[3] The act was passed at a time when Parliament was anxious to ensure the succession of a Protestant on the death of Queen Anne.

The act required privy counsellors and other officers, in the event of Anne's death, to proclaim as her successor the next Protestant in the line of succession to the throne, and made it high treason for any of them to fail to do so.

[4] If the next monarch was overseas at the time of the succession, the government would be run until he or she returned by between seven and fourteen "Lords Justices."

[5] The act made it treason for any unauthorised person to open these, or to neglect to deliver them to the Privy Council.

[10] These clauses remain in force today (without the six-month time limit on Parliament's continued existence, which was repealed in 1878[11]).