The governor appointed to teach Philip the social duties and exercises fitting to his rank was an honest Spanish gentleman who possessed the full confidence of the emperor--Don Juan de Zuñiga, Comendador Mayor of Castile. From him he learnt fencing, riding, and warlike exercises, and especially dancing, of which during his youth he was very fond. Don Juan was somewhat uncompromising of speech, and apparently made no attempt to flatter or spoil his pupil, for the emperor in 1543, when Philip was sixteen, warns him that he is to prize Don Juan the more for this quality, and is to follow his advice in all personal and social matters. At the age of twelve Philip lost his mother, and two years afterwards, in 1541, his political instruction may be said to have commenced. The emperor, although still in the prime of life, was already tired of the world. His great expedition to Algiers, from which he had hoped so much, had brought him nothing but disaster and disappointment, and he arrived in Spain in deep depression. A letter supposed to have been written to him at the time by Philip, full of religious and moral consolation for his trouble, is quoted by Cabrera de Cordoba and subsequent historians; but on the face of it there are few signs of its being the composition of a boy of fourteen, and it is not sufficiently authenticated to be reproduced here. The emperor in any case was delighted with his son. He found him studious, grave, and prudent beyond his years, and during the period that the father and son were together the great statesman devoted a portion of every day to initiate his successor in the intricate task before him. In 1542 Philip was to receive his first lesson in practical warfare, and accompanied the Duke of Alba to defend Perpignan against the French, but he saw no fighting, and on his way back to Castile he received the oath of allegiance of the Aragonese Cortes at Monzon, Philip himself swearing in October at Saragossa to maintain inviolate the tenaciously-held privileges of self-government cherished by the kingdom of Aragon. How he kept his oath will be seen in a subsequent chapter. The tendency of Charles’s policy was in favour of centralisation in the government of Spain, and he several times in writing to his son shows his dislike of the autonomy possessed by the stubborn Aragonese. He had completely crushed popular privileges in his kingdom of Castile, and would have liked to do the same in Aragon. This will probably explain Philip’s eagerness in subsequently seizing upon an excuse to curtail the rights of the northern kingdom. Before this period Charles had conceived another project in favour of the consolidation of Spain. Ferdinand the Catholic, with the papal authority, had seized the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and added it to his own dominions. Thenceforward the titular sovereigns of Navarre were only tributary princes of France, but they did not lightly put up with their