Pedro de Ayala

Don Pedro de Ayala also Pedro López Ayala (died 31 January 1513) was a 16th-century Spanish diplomat employed by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile at the courts of James IV of Scotland and Henry VII of England. His mission to Scotland was concerned with the King's marriage and the international crisis caused by the pretender Perkin Warbeck. In his later career he supported Catherine of Aragon in England but was involved in a decade of rivalry with the resident Spanish ambassador in London. Ayala was a Papal prothonotary, Archdeacon of London, and Bishop of the Canary Islands.

Sources in English reveal little of Ayala's background; however, he was from the noble family of the Counts of Fuensalida in Toledo.^[1] He was the son of Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Commendator of Mora and Treze, and Doña Leonor de Ayala.^[2] His contemporary, the historian Polydore Vergil, who may have known him in England, remarks that he was clever, but no scholar.^[3]