rowing age and
fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of
prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for
the guidance that she might still have exercised.

The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage.
Friar Diego, who was now Katharine's chancellor, wrote an extraordinary
letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that
Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so
secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician,
and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as
ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: "Her Highness
is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the
greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and
her Highness him." But with this letter to the King went another to his
secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish ambassador, Carroz, who complains
bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his
access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine's first
matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were
at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said
to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir
William Compton. This lady's family, and especially her brother the Duke,
who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen's
friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the
country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen's favourite away, and
quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and
diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her
badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.

Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling
friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming
minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the
crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was
desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the
looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing
again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had
ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks
for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once agai