n sovereigns would not
allow him to accept, and a wealthy wife in England was denied him for a
similar reason; for Ferdinand on principle kept his agents poor. On a
wretched pittance allowed him by Henry, Puebla lived thus in London until
he died almost simultaneously with his royal friend. When not spunging at
the tables of the King or English nobles he lived in a house of ill-fame
in London, paying only twopence a day for his board, and cheating the
other inmates, in the interests of the proprietor, for the balance. He
was, in short, a braggart, a liar, a flatterer, and a spy, who served two
rogues roguishly and was fittingly rewarded by the scorn of honest men.

This was the ambassador who, with a colleague called Juan de Sepulveda,
was occupied through the spring of 1488 in negotiating the marriage of the
two babies--Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta Katharine. They found
Henry, as Puebla says, singing _Te Deum Laudamus_ about the alliance and
marriage: but when the parties came to close quarters matters went less
smoothly. What Henry had to gain by the alliance was the disarming of
possible enemies of his own unstable throne, whilst Ferdinand needed
England's active or passive support in a war against France, for the
purpose of extorting the restoration to Aragon of the territory of
Roussillon and Cerdagne, and of preventing the threatened absorption of
the Duchy of Brittany into the French monarchy. The contest was keen and
crafty. First the English commissioners demanded with the Infanta a dowry
so large as quite to shock Puebla; it being, as he said, five times as
much as had been mentioned by English agents in Spain. Puebla and
Sepulveda offered a quarter of the sum demanded, and hinted with pretended
jocosity that it was a great condescension on the part of the sovereigns
of Spain to allow their daughter to marry at all into such a parvenu
family as the Tudors. After infinite haggling, both as to the amount and
the form of the dowry, it was agreed by the ambassadors that 200,000 gold
crowns of 4s. 2d. each should be paid in cash with the bride on her
marriage. But the marriage was the least part of Ferdinand's object, if
indeed he then intended, which is doubtful, that it should take place at
all. What he wanted was the assurance of Henry's help against France; and,
of all things, peace was the first need for the English king. When the
demand was made therefore that England should go to war with France
w