The Act of Settlement of 1701 was significant because it declared that only Protestants could be monarchs in England.
The Act of Settlement is an English law promulgated by the Parliament of Westminster in 1701, which guarantees the succession to the Crown of England to the members of the Protestant family of the House of Hanover, which was linked to the Stuarts by a daughter of James I. This provision sought the exclusion of the throne of a king favorable to Catholicism and cut the pretensions of James Francis Edward Stuart, a Catholic, whom Louis XIV recognized King of England in 1701, with the name of James III.