Royal Marriages Act 1772
 Parliament of Great Britain |
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| Long title | An Act for the better regulating the future Marriages of the Royal Family. |
|---|---|
| Statute book chapter | 12 Geo 3 c. 11 |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales; Scotland |
| Other legislation | |
| Amendments | Criminal Law Act 1967 |
| Status: Amended | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Official text of the Royal Marriages Act 1772 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database | |
The Royal Marriages Act 1772 is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which prescribes the conditions under which members of the British Royal Family may contract a valid marriage, in order to guard against marriages that could diminish the status of the Royal House. The right of veto vested in the sovereign by this Act provoked severe adverse criticism at the time.[1][2]
Contents |
[edit] Provisions
The Act said that no descendant of George II, male or female, other than the issue of princesses who had married or might thereafter marry "into foreign families", could marry without the consent of the reigning monarch, "signified under the great seal and declared in council". That consent was to be set out in the licence and in the register of the marriage, and entered in the books of the Privy Council. Any marriage contracted without the consent of the monarch was to be null and void.
However, any member of the Royal Family over the age of 25 who has been refused the sovereign's consent may marry one year after giving notice to the Privy Council of their intention to so marry, unless both houses of Parliament expressly declare their disapproval. There is, however, no instance in which the sovereign's formal consent in Council has been refused.
The Act further made it a crime to perform or participate in an illegal marriage of any member of the Royal Family. This provision was repealed by the Criminal Law Act 1967.
[edit] Rationale
The Act was proposed by George III as a direct result of the marriage of his brother, Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, who, in 1771, had married the commoner Mrs Anne Horton, the daughter of Simon Luttrell and the widow of Christopher Horton. Royal Assent was given to the Act on 1 April 1772,[3] and it was only on 13 September following that the King learned that another brother, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, had in 1766 secretly married Maria, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and the widow of the 2nd Earl Waldegrave.[4] Both alliances were considered highly unsuitable by the King, who "saw himself as having been forced to marry for purely dynastic reasons".[5]
[edit] Couples affected
- On 15 December 1785 the King's eldest son George, Prince of Wales, married privately and in contravention of this Act and of the Act of Settlement 1701, at her house in Park Lane, London, according to the rites of the Church of England, the twice widowed Maria Anne Fitzherbert, a practising Roman Catholic. Although viewed as a canonically sound marriage by Roman Catholics this marriage was legally invalid under the Act. If valid the marriage would have excluded the Prince from succession to the throne under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701.
- On 29 September 1791 the King's son Prince Frederick, Duke of York, married Frederica, the daughter of Frederick William II, King of Prussia, at Charlottenburg, Berlin, but the ceremony had to be repeated in London on 23 November 1791 as, although consent had been given at the Privy Council on 28 September, it had proved impossible to obtain the Great Seal in time and doubt had thus been thrown on the legality of the marriage.[6]
- On 4 April 1793 Prince Augustus, the sixth son of the King, married in contravention of the Act, privately and without witnesses, according to the rites of the Church of England at the Hotel Sarmiento, Rome, Lady Augusta Murray, and again, after banns, on 5 December 1795, at St George, Hanover Square, London. Both marriages were declared null and void by the Court of Arches, 14 July 1794, and their two children were subsequently considered illegitimate.[7]
- After the death of Lady Augusta Murray, Prince Augustus, now Duke of Sussex, apparently married secondly (no contemporary evidence survives), again in contravention of the Act, about 2 May 1831, at her house in Great Cumberland Place, London, Lady Cecilia Buggin who on that day had taken the surname Underwood in lieu of Buggin and who, on 10 April 1840 was created Duchess of Inverness by Queen Victoria (the Duke being Earl of Inverness). The Queen had, as Lord Melbourne wrote, thereby "recognized the moral and religious effect of whatever has taken place whilst she avoided the legal effects of a legal marriage which was what her Majesty was most anxious to do".[8] Acceptance of the marriage would have meant the acceptance of the Duke's earlier marriage and the legitimacy of his two children. However, the couple cohabited and were socially accepted as husband and wife.
