altered in any realm except by that realm's own parliament and, by convention, only with the consent of all the other realms, as it touches on the succession to the shared crown. On 26 March 2015, following the Perth Agreement, legislation amending the Act came into effect across the Commonwealth realms that removed the disqualification arising from marriage to a Roman Catholic and instituted absolute primogeniture. Background Following the Glorious Revolution, the line of succession to the English throne was governed by the Bill of Rights 1689, which declared that the flight of James II from England to France during the revolution amounted to an abdication of the throne and that James's daughter Mary II and her husband/cousin, William III (William of Orange, who was also James's nephew), were James's successors. The Bill of Rights also provided that the line of succession would go through Mary's Protestant descendants by William and any possible future husband should she outlive him, then through Mary's sister Anne and her Protestant descendants, and then to the Protestant descendants of William III by a possible later marriage should he outlive Mary. During the debate, the House of Lords had attempted to append Sophia and her descendants to the line of succession, but the amendment failed in the Commons. Mary II died childless in 1694, after which William III did not remarry. In 1700, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, who was Anne's only child to survive infancy, died of what may have been smallpox at the age of 11. Thus, Anne was left as the only person in line to the throne. The Bill of Rights excluded Catholics from the throne, which ruled out James II and his children (as well as their descendants) sired after he converted to Catholicism in 1668. However, it did not provide for the further succession after Anne. Parliament thus saw the need to settle the succession on Sophia and her descendants, and thereby guarantee the continuity of the Crown in the Protestant line. With religion and lineage initially decided, the ascendancy of William of Orange in 1689 would also bring his partiality to his foreign favourites that followed. By 1701 English jealousy of foreigners was rampant, and action was considered necessary. The Act The Act of Settlement provided that the throne would pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover – a granddaughter of James VI and I and a niece