Royal Marriages Act 1772
The
Royal Marriages Act of 1772 is an
Act of the
Parliament of Great Britain (12 Geo III c. 11) which made it illegal for any member of the British royal family (defined as all descendants of King
George II, excluding descendants of princesses who marry foreigners) under the age of 25 to marry without the consent of the ruling monarch. 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 Parliament passes an act against the marriage in the interim.
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 This provision was repealed by the Criminal Law Act,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.
The
1772 Act resulted from the
1771 marriage of
Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, brother of
George III to the commoner
Anne Horton, a woman George III considered unsuitable. As the result of the Act, the
1785 marriage of
George IV, then heir to the throne, to
Maria Anne Fitzherbert (a Catholic widow) was deemed illegal; without the Royal Marriages Act, it is possible that the marriage could have excluded George from the throne under the
Act of Settlement 1701.
The
Succession to the Crown Bill, presented to Parliament on
December 9,
2004, would have repealed this act in its entirety if passed. However, the bill was withdrawn January 15, 2005 by its publisher after being told by the government that the bill would be blocked.
Court precedents determine that the provisions of this Act are personal, that is, they apply to those covered by the requirement of Royal Consent even if they contract marriage outside of the United Kingdom.
It has been theorized that the current act is out-of-date, because all members of the current immediate royal family are descendants (by way of
Queen Alexandra) of as many as two princesses (
Mary of Great Britain,
landgravine of Hesse; and
Louise of Great Britain, Queen of
Denmark and
Norway; two youngest daughters of George II, great-great-grandmothers of Alexandra) who married into a foreign house (respectively,
Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and king
Frederick V of Denmark and Norway). This "Farran exemption" (named after Charles Farran, who popularized the theory in the 1950s) has not been tested in the courts. Consent to marriages in the Royal Family continues to be sought and granted as usual, ignoring this theory. Thus, in practice, the Farran exemption is worthless, since members of the Royal Family behave as if it did not exist.
*
Succession to the Crown Bill
