This image is taken from a plea roll from the Court of King's Bench. One of the most significant European marriages of the sixteenth century saw the English royal house of Tudor unite with the Spanish branch of Habsburg family. The implications for the union were momentous, as any future children stood to inherit an Anglo-Spanish empire that claimed overlordship of the New World and the Spanish Netherlands, with Habsburg possessions on the continent completing an encirclement of France. However Mary died childless in 1558 and under the Protestant Elizabeth, England and Spain were soon at war.
