Another person who, about this time, gave infinite vexation to Charles and Adrian was Diego de las Casas of Seville, the agent who bore to Rome the contested proceedings of the Córtes of Aragon and labored for their confirmation. He was well supplied with funds and naturally was a _persona grata_ to the curia. The Inquisition speedily attacked him, in its customary unscrupulous manner, by not only prosecuting him _in absentia_ but by seizing his brothers, Francisco and Juan, and their wives. To meet this he procured a brief committing the cases to Adrian and to Ferdinand de Arce, Bishop of Canaries, with a provision that the parties should present themselves to Adrian and Arce and keep such prison as might be designated for them, and further permitting them to select advocates for their defence. Equitable as were these provisions, the brief excited hot indignation. When laid before the royal council it was pronounced scandalous and of evil example and its execution was refused. Charles wrote in haste to Leo, April 30, 1519, that it was scandalous and would destroy the Inquisition; he instructed his agents to procure its revocation to be forwarded by the next courier and he invoked by letters the cardinals in the Spanish interest to bring what pressure they could upon the pope. His urgency was fruitless and when, in September, he sent Lope Hurtado de Mendoza to Rome, as special ambassador in the quarrel with Aragon, his instructions were to represent to the pope the impropriety of harboring in Rome fugitives from the Inquisition, especially Diego de las Casas and his colleague Juan Gutiérrez, whose parents and grandparents and kindred had been reconciled or burnt; they should be expelled, and Mendoza was to labor for the revocation of their briefs and all other exemptions and commissions in favor of Conversos. Mendoza exerted all his diplomatic ability, but, although Leo admitted, in a brief of July 13, 1520, to Adrian that the evocation of cases to Rome, both on appeal and in first instance, led to delays, impunity for offenders and encouragement of offences, still he would not abandon Diego de las Casas. The grant by Sixtus IV of appellate jurisdiction to the inquisitor-general, he admitted had been beneficial and, in hopes that Adrian would use it with integrity and justice, he evoked to himself all cases pending in the Roman courts and committed them to Adrian with full powers, but he made no promises as to the future and he especially excepted his physician, Ferdinand de Aragon and his wife, Diego de las Casas, Juan Gutiérrez and the deceased Juan de Covarrubias, whose cases had long been in dispute.