raitor.... That your
Highness may judge what sort of person he is, I will repeat exactly
without exaggeration the very words he used to me. 'I know,' he said,
'that they have been telling you evil tales of me.' 'I can assure you,
father,' I replied, 'that no one has said anything about you to me.' 'I
know,' he replied; 'the same person who told you told me himself.' 'Well,'
I said, 'any one can bear false witness, and I swear by the Holy Body
that, so far as I can recollect, nothing has been said to me about you.'
'Ah,' he said, 'there are scandal-mongers in this house who have defamed
me, and not with the lowest either, but with the highest, and that is no
disgrace to me. If it were not for contradicting them I should be gone
already.'" Proud Fuensalida tells the King that it was only with the
greatest difficulty he kept his hands off the insolent priest at this.
"His constant presence with the Princess and amongst her women is shocking
the King of England and his Court dreadfully;" and then the ambassador
hints strongly that Henry is only allowing the scandal to go on, so as to
furnish him with a good excuse for still keeping Katharine's marriage in
abeyance.

With this letter to Spain went another from Katharine to her father,
railing bitterly against the ambassador. She can no longer endure her
troubles, and a settlement of some sort must be arrived at. The King of
England treats her worse than ever since his daughter Mary was betrothed
to the young Archduke Charles, sovereign of Castile and Flanders. She had
sold everything she possessed for food and raiment; and only a few days
before she wrote, Henry had again told her that he was not bound to feed
her servants. Her own people, she says, are insolent and turn against her;
but what afflicts her most is that she is too poor to maintain fittingly
her confessor, "the best that ever woman had." It is plain to see that the
whole household was in rebellion against the confessor who had captured
Katharine's heart, and that the ambassador was on the side of the
household. The Princess and Fuensalida had quarrelled about it, and she
wished that the ambassador should be reproved. With vehement passion she
begged her father that the confessor might not be taken away from her. "I
implore your Highness to prevent him from leaving me; and to write to the
King of England that you have ordered this Father to stay with me; and beg
him for your sake to have him well treated and humo