British Act of Settlement to be reviewed

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/index.php/2008/03/27/british-act-of-settlement-to-be-reviewed/

[Anglican Mainstream] 27 Mar 2008--The government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is ready to review the terms of the Act of Settlement and end the ban on Roman Catholics ascending the throne.

While a repeal of the 1701 Act’s ban on a Catholic monarch was not part of the white paper on constitutional reform, in response to a question Justice Minister Jack Straw said the government was ready to examine this “antiquated” law.

Passed by Parliament in 1701 to govern the succession of the monarch, the Act required the sovereign to “join in communion with the Church of England” and settled the throne on the Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover — a granddaughter of Charles I, and to exclude the Roman Catholic Stuarts from the throne.