Act Of Settlement 1701
The Act of Settlement is an Act of the Parliament of England that was passed in 1701 to settle the succession to the English and Irish crowns and thrones on the Electress Sophia of Hanover (a granddaughter of James I) and her Protestant heirs.
The Act was prompted by the failure of William and Mary, as well as of Mary's sister Princess Anne, to produce any surviving children, and the Roman Catholic religion of nearly all other members of the House of Stuart. The line of Sophia of Hanover was the most junior among the Stuarts, but consisted of convinced Protestants. Sophia herself went to England to campaign for the Act, though Queen Anne barely outlived Sophia, whose son duly became King George I and started the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714.
The act played a seminal role in the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain. England and Scotland had shared a monarch since 1603, but had remained separately governed countries. The Scottish Parliament was more reluctant than the English to abandon the House of Stuart, members of which had been Scottish monarchs long before they became English ones. English pressure on Scotland to accept the Act of Settlement led to the parliamentary union of the two countries in 1707.
Anyone who becomes a Roman Catholic, or who marries a Roman Catholic, becomes disqualified to inherit the throne under the Act of Settlement. The Act also placed limits on both the role of foreigners in the British government and the power of the monarch with respect to Parliament, though some of those provisions have been altered by subsequent legislation.
Along with the Bill of Rights 1689, the Act of Settlement remains today one of the main constitutional laws governing the succession not only to the throne of the United Kingdom, but also to those of the other Commonwealth realms, whether by willing deference to the Act as a British statute or as a patriated part of the particular realm's constitution. The Act of Settlement cannot be 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 throne.
Read more about Act Of Settlement 1701: Original Context, Provisions of The Act, Effects of The Act, Present Status, Amendment Proposals
Famous quotes containing the words act of, act and/or settlement:
“The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the cliché that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)