The Protestant Succession.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 33, 14 August 1902, Page 1

The Protestant Succession.

In the agitation which bubbled and sizzled at intervals regarding the alteration of the offensive terms of the Coronation Oath, the ' Protestant Succession ' — to which, by the way, we have not the slightest objection — was the centre around which whirled many a coruscating and noisy display of oratorical fireworks. It possesses, too, more than a merely passing interest at the present time. Perhaps not more than one in ten of the many orators whose burning words gyrated around this central theme could have given a connected account of the subject of their fiery eloquence.

The term Protestant Succession simply amounts to this : that the Sovereign of Great Britain shall not be in communion with the See ot St. Peter. Only that and nothing more. Incidentally, he or she must conform to the particular fotms of ' the Protestant religion ' that are established in Great Britain — they must be Anglican Episcopalians in England and Wales ; they must be Presbyterians once they cross the border into the Land o' Cakes. The definite parting- of the ways came on the death of Queen Anne in 17 14. With one exception all Anne's children paid the debt ot nature before they were old enough to talk or toddle. The exception was the Duke of Gloucester — a puny, weedy boy. Death pulled him up by the roots in 1700, and Anne reigned and died childless. The succession to the

throne had to be determined. There were two claimants in the" held. The one was of the senior and direct line of the exiled Catholic Stuarts— descended from Charles I. But these had been made ineligible for the Crown by an Act of Parliament which limited the succession to Protestants. The other was the more remote line— descended from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland. This line was represented by the Electress Sophia of Hanover. She was a Lutheran, and upon her and the heirs of her body, being Protestants, the succession to the throne of England was therefore fixed.