Deaf to all remonstrances both from King Henry and her own old servants, Katharine obstinately had her way, and the chances of her marriage in England grew smaller and smaller. It is not to be supposed that the ambassador would have dared to say so much as he did to the lady's own father if he had not taken the gravest view of Katharine's conduct and its 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.