Protestant - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition protestant

Definition :

Protestant. This term does not occur in the Canons of 1603, or in the Thirty-nine Articles, or in the Acts of Uniformity, but appears in many statutes of later date, notably in the (English) Act of Settlement of 1700 (12 & 13 Wm. 3, c. 2), in which, by way of making further provision (in addition to that made by the Bill of Rights in 1688) 'for the succession of the Crown in the Protestant line,' the Crown was settled, in default of issue of Princess Anne of Denmark (afterwards Queen Anne) and William III., on the Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body, 'being Protestants'; it being added that 'whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of this Crown shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established.'

The Bill of Rights (1 W. & M. sess. 2, c. 2), after reciting that 'it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince or by any king or queen marrying a papist,' debars such from succession to the Crown, and entails the succession on such person or persons being Protestants as would have succeeded incase the person reconciled to or holding communion with the Church of Rome or professing the popish religion or marrying a papist were dead, and also required every sovereign on the first day of the meeting of his first Parliament or on coronation, which shall first happen, to make a declaration taken from 30 Car. 2, st. 2 (repealed by the (English) Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866), and expressed therein to be 'in the plain and ordinary sense of the words as they are commonly understood by English Protestants,' against transubstantiation, invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the Mass as used in the Church of Rome. For the declaration that now has to be made by the sovereign, see BILL OF RIGHTS.

The Union with Scotland Act, 1706, confirms the English succession to the Crown of the heirs of the body of the Electress Sophia, 'being Protestants,' and so did the Union with Ireland Act, 1800, though not in express terms; the 5th Article of that Union, however, provided for the union of the churches of England and Ireland into one 'Protestant Episcopal Church' --a union dissolved by the Irish Church Act, 1869.

The term was originally applied to those who 'pro-tested' against a decree of the Emperor Charles V. and the Diet held at Spires in 1529. See ROMAN CATHOLIC.