THE TELEGRAPH: Hands off the heads that wear the crown, says Andrew Roberts.
The news that Gordon Brown has opened talks with Buckingham Palace over altering the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bars members of the Royal family from succeeding to the throne if they marry Roman Catholics, has profound implications for the long-term future of this country. For the Act of Settlement is not the bigoted, irrelevant and obsolete law that Downing Street presents it as – it is one of the key pieces of legislation that has defined what Britain was and still is. For a Prime Minister who claims to care deeply about the concept of Britishness, the Act should be sacrosanct, rather than sacrificed in a gross bout of politically correct gimmickry.
Britain is a Protestant country today largely because of the Act of Settlement. It secured the Hanoverian succession 13 years after the Glorious Revolution replaced the Catholic King James II with the Protestant William III (of Orange) and Mary II. Since the only surviving son of their daughter, the future Queen Anne, had died, it settled the Crown after her upon the Electoress Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I, and her heirs – if they were Protestants, and married to Protestants, as indeed the four King Georges were.
Because it is a central tenet of the Catholic Church that the children of Catholics should be raised as Catholics, it was understood that marriage of a Royal opened up the possibility either of a Catholic one day sitting on the Throne, or a Catholic parent committing apostasy by allowing their child to be raised as a Protestant – neither of which were desirable outcomes politically, religiously or morally. Since the monarch is also Supreme Head of the (Protestant) Church of England, above whom there is no one in the Church hierarchy – including the Pope – the ban on Catholics makes further sense. Gordon Brown's Assault on the Traditions of the Monarchy Is Preposterous >>> Andrew Roberts | Saturday, March 28, 2009
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