Act of Settlement 1701

12 June 1701: royal assent

On 12 June 1701 Old Style, royal assent was given to "An Act for the further limitation of the Crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject" — the statute now called the Act of Settlement.

The 24 June date often attached to it is unsupported. Contemporary English records give 12 June 1701 Old Style, equivalent to 23 June Gregorian.

Sophia placed behind Anne

Anne's only child to survive infancy, the 11-year-old Duke of Gloucester, had died in 1700, leaving no assured Protestant successor after William III and Anne.

The Act declared Sophia, Electress of Hanover — James I's Protestant granddaughter — and the Protestant heirs of her body to be the contingent successors after William III, Princess Anne and any issue either might have. It preserved the exclusion of Catholics and of people married to Catholics from inheriting or exercising the Crown.

It did not put Sophia ahead of Anne, who was still a princess and did not become queen until 1702. The statute wrote a legal contingency plan for a future failure of heirs.

Conditions written for a reign that had not begun

The Act also enacted constitutional conditions for the future Hanoverian limitation, including judicial tenure during good behaviour and restrictions aimed at foreign influence. Several were expressly conditional on that limitation taking effect rather than changing daily government in 1701.

Its restriction on war was narrower than a general requirement of parliamentary permission: it concerned war for territories not belonging to the English Crown under a foreign-born sovereign.

Official statute collections sometimes call it the Act of Settlement 1700, because statutes were then dated by the parliamentary session in which they passed. It nevertheless received assent in the calendar year 1701.