After the death of Britain's last monarch, Queen Anne, in 1714, the crown of England passed to the Stuart dynasty's German Protestant cousins, the House of Hanover or  Brunswick-Lüneburg, because of the 1701 Act of Settlement that prevented any Catholic from taking the crown. The direct heir to the British throne was James II 's son James, who lived in exile, but for the reason that he professed Catholicism, Queen Anne declared Sophia of Hanover, who was the Electress of Hanover, as her successor to the crown...