THE ENGLISH BILL OF RIGHTS 1689

In British history, this is one of the fundamental instruments of constitutional law. It registered in statutory form the outcome of the long 17th-century struggle between the Stuart kings and the English Parliament. Its principles were accepted by William III and Mary II in the Declaration of Rights as a condition for ascending the throne after the revolution in which James II was dethroned (1688). The Bill of Rights stated that certain acts of James II were illegal and henceforth prohibited; that Englishmen possessed certain inviolable civil and political rights; that James had forfeited the throne by abdication and that William and Mary were lawful sovereigns; that the succession should pass to the heirs of Mary, then to Princess Anne (later queen) and her heirs; and that no Roman Catholic could ever be sovereign of England. By its provisions and implications it gave political supremacy to Parliament and was supplemented (1701) by the Act of Settlement. It was this BILL OF RIGHTS that acted as a template for the later American Bill of Rights.

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT 1701

This document is an act of the Parliament of England, originally filed in 1700, and passed in 1701, to settle the succession to the English throne on the Electress Sophia of Hanover — a granddaughter of James I — and her Protestant heirs. The act was later extended to Scotland as a result of the Treaty of Union (Article II), enacted in the Acts of Union 1707 before it was ever needed, and further through the expansion of the British Empire. Along with the Bill of Rights 1689, it remains today one of the main constitutional laws governing the succession to not only the throne of the United Kingdom, but, following British colonialism, the resultant doctrine of reception, and independence, also to those of the other Commonwealth realms, whether by willing deference to the act as a British statute or as a patriated part of the particular realm's constitution. Since the implementation of the Statute of Westminster in each of the Commonwealth realms (on successive dates from 1931 onwards), the Act of Settlement cannot be altered in any realm except by that realm's own parliament, and then, by convention, and as it touches on the succession to the shared throne, only with the consent of all the other realms.

Because of a change in the way bills are named, the act is also sometimes referred to as the Act of Settlement 1700. The measure contains neither date in its title, making the minor name ambiguity in some references to it now a matter of mere historical trivia. Today it is generally referred to as Act of Settlement 1701.