- On 8 January 1847 the Queen's first cousin Prince George of Cambridge married by licence of the Faculty Office but in contravention of this Act Sarah Fairbrother, a pregnant actress with four illegitimate children (two by himself and two by other men), at St James, Clerkenwell. From about 1858 Sarah took the name Mrs FitzGeorge but the marriage being invalid it is incorrect to call it a morganatic marriage as many have done.[9] It is also incorrect to say that Queen Victoria refused to consent to this marriage as no application was made to her under the Act,[10] it being very apparent that no consent would be given.
[edit] Broad effects
The Act renders void any marriage wherever contracted or solemnized in contravention of it. A member of the royal family who contracts a marriage that violates the Act does not thereby lose his or her place in the line of succession,[5] but the offspring of such a union are made illegitimate by the voiding of the marriage and thus lose any right to succeed.
The Act applies to Catholics, even though they are ineligible to succeed to the throne.[5] It does not apply to descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are not also descendants of George II, even though they are still eligible to succeed to the throne.
It had been claimed that the marriage of Prince Augustus had been legal in Ireland and Hanover but the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords ruled (in the Sussex Peerage Case), 9 July 1844, that the Act incapacitated the descendants of George II from contracting a legal marriage without the consent of the Crown, either within the British dominions or elsewhere.
The effects of the law, not always foreseen, remain very much in force. An example is seen in the royal House of Hanover, which descends from Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, a younger son of King George III, who inherited the crown of Hanover according to its semi-Salic order of succession when the British crown went to his niece, Queen Victoria. Although his descendants lost their royal crown in 1866, and their British titles in 1918, as male-line descendants of George II they continue to seek permission for their marriages from the British monarch.
Thus, on 11 January 1999, Elizabeth II issued the following Declaration in Council: "My Lords, I do hereby declare My Consent to a Contract of Matrimony between His Royal Highness Prince Ernst August Albert of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Her Serene Highness Princess Caroline Louise Marguerite of Monaco...". Without this consent, the marriage would have been void in Britain, where the groom's family continues to own substantial property and retains the right to petition for resumption of the dukedom of Cumberland, suspended since World War I (likewise, the Monégasque court officially notified France of Caroline's contemplated marriage to Prince Ernst August and received assurance that there was no objection, in compliance with the 1918 Franco-Monégasque Treaty). (However, as Ernst August married a Roman Catholic, he lost his place in the succession to the British throne under a different piece of legislation, the Act of Settlement 1701).
All European monarchies, and many non-European realms, have laws or traditions requiring prior approval of the monarch for members of the reigning dynasty to marry. But Britain's is unusual because it has not been modified since originally adopted, so that its ambit has grown rather wide, affecting not only Britain's immediate Royal Family, but more distant relatives of the monarch. Moreover, its purview is growing: Whereas in the past British princesses usually married into foreign dynasties, thereby exempting their descendants from the Act, most now marry fellow Britons so that their children become subject in turn to the Act's restrictions, as do their Protestant descendants who marry Britons, and so on potentially without limit. Nor is the law's application confined to those that bear the official style of "princess". For purposes of the Act, that term is deemed to include any legitimate female descendant of George III, since each inherits a claim on the British crown, unless excluded by the Act itself.
[edit] Farran exemption
In the 1950s, Charles d'Olivier Farran, B.C.L., M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in Constitutional Law at Liverpool University, theorised that the Act could no longer apply to anyone living, because all the members of the immediate royal family were descended from British princesses who had married into foreign families.[11]
Many of George II's descendants in female lines have married back into the British royal family. In particular, the Queen and other members of the House of Windsor descend (through Queen Alexandra) from two daughters of George II — (Mary, Landgravine of Hesse and Louise, Queen of Denmark) — who married foreign rulers (respectively Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and King Frederick V of Denmark), and through Queen Mary from a third (Anne, Princess of Orange, consort of William IV, Prince of Orange). Moreover The Prince of Wales, his issue, siblings, and their issue descend from yet a fourth such marriage, that of The Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria, to Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse.
This so-called "Farran exemption" met with wide publicity, but arguments against it were put forward by Mr Clive Parry, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge,[12] and Farran's interpretation has since been ignored.[13] Consent to marriages in the Royal Family (including the distantly related House of Hanover) continues to be sought and granted as if none of the agnatic descendants of George II were also his cognatic descendants.
