the rix mix

It's about time they changed the laws that kept a royal daughter from marrying a bastard son of an Archbishop of Dublin. Great Britain may someday have a female Catholic monarch ruling a mostly secularized populace with her Muslim subjects bound by Sharia.

A throne for a Papist Queen?

LONDON (Reuters) Britain may end centuries of discrimination by reforming 300-year-old laws that ban the monarch from marrying a Catholic and give male heirs prior claim to the throne, the government said Friday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has held talks with Queen Elizabeth, who had no brothers, on changing the 1701 law on succession that was drawn up at a time of widespread hostility to Roman Catholics.

The Act of Settlement bars members of the royal family from becoming king or queen if they are Catholic or marry a Catholic. It also gives male heirs precedence in the line of succession.
^^^
The law was passed to ensure that all future monarchs would be Protestants, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Roman Catholic King James II was deposed and his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, were invited to replace him.

Opposition to Catholics in Britain had its roots in Henry VIII's split from Rome in the 16th century, suspicion of the Pope and Catholic France and Spain, and a 1605 plot by Catholic gentry to blow up parliament in London.

Under the statute, male heirs to the throne automatically take precedence over women, monarchs must be Protestants and marriage to a Catholic bars royal heirs from taking the throne.

Prime Minister: Your Majesty, we are considering important changes in the Act of Settlement regarding females & Roman Catholics.
Her Royal Majesty: Oh? Have I a papist great-granddaughter now? They try to keep things from me, you know.
PM: No, Your Majesty.
HRM: Very nice. Is that all?
PM: That is all, Your Majesty.
HRM: Thank you for coming. Good afternoon, Mr. Brown. Please allow my dogs to enter as you leave.

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