For the next two years the emperor kept his son by his side, indoctrinating him with his principles and policy. For two hours nearly every day the Spanish prince learnt the profound lessons of government from the lips of his great father, government founded on the principle of making all other men merely instruments for carrying out the ends of one. Philip had now been a widower for four years, and doubtless during this period contracted his connection with Doña Isabel de Osorio, by whom he had several children; and he had one at least by a Flemish lady in Brussels. His only legitimate son was the lame, epileptic Don Carlos, and the emperor had no other sons; so during the intimate conferences which followed Philip’s arrival in Brussels, Charles pressed upon his heir the necessity of taking another wife, and once more brought forward Jeanne d’Albret, titular Queen of Navarre, who had claimed a divorce from the Duke of Cleves, whom she had been constrained to marry. But whether because cautious Philip saw that to extend his dominions into the south of France would be a source of weakness rather than strength to him, or whether he was influenced by the greed for dowry, and the persuasions of his widowed aunt Leonora, who was with his father in Brussels, he certainly leant to the side of her daughter, another Princess Maria of Portugal, aunt of his former wife, and negotiations were opened in this direction, although Ferdinand, King of the Romans, the brother of the emperor, tried his hardest to promote his own daughter to the place of Philip’s consort. Philip had contrived to persuade his probably not unwilling father to endeavour to promote his claims to the succession of the imperial crown in the place of Ferdinand, and the Austrian archives contain full details of the almost interminable family discussions with this end. At last, in March 1551, a compact was made with which Philip was forced to be satisfied. It was to the effect that Ferdinand should succeed Charles as emperor, but that on the death of Ferdinand the imperial crown should pass to Philip instead of to Maximilian, who was to govern the empire in his name, holding a similar position towards Philip to that occupied by Ferdinand towards Charles. The emperor’s suzerainty over Italy was to be exercised vicariously by Philip during the life of Ferdinand. This last provision was a bitter pill for Ferdinand to swallow, but it was, in Charles’s view, the most important of them all. Spain, with a supremacy over the Italian states, would be the mistress of the Mediterranean, with infinite possibilities of extension to the east and in Africa, whilst France would be checkmated on this side, as she had been on the north. Philip, who had accompanied his father to Augsburg for the Diet, only stayed until this arrangement was settled and he had received the fiefs of the empire, and then (in May 1551) started on his way home to Spain.