London ? After more than a week of silence, Prince Charles waded into the controversy that followed the abrupt end of former royal butler Paul Burrell’s theft trial, ordering an investigation of his household’s role in the affair.

Charles’ private secretary Sir Michael Peat announced Tuesday that Charles told him to review questions raised by the trial. The news came as Burrell’s tabloid story, the latest in a string of royal servants’ tell-alls, continued to provide grist for gossip,

Peat also plans to examine whether the palace covered up allegations that a former member of the prince’s staff raped a male colleague.

“The Prince of Wales has instructed me to undertake this inquiry without fear or favor,” Peat said. “Concerns have been raised in the newspapers. Underlying it may be some matters that may well be of concern to people, and, therefore, we are going to look into these matters.”

“I, and more importantly the Prince of Wales, are totally committed to openness and accountability,” Peat told Press Assn., the national news agency.

Burrell, Princess Diana’s former servant, had been accused of stealing hundreds of her belongings after she died in 1997. But prosecutors dropped their case Nov. 1, after Queen Elizabeth II said Burrell had told her long before that he was holding some of Diana’s belongings for safekeeping.

Critics claimed the queen wanted to keep embarrassing revelations from emerging if Burrell testified, or to prevent her relatives from being called to the stand.

In his latest revelation, Burrell was quoted in the Daily Mirror on Monday as saying Princess Diana was deeply distressed by a series of insulting letters from her father-in-law Prince Philip, the queen’s husband.

According to Monday newspaper reports, the prince branded Diana a “harlot” and a “trollop” and warned her she was damaging the royal family.

Talkative staff members

Britain's Princess Elizabeth, center, later to become Queen Elizabeth II, and Princess Margaret, foreground, take a river trip in England with their Governess Marion Crawford, second from left, in Jan. 1940. Others are unidentified. Crawford was the first servant to give an intimate account of life behind the palace gates. The palace is reeling now from the revelations of Princess Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell.

Burrell is the latest loose-lipped servant to go public with gossip about the royals.

The first servant to give an intimate account of life behind the palace gates was Marion Crawford, who cared for the future queen and her sister, Princess Margaret, when they were children.

Her book “The Little Princesses,” was an affectionate account of royal life but it infuriated the family, who shunned her thereafter.

Patrick Jephson, Diana’s private secretary from 1987 to 1996, psychoanalyzed his former boss in 2000 in “Shadows of a Princess,” saying she had a “pathological craving for victimhood and self-justification.”

This summer, Diana’s former bodyguard Ken Wharfe wrote a book that included descriptions of tensions between Charles and Diana and the princess’s affair with former army officer James Hewitt.

Burrell has insisted he is loyal to the queen and to Diana’s memory, saying he only wanted to set the record straight.

Peat said he would investigate whether any members of Charles’ household acted improperly in the decision to end the trial. Peat said he would publish a report by Christmas.

Other allegations

He also planned to examine whether palace officials covered up accusations of homosexual rape by one of Charles’s aides and charges that another staff member sold royal gifts for cash.

On Sunday, George Smith, a 42-year-old former valet of Prince Charles, was quoted as telling The Mail on Sunday tabloid that he was raped by another man on the palace staff in 1989. The paper did not identify the alleged attacker.

Charles’ office has said police and the palace investigated the charges, and that there was no basis for prosecution. The office also said the alleged victim did not raise the issue until 1996 and did not want to pursue the matter.

Smith was quoted as saying the man later tried to assault him again while they were both accompanying Prince Charles on a foreign tour to Cairo.

Law firm Kingsley Napley later released a statement from the unidentified alleged rapist denying Smith’s allegations.

The allegation surfaced again in 2001 and police investigated, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue a trial.

Peat will also investigate newspaper reports that a personal assistant of the prince has sold unwanted gifts Charles received and kept up to 20 percent of the profits. Peat said there was no evidence that had happened.