As Clive Parry pointed out the "Farran exemption" theory was further complicated by the fact that all the Protestant descendants of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, ancestress of the United Kingdom's monarchs since 1714, had been entitled to British citizenship under the Sophia Naturalization Act 1705 (if born prior to 1948, when the act was repealed). Thus, some marriages of British princesses to continental monarchs and princes were not, in law, marriages to foreigners. For example, the 1947 marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, by birth a Greek and Danish prince but descended from the Electress Sophia, was a marriage to a British subject even if he had not been previously naturalised in Britain. This would also mean theoretically, for example, that the present royal family of Norway is bound by the Act, for the marriage of The Princess Maud, a daughter of King Edward VII, to the future King Haakon VII of Norway, was a marriage to a "British subject", since Haakon descended from the Electress Sophia.
[edit] Exemption of the former Edward VIII
In 1936 His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 specifically excluded Edward VIII from the provisions of this Act upon his abdication, allowing him to marry the divorcee, Wallis Simpson. The wording of the declaration also excluded any issue of the marriage from being subject to the Act.[14]
[edit] Proposals to repeal or modify
The Succession to the Crown Bill, a private member's bill, presented to the British Parliament on 9 December 2004, would have repealed this act in its entirety. However, the Bill was withdrawn 15 January 2005 by its sponsor after being told that it would not receive government support.
In October 2011 David Cameron wrote to the leaders of the Commonwealth Realms proposing that the act be limited to the first six people in line to the throne.[15] The leaders approved the proposed change at a summit in Australia.[16]
[edit] Other legislation
The Regency Act 1830, which provided for a regency in the event that Queen Victoria inherited the throne before she was eighteen, made it illegal for her to marry without the regent's consent. Her spouse and anyone involved in arranging or conducting the marriage without such consent would be guilty of high treason. This was more serious than the offence created by the Act of 1772, which was equivalent to praemunire. However, the Act never came into force, as Victoria was eighteen when she became queen.
[edit] Consents for marriages under the Act
Consents under the Act were entered in the Books of the Privy Council but have not been published. In 1857 it became customary to publish them in the London Gazette and notices appear of consents given in Council at Courts held on the following dates. Not all consents, however, were noted there and gaps in the list have been filled by reference to the Warrants for Royal Marriages in the Home Office papers (series HO 124) in The National Archives[17]:
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ C. Grant Robertson, Select statutes, cases and documents to illustrate English constitutional history(4th edn. 1923) pages 245-7
- ^ Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, ed. Halsbury's Laws of England (4th edn. 1998), volume 21 (1), Page 21
- ^ London Gazette: no. 11236. p. 1. 4 April 1772.
- ^ Matthew Kilburn, William Henry, Prince, first duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1743–1805), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 18 Dec 2011
- ^ a b c Bogdanor, Vernon (1997). The Monarchy and the Constitution. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 0198293348. http://books.google.com/books?id=HEC6Ivq2JK8C.
- ^ A. Aspinall, ed., The later correspondence of George III, vol. 1 (1966) pages 567-71. The statement in Michel Huberty, Alain Giraud, F. and B. Magdelaine, L'Allemagne Dynastique, vol. 3: Brunswick-Nassau-Schwarzbourg (1981) page 146, that the first marriage was by procuration (or proxy) is incorrect.
- ^ This marriage, being invalid, was not morganatic as is frequently stated, e.g. by Michael Thornton, Royal Feud (1985) page 161.
- ^ Mollie Gillen, Royal Duke (1976) page 223.
- ^ e.g. Compton Mackenzie, The Windsor tapestry (1938) page 344; Michael Thornton, Royal Feud (1985) pages 161-2, and many other authorities.
- ^ as stated in Brian Inglis, Abdication (1966) page 265, and many other authorities.
- ^ Modern Law Review, volume 14 (1951) pages 53-63;
- ^ in 'Further Considerations on the Prince of Hanover's Case' in International & Comparative Law Quarterly (1957) pages 61 etc.
- ^ Farran replied to Mr Parry in Appendix I, 'The Royal Marriages Act Today', in Lucille Iremonger, Love and the Princesses' (1958) pages 275-280.
- ^ His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 (c.3), full text online at statutelaw.gov.uk
- ^ "David Cameron proposes changes to royal succession". BBC News. 12 October 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15282940. Retrieved 12 October 2011.
- ^ "Girls equal in British throne succession". BBC News. 28 October 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15492607. Retrieved 28 October 2011.
- ^ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue.
[edit] External links
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