Thank God for the Act of Settlement (1701). It keeps us focused. In the past week newspapers have been focusing on poor Peter Phillips, tenth in line to the throne, who is engaged to Autumn Kelly, a Canadian Catholic. If she does not abandon her religion, he will have to renounce his right to succeed — or call the wedding off.
That’s the deal with the Act of Settlement — the Supreme Governor of the Church of England may not be married to a Roman Catholic — and RCs are said to be very cross. In the words of the Times’s excitable Ruth Gledhill, the Act ‘has for centuries been a cause of anguish to Catholics’. According to my friend Christine Odone, ‘he [Phillips] and Miss Kelly face the kind of sacrifice that recurs in medieval chronicles along with witch-burning and lepers’ bells…’
Whoa, girls.
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