The greatest of the emperor’s Spanish subjects was the Duke of Alba, yet this is how he is sketched for the benefit of Philip. “The Duke of Alba would have liked to be associated with them (_i.e._ Cardinal Tavara and Cobos), and I do not think that he would have followed either party, but that which best suited his interests. But as it concerns the interior government of the kingdom, in which it is not advisable that grandees should be employed, I would not appoint him, whereat he is much aggrieved. Since he has been near me I have noticed that he aims at great things and is very ambitious, although at first he was so sanctimonious, humble, and modest. Look, my son, how he will act with you, who are younger than I. You must avoid placing him or other grandees very intimately in the interior government, because he and others will exert every means to gain your goodwill, which will afterwards cost you dear. I believe that he will not hesitate to endeavour to tempt you even by means of women, and I beg you most especially to avoid this. In foreign affairs and war make use of him, and respect him, as he is in this the best man we now have in the kingdom.” And so, one by one, the bishops and ministers who were to be Philip’s advisers are dissected for his benefit. The prince was ready enough to learn lessons of distrust, and it afterwards became one of the main principles of his system that only creatures of his own making should be his instruments for the political government of Spain. Quite as extraordinary as the political instructions were the minute rules of conduct given by the emperor to his son for the regulation of his married life and the continuance of his studies. He is not to consider that he is a man with nothing to learn because he married early, and is left in so great a position, but is to study harder than ever. “If this, my son, be necessary for others, consider how much more necessary is it for you, seeing how many lands you will have to govern, so distant and far apart.... If you wish to enjoy them you must necessarily understand and be understood in them; and nothing is so important for this as the study of languages.” The coming marital relations of the young prince were in somewhat curious terms, left entirely to the guidance of Don Juan de Zuñiga, and the lessons enforced all through the proud and anxious father’s instructions, were piety, patience, modesty, and distrust. These were Philip’s guiding principles for the rest of his long life. The prince fully answered the expectations of his father. During the next few years, full of stress and storm for the wearying emperor, a close correspondence was kept up between them, and the plans and principles of the father were gradually assimilated by the son.