Random Things That Prince Harry Is Married To A Woman With Catholic Connections (13 items)

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  (#1) The English Would Rather Have A Revolution Than A Catholic King

  James II was a Catholic king - and English Protestants were totally not okay with it. Even though he was Catholic, his two daughters - Mary and Anne - were Protestant, and many English men and women were simply biding their time until the king died and one of the Protestant princesses would ascend the throne. In 1688, those dreams were dashed when James and his Catholic wife had a male heir. Since boys always inherited ahead of girls at this time, it meant that James II would be succeeded by a Catholic prince.

  Parliament wouldn't stand for it. Rather than accept a Catholic monarch, they invited Princess Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange to come to England and rule instead of her father. Panicked, James, Mary, and their baby boy fled for the continent. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 basically confirmed that Catholic kings were not welcome in England. 
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  (#2) More Than 50 Catholics Were Skipped Over To Make Sure A Protestant Inherited The Throne - Even Though He Didn't Speak English

  When Protestant Queen Anne's only living child died tragically in 1700 at the age of 11 - sadly, though she had 17 pregnancies, none of Anne's children survived to adulthood - the English and Scottish thrones had no direct heir. The crown faced a succession crisis and the possibility of a Catholic inheriting the throne reared its head once more.

  So in 1701, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement, which settled the question of succession. It decreed that only Protestants could ascend the throne. Moreover, Protestant kings and queens couldn't even have a Catholic spouse. 

  Parliament struggled to find a legitimate heir to fit the bill, and it finally settled on one of Anne's distant relatives, George of Hanover. By electing to make George the heir, it skipped over more than 50 Catholics who had a better claim to the throne than a prince of a Germanic state. How did George become the heir? He was the great-grandson of James I, and so he succeeded Queen Anne in 1714. He may have been a German who didn't even speak English - but at least he wasn't a Catholic. 
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  (#3) Charles II Converted To Catholicism On His Deathbed Because Anti-Catholic Sentiment Prevented Him From Getting Around To It Sooner

  When Charles II became king in 1660, he took the reins of an England that had become severely anti-Catholic. Catholics were even blamed for starting the Great Fire of London in 1666. Seven years later, Parliament passed the Test Act, which basically tested military and government officials by requiring them to take a Protestant oath. Parliament even tried to strong-arm Charles into excluding his younger brother James from the throne. James was an avowed Catholic, and, since Charles didn't have an heir of his own, the crown would pass to him. Charles refused, and his brother remained his heir.

  Despite fears of "Popish Plots" that pervaded England and Scotland, Charles actually had a sneaking admiration for Catholicism. In fact, he was resolved to become a Catholic himself. But, correctly gauging the anti-Catholicism of his subjects, he waited until the last possible moment. He converted on his deathbed in 1685.
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  (#7) The Future George IV Knew He Couldn't Legally Marry A Catholic, So He Married One Illegally

  Thanks to the Act of Settlement - which stated that men and women in the line of succession couldn't have a Catholic spouse - the future George IV knew that he would have to take a Protestant as his bride. So when he fell head over heels for Maria Fitzherbert, a twice-widowed Catholic, he knew there was no chance they could get married. Moreover, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 insisted that a member of the royal family had to seek permission from the monarch to get married. Again, George soberly faced the truth: there was no way that his stodgy, old father was going to let his eldest son and heir marry a Catholic widow.

  So George took matters into his own hands. On December 15, 1785, he secretly married Maria Fitzherbert in an illegal ceremony. Though the marriage had a romantic start, it had fizzled out in less than a decade. In 1794, George broke it off with Fitzherbert for the most unromantic reason: his father agreed to settled his debts, if only he'd take a legal bride.

  In April 1795, George married his Protestant bride, the German Princess Caroline of Brunswick. It was basically hate at first sight, and the marriage proved to be an epic disaster. 
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  (#5) The Warming-Pan Scandal Was A Moment When Protestants Freaked Out Over The Birth Of A Catholic Heir

  When James II became king in 1685, he was the first Catholic to ascend the throne in over a century - and it freaked everyone out. Protestants distrusted James so much that they feared he had a Catholic agenda. But they accepted him at first, since his two daughters and likely heirs were firm Protestants. Mary and her younger sister Anne had no intention of converting to Catholicism, and so Protestants tolerated James because they knew that things would go back to normal when one of his daughters became queen.

  But that all changed in 1688 when James and his young, Catholic wife welcomed a legitimate male heir whose gender threatened to downgrade his Protestant older sisters in the line of succession. If Protestants were concerned before, they were losing it now. Rumors started to circulate that the infant - James Francis Edward Stuart, the Prince of Wales - wasn't the legitimate son of James at all. The real infant prince was stillborn, many insisted, and the baby that now slumbered in royal cradle had been born to someone else and smuggled into the palace in a warming pan. The scandal was noisy enough that it threatened to make illegitimate the king's bouncing baby boy. 
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  (#8) Elizabeth I Executed A Foreign Queen Because Some English Subjects Wanted Her To Become Their Catholic Ruler

  Elizabeth I was a Protestant queen of a Protestant England. Her neighbor to the north was Queen Mary of Scotland - and Mary had the discomfort of being a Catholic queen of an increasingly Protestant kingdom. In 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son James, who would be raised as a Protestant. She fled to England, hoping that her cousin Elizabeth would protect her.

  Instead, Elizabeth imprisoned Mary for nearly two decades. During that time, schemers hatched several plots to depose Elizabeth and install Mary as a Catholic queen in England. The Babington Plot was the last straw. Elizabeth finally agreed to eliminate the threat Mary and her religion posed to her authority by executing her Scottish cousin on February 8, 1587.

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