Act of Settlement 1701
The Act of Settlement is a piece of English legislation governing the succession to the English Crown. It was passed in 1701 as an ammendment to the English Bill of Rights, following the death of the last heir of the then Princess Anne. It provides that only Protestant descendants of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, who have not married a Catholic, can succeed to the English Crown. In addition, it specifies that it is for Parliament to determine who should succeed to the throne, not the monarch.This act was, in many ways, the major cause of the union of Scotland and England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Parliament of Scotland was not happy with the Act of Settlement and, in response, passed the Act of Security in 1704, which gave them the right to choose their own Protestant successor to Queen Anne. This would have created a fully independent Scotland rather than the partially independent nation which had resulted from the Union of the Crowns a hundred years before. As a result, the Parliament of England decided that full union of the two Parliaments and nations was essential before Anne's death, and used a combination of exclusionary legislation (the Alien Act of 1705), politics, and bribery to achieve it within three years under the Act of Union 1707. This was in marked contrast to the four attempts at political union between 1606 and 1689, which all failed owing to a lack of political will. By virtue of Article II of the Treaty of Union, which defined the succession to the British Crown, the Act of Settlement became, in effect, part of Scots Law.
Sophia died before Anne, so the result of the Act was the succession of Sophia's son George in preference to many of his cousins.
As a result of the Act of Settlement, several members of the British Royal Family who have converted to Roman Catholicism or married Catholics have been barred from their place in the line of succession, though since George I no individual has in practice been excluded on the grounds of religion from the throne.
Many of those currently excluded are noted in the article List of Succession to the British throne. The most directly affected are the Earl of St. Andrews who married a Roman Catholic, and his son Baron Downpatrick who converted to Catholicism; without the Act of Settlement, they would be 23rd and 24th in line, pushing down the Earl's elder daughter Lady Marina-Charlotte Windsor.
The Royal Marriages Act 1772 and the Abdication Act 1936 also had potential consequences for the succession.
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Challenge and pressure for reform
This law has in recent times been frequently been attacked as anti-Catholic and religiously discriminatory. The Guardian newspaper recently brought an unsuccessful legal challenge to the legislation, based on the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998.
In 2003 the Fabian Society issued a paper calling for the lifting of the ban on Catholics inheriting the throne. In 2002, the Lord Chancellor rejected calls from the backbench for a change in the succession rules. A motion already passed the Scottish Parliament in 1999 requesting a change.
Under the Statute of Westminster any change in the succession rules would require unanimous consent of all Commonwealth realms. The complex procedures that would have to be undertaken to not only change various British statutes but receive the consent of Commonwealth parliaments has been cited by Tony Blair as the reason why the current Labour government had decided not to seek any change in the succession rules.
As the Act of Settlement impacts on the crown in the Commonwealth realms the act's anti-Catholic provisions have also been a subject of debate outside of Britain. In 2003, Canadian local politician Tony O'Donohue filed a court challenge arguing that the Act of Settlement's anti-Catholic provisions were a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the court ruled that the Act of Settlement was part of Canada's written constitution and dismissed the case as one part of the constitution cannot be used to invalidate another part.