The Royal Succession
The news that a royal baby is expected (DV) has led to fresh calls for changes to the Act of Settlement. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says that an agreement made by Commonwealth leaders in Perth, Australia, last year means that the child will be heir to the throne irrespective of its sex. Perhaps Mr Clegg is correct in this statement but one would have thought that parliamentary decisions ought to be necessary in the various nations over which a future monarch would reign, rather than a mere “agreement in principle”. This casual attitude to ancient constitutional laws and practices is one of the many indications of pride, folly and blindness among our rulers. Furthermore, the rules of inheritance up till now have been in accordance with biblical teaching on the roles of men and women whereas the proposed new arrangement would ignore and further undermine that teaching.
It is also proposed that the monarch should in future be allowed to marry a Roman Catholic. This is so obviously a halfway-house to having a Roman Catholic monarch that comment is unnecessary. The Bill of Rights of 1689 stated that “it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince”, and it would be found by experience that exactly the same is true today. Britain deserves, for her ingratitude to God, to be put through that experience again, but we pray that the Lord in His mercy will prevent it. DWBS