probable political result. But his hints to Ferdinand's ministers were
much stronger still. "The Princess," he said, "was guilty of things a
thousand times worse" than those he had mentioned; and the "parables" that
he had written to the King might be made clear by the examination of
Katharine's own servant, who carried her letters. "The devil take me," he
continues, "if I can see anything in this friar for her to be so fond of
him; for he has neither learning, nor good looks, nor breeding, nor
capacity, nor authority; but if he takes it into his head to preach a new
gospel, they have to believe it."[18] By two letters still extant, written
by Friar Diego himself, we see that the ambassador in no wise exaggerated
his coarseness and indelicacy, and it is almost incredible that
Katharine, an experienced and disillusioned woman of nearly twenty-four,
can have been ready to jeopardise everything political and personal, and
face the opposition of the world, for the sake alone of the spiritual
comfort to be derived from the ministrations of such a man. How far, if at
all, the connection was actually immoral we shall probably never know, but
the case as it stands shows Katharine to have been passionate,
self-willed, and utterly tactless. Even after her marriage with young
Henry Friar Diego retained his ascendency over her for several years, and
ruled her with a rod of iron until he was publicly convicted of
fornication, and deprived of his office as Chancellor of the Queen. We
shall have later to consider the question of his relationship with
Katharine after her marriage; but it is almost certain that the
ostentatious intimacy of the pair during the last months of Henry VII. had
reduced Katharine's chance of marriage with the Prince of Wales almost to
vanishing point, when the death of the King suddenly changed the political
position and rendered it necessary that the powerful coalition of which
Ferdinand was the head should be conciliated by England.

Henry VII. died at Richmond on the 22nd April 1509, making a better and
more generous end than could have been expected from his life. He, like
his rival Ferdinand, had been avaricious by deliberate policy; and his
avarice was largely instrumental in founding England's coming greatness,
for the overflowing coffers he left to his son lent force to the new
position assumed by England as the balancing power, courted by both the
great continental rivals. Ferdinand's ambition had o'er