MARRIAGE
Once Mary became queen, after the exceedingly short (and disputed) reign of Lady Jane Grey, a high priority for the new monarch was to find a husband and produce an heir. To Mary, the alternative was inconceivable. The 1544 Act of Succession, the legislation that had overlooked Mary's supposed illegitimacy and placed her on the throne should Edward VI die without issue, would on Mary's death do exactly the same for her younger halfsister, Elizabeth. If that were so, any recalibration of England along Catholic lines under Mary's rule would be unstitched by Elizabeth's keenness for the country to revert back to Protestantism as its official religion.
At the age of 37, Mary had to move swiftly. A suitable husband was speedily identified when her politically savvy cousin (and former fiancé), Charles V of Spain, offered his widowed son Philip, who had already fathered a son of his own with his first wife, Maria Manuela of Portugal. While the subsequent marriage did intimately reconnect England with one
