An Act for explaining a Clause in an Act made at the Parliament begun and holden at Westminster the two and twentieth of November in the Seventh year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King William the Third intituled An Act for the better Security of His Majesties Royal Person and Government[b]
The Demise of the Crown Act 1702[1][a] is an act of the Parliament of England. It abolished the rule that all legal proceedings automatically ended upon the death of the monarch.
As of 2025[update], two sections of the act remain in force in England and Wales: section IV, which preserves actions for debt and contract, and proceedings on indictment, for future demises, and section VI, which extended the act to Ireland.[2]
Common law position
Under medieval English common law, the authority of the royal courts was derived from the monarch personally. As a result, on the death of the monarch, writs and proceedings in the royal courts ceased. Litigants had to begin their proceedings anew, causing delays and additional expenses, such as the cost of reissuing court writs.[3][4][5]
This concept was termed the "demise of the Crown". "Demise" was not referring to the death of the previous monarch, but rather was used in the property law sense, of a transfer of property. Upon the death of the previous monarch, the Crown and all its powers and prerogatives were transferred to the succeeding monarch.[6][7]
Blackstone explains this point:
The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die; but the king survives them all. For immediately upon the decease of the reigning prince in his natural capacity, his kingship or imperial dignity, by act of law, without any interregnum or interval, is vested at once in his heir, … his natural dissolution is generally called his demise; dimissio regis, vel coronae: an expression which signifies merely a transfer of property…[8]
Tudor reform
The effect of the demise of the Crown caused considerable inconvenience for litigants. In 1547, the first year of the reign of King Edward VI, the English Parliament passed the first statute to relieve some of the inconveniences: Justices of the Peace Act 1547]. (1 Edw. 6, c. 7). This statute provided that pending court actions would not be affected by the death of King Edward or his successors. Actions could continue under the name of a successor monarch.[9]
The act
The Tudor legislation mainly continued actions begun by writs issued under the name of King Henry VIII. Upon the death of King William III, Parliament enacted the Demise of the Crown Act 1702, which was more comprehensive.[10] It continued the commissions of the various courts and justices issued during William's reign, which were to continue to operate as if the commissions had been issued in the name of Queen Anne.[11] Future commissions were to last for six months after the death of a monarch, unless cancelled sooner by the new monarch.[12] The courts were to continue to operate under Queen Anne or any successor, without interruption.[12] Claims brought by the Crown prior to Williams death to recover property or in debt were continued, as were proceedings on indictments.[13] The same principle applied to property and debt claims, and proceedings on indictments, brought during the reign of Anne or a successor.[14] The demise did not affect any jurisdictional issues in the courts.[12]
↑ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1st ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–1769; facsimile edition Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), Book the First, p. 181; Book the Third, p. 296.
↑ Halsbury's Laws of England (London: Butterworths, 1998, 4th ed. reissue), vol. 12(1), para. 15.
↑ Thomson Irvine, "Demise of the Crown: An Historical Review of the Law in Canada" (2019), 12 Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 695, at p. 697.
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