Act of Settlement 1701

UK legislation governing the succession to the British Crown. It provides that only Protestant descendants of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and who furthermore have not married a Catholic, can succeed to the British Crown.

As a result of this law, several members of the British Royal Family who have converted to Catholicism or married Catholics have been barred from their place in the line of succession. This law has in recent times been frequently been attacked as anti-Catholic and religiously discriminatory. The Guardian newspaper is in the process of launching a legal challenge to the legislation, based on the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Any repeal of the law would most likely require the removal of the Church of England from its status as the state church, since a Catholic monarch could not be the head of the Church of England.