Act of Settlement 1701

Uncommon card · No. 160009

The Act of Settlement (12 & 13 Will. 3. c. 2) is an act of the Parliament of England passed in 1701 that settled the succession to the English and Irish crowns to Sophia of Hanover in the event that Queen Anne died without issue; it further reaffirmed the exclusion of Catholics and anyone married to a Catholic from the succession, along with the requirement for the monarch to be in communion with the Church of England contained in the Bill of Rights 1689. This had the effect of deposing the remaining descendants of Charles I other than Anne, as Sophia was the next Protestant in the line of succession. Born into the House of Wittelsbach, Sophia was a granddaughter of James VI and I from his most junior surviving line, with the crowns descending only to her non-Catholic heirs. Sophia predeceased Anne by two months, and her son succeeded to the throne as King George I, starting the Hanoverian dynasty in Great Britain and Ireland. The Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1) had confirmed the...

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