Of his allies, however, by far the most important was Maurice of Saxony. The history of the House of Wettin in Saxony illustrates most forcibly the evil results of that custom, so prevalent among the German princes, of dividing their territories among their sons. In 1464, Frederick II. of Saxony had died, leaving his territories to his two sons, Ernest and Albert, and from that day the jealousy between these two lines had been extreme. In the early days of the Lutheran movement, while the Electors, Frederick the Wise, John, and John Frederick, the representatives of the elder or Ernestine branch, had, in their capital of Wittenberg, been the earnest supporters of reform, George, the representative of the Albertine line at Meissen, had been one of the most devoted advocates of the ancient faith. This cause of difference was but in part removed when Henry, the brother of Duke George, who succeeded him in 1539, accepted Lutheranism. Maurice, who succeeded his father Henry in 1541, had also declared himself a Protestant, and had married the daughter of the Landgrave, Philip of Hesse. Nevertheless, he had recalled some of the ministers of his Catholic uncle, George, and among them Carlowitz. He had also refused to join the League of Schmalkalde, weak and divided by jealousies as it was, and had always taken an independent position, which was disliked by his cousins at Wittenberg. The estrangement thus caused between him and John Frederick, the Elector, was aggravated by more personal grounds of quarrel. None of the princes of Germany had made greater use of the cry for secularisation of ecclesiastical property than these Saxon princes, and this had led to fresh disagreements between the two cousins. The bishopric of Naumburg had been secularised by John Frederick; Maurice was anxious to do the same with the bishopric of Merseburg. They also quarrelled over their claims within the limits of the see of Meissen, which was under the common jurisdiction of both branches; while both were anxious to obtain possession of the two bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, which had accepted Protestantism, and lay close at hand.