of
descent are essentially identical with those governing the inheritance
of real property at common law.[61] Regularly, the sovereign's eldest
son, the Prince of Wales,[62] inherits. If he be not alive, the
inheritance passes to his issue, male or female. If there be none, the
succession devolves upon the sovereign's second son, or upon his
issue; and in default thereof, upon the eldest son who survives, or
his issue. If the vacancy be not supplied by or through, a son,
daughters and their issue inherit after a similar order. No Catholic
may inherit, nor anyone marrying a Catholic; and by the Act of 1701 it
was stipulated that every person who should attain the throne "shall join
in communion with the Church of England as by law established." (p. 050)
If after accession the sovereign should avow himself a Catholic, or
should marry a Catholic, his subjects would be absolved from their
allegiance. It is required, furthermore, that the sovereign shall take
at his coronation an oath wherein the tenets of Catholicism are
abjured. Until 1910 the phraseology of this oath, formulated as it was
in a period when ecclesiastical animosities were still fervid,[63] was
such as to be offensive not only to Catholics but to temperate-minded
men of all faiths. By act of parliament passed in anticipation of the
coronation of George V., the language employed in the oath was made
very much less objectionable. The sovereign is required now merely to
declare "that he is a faithful Protestant and that he will, according
to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant
succession to the throne of the Realm, uphold and maintain the said
enactments to the best of his power according to law."

[Footnote 60: The text of the Act of Settlement is
printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 528-531; Adams
and Stephens, Select Documents, 475-479; and Gee
and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church
History, 664-670, As safeguards against dangers
which might conceivably arise from the accession of
a foreign-born sovereign the Act stipulated (1)
that no person who should thereafter come into
possession of the crown should go outside the
dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without
consent of Parliament, and (2) that in the