When Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in 1536 and formally broke from the Catholic Church, he declared himself leader of the Church of England. This church became aligned with the Protestant principles which had been gaining traction across Europe since Martin Luther first published his Ninety-Five Theses in 1519. Though the country briefly became Catholic again during the reign of his daughter Mary, the Church of England was reinstated by Elizabeth I.
Both Elizabeth and her successor, James I, faced assassination plots planned by Catholic factions. However, the royal family in the seventeenth century had ambiguous sympathies. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, after the Civil War, the Stuart kings were still suspected of Catholic tendencies. Charles II confirmed these suspicions when he converted on his deathbed, and his brother, James II, was openly Catholic—for this reason, some politicians argued that he should be barred from ascending to the throne.
Though James did become king, he was deposed in 1688 and replaced by his daughter, Mary, and her Protestant husband William of Orange. Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701 forbidding any Catholic, or anyone with a Catholic spouse, from assuming the throne. James’s Catholic descendants by his second wife, Mary of Modena, continued to claim their right to the English throne; the rebellious supporters of the 'Old Pretender' James Francis Edward Stuart (and later of his son, Charles Edward Stuart or 'Bonnie Prince Charlie') were dubbed 'Jacobites.'
Penal laws against British Catholics began to be dismantled in the eighteenth century: Catholics were allowed to own property from 1776 and to vote from 1791, with conditions. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 permitted Catholics to enter the civil service and judiciary. Pope Pius IX announced the restoration of a full Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 (in a directive titled Universalis Ecclesiae), although this prompted a flurry of anti-Catholic publications.
However, the prohibition against Catholic marriages in the line of succession endured into the twenty-first century. The Succession to the Crown Act finally relaxed the rule in 2013.
