Settlement, Act of

Settlement, Act of, common name of a statute passed by the English Parliament in 1701. Its primary purpose was to regulate the succession to the throne following the death of the Duke of Gloucester, the last surviving child of Princess Anne, who would become queen in 1702 on the death of her brother-in-law William III.

William III had become king in 1689 following the flight of the Catholic king, James II, during the Glorious Revolution. James II’s supporters, the Jacobites, did not accept the legitimacy of this change of monarch, and James, his son, and grandson in turn claimed to be the rightful king (see Stuart, James Francis Edward; Stuart, Charles Edward). Parliament’s response to James’s Catholicism and perceived misgovernment was a resolution by both House of Commons and House of Lords that experience had shown that it was incompatible with the safety of a Protestant kingdom to be governed by a Catholic king. Later in 1689 the Bill of Rights laid down that no Catholic, or spouse of a Catholic, could become king or queen of England; Catholics were already excluded from other public offices by the Test Acts of 1673 and 1678. The Bill had also stated that if William’s queen, Mary II, remained childless, the throne would pass to her sister Anne and her heirs.

There had seemed no need in 1689 to specify the succession any further, but it became problematic with the Duke of Gloucester’s death, as William had not remarried after Mary died in 1694. The nearest Protestant heir was Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I. There were many whose claim by blood was stronger, but Parliament and the Protestant nation wished to avoid another Catholic ruler, so the Act of Settlement vested the succession, after Anne, in the House of Hanover, and restated the provision that Catholics were excluded from the throne. This marked a serious deviation from the principle that the Crown should always pass to the nearest heir by blood, a principle that the Stuart monarchs and their most active supporters regarded as sacrosanct, and one aspect of the belief that hereditary monarchy was the form of government ordained by God.

The Act also imposed a number of new restrictions on the monarch. Its full title was: An Act for the Further Limitation of the Crown and Better Securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject. These restrictions were enacted by a xenophobic Parliament and reflected the experience of a Dutch king (William) and the prospect of a German monarch. The Hanoverians would not be allowed to leave England or involve England in a war affecting Hanover without Parliament’s permission. They were required to conform to the Church of England (they were Lutherans) and forbidden to appoint foreigners to office. Other provisions were designed to make the king’s ministers and judges more accountable to Parliament.

Sophia died shortly before Anne. Her son, George I, came to the British throne in 1714, but the exiled Stuart kings posed a serious threat to Hanoverian rule until at least 1746. The provision against a Catholic succeeding to the British throne remains in force to this day.