and suspected, lonely and
unhappy; it is not wonderful that when Henry VII. was gradually sinking to
his grave, and her marriage with his son was still in doubt, this ardent
Southern young woman in her prime should be tempted to cast to the wind
considerations of dignity and prudence for the sake of her love for a man.

She was friendless in a foreign land; and when her father was in Naples in
1506, she wrote to him praying him to send her a Spanish confessor to
solace her. Before he could do so she informed him (April 1507) that she
had obtained a very good Spanish confessor for herself. This was a young,
lusty, dissolute Franciscan monk called Diego Fernandez, who then became a
member of Katharine's household. When the new outspoken ambassador,
Fuensalida, arrived in England in the autumn of 1508, he, of course, had
frequent conference with the Princess, and could not for long shut his
eyes to the state of affairs in her establishment. He first sounded the
alarm cautiously to Ferdinand in a letter of 4th March 1509. He had hoped
against hope, he said, that the marriage of Katharine and Prince Henry
might be effected soon; and the scandal might remedy itself without his
worrying Ferdinand about it. But he must speak out now, for he has been
silent too long. It is high time, he says, that some person of sufficient
authority in the confidence of Ferdinand should be put in charge of
Katharine's household and command respect: "for at present the Princess's
house is governed by a young friar, whom her Highness has taken for her
confessor, though he is, in my opinion, and that of others, utterly
unworthy of such a position. He makes the Princess commit many errors; and
as she is so good and conscientious, this confessor makes a mortal sin of
everything that does not please him, and so causes her to commit many
faults." The ambassador continues that he dare not write all he would
because the bearer (a servant of Katharine's) is being sent by those who
wish to injure him; but he begs the King to interrogate the man who takes
the letter as to what had been going on in the Princess's house in the
last two months. "The root of all the trouble is this young friar, who is
flighty, and vain, and extremely scandalous. He has spoken to the Princess
very roughly about the King of England; and because I told the Princess
something of what I thought of this friar, and he learnt it, he has
disgraced me with her worse than if I had been a t