“ West’s long and successful career as a diplomatist began in 1502 through his friendship with Richard Fox, bishop of Durham, In the interests of Henry VII he visited the German king Maximilian I and George, duke of Saxony, in 1506 he negotiated an important commercial treaty with Flanders, and he attempted to arrange marriages between the king’s daughter Mary and the future emperor Charles V, and between the king himself and Charles’s sister Margaret. ”