De Puebla, the Spanish Ambassador entrusted by Ferdinand with the greater part of the marriage negotiations, had also tried his hand during the years that he resided in England, at enticing the King of Scotland into the anti-French web. The friendship between France and Scotland was of ancient date; but De Puebla felt that the offer of a royal bride from the Spanish Court would make a deep impression on King James’s susceptible vanity, and since, at the date when this idea occurred to him, all the Spanish Infantas were either married or betrothed, he suggested instead Doña Juana, one of Ferdinand’s illegitimate daughters, concealing as he believed with considerable statesmanship the fact of the bar sinister. Ferdinand, when he heard of it, was most contemptuous. Such a deception, he wrote, could not possibly be maintained and therefore was not worth the lie. Let De Puebla, on the other hand, hold out false hopes if he could of one of the real Princesses, and by this bait induce the Scottish monarch to quarrel with France. Even moderate success in this strategy would prove of considerable value. James IV. did not marry a Spanish Princess but Catherine of Aragon’s sister-in-law Margaret Tudor; and what harm he might inflict on Spain and her Allies in French interests was a mere pin-prick to the stab administered by Ferdinand’s immediate family. On the death of Prince Miguel in July, 1500, Joanna, Archduchess of Austria, became heiress to the throne of Castile and Aragon; and, though there was cause for rejoicing that a son had been born to her early in the same year and thus the succession was assured, yet the situation arising from the new importance of her position tended every day to grow more critical. Joanna and her husband had been from the first an ill-matched pair, his light careless nature acting like a spark to fire the mine of her sullen temper and quick jealousy; and his faithlessness and her lack of self-control combined to keep the Flemish Court in a perpetual flame of scandal. Had they been merely private individuals, the evil effects of their passions might have spread no further than the street or town in which they lived; but unfortunately Joanna had gone to Flanders not merely as a bride but as an agent to influence her husband’s policy in her father’s favour, and the odium and exasperation her behaviour aroused reacted to the detriment of Spain. Philip had nothing in common with the Castilian race. Their pride irritated him, their deep religious feeling awoke his incredulity, their sense of reverence and gravity a flippant scorn and boredom, that his selfishness found it difficult to disguise. Personal tastes inclined him rather to the volatile, easy-mannered Frenchman; and, as domestic differences increased, so also did his dislike for the Aragonese and sympathy with their enemies.