The Act was passed because in 1688 King James II of England was deposed and replaced as king by William and Mary, who ruled jointly. However this could not be achieved without an Act of Parliament to approve it. Since no parliament was in existence at the time, it was necessary to convene one, but under the constitution only the King could summon a parliament. In the absence of a king to do so, the members of the previous parliament convened a new one themselves, without a royal summons, instead asking William to issue the summons, which he did on 22 January 1689. This irregular Parliament sat on 13 February. They declared James to have abdicated, and then chose Mary and William to succeed him, and passed an Act to make it legal. This Act was the Bill of Rights 1689. However, doubts arose as to the validity of the Bill of Rights and the other Acts passed by the Convention Parliament. Since the Parliament had not been summoned in the regular way, it was arguable that it was no parliament at all and its legislation was of no legal effect. Therefore after the Convention Parliament was dissolved and the next parliament was summoned by the King and Queen in the normal manner, the Crown and Parliament Recognition Act was passed to confirm the validity of the royal succession and the previous parliament's legislative competence.
Controversy
The difficulty with the Act is that if the Convention Parliament had no authority, then the succession of William and Mary was of no legal effect, which meant that they were not capable of giving Royal Assent to any bill in the next parliament, with the result that even the Crown and Parliament Recognition Act was of no effect either. This very point was argued before the Hereford County Court in 1944 by a litigant who represented himself in a probate case called Hall v. Hall. He argued that the Court of Probate Act 1857 was of no legal effect whatsoever, since it had never received Royal Assent. It had received Royal Assent from Queen Victoria, but according to his argument Victoria had never legally inherited the throne, because the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement 1701 were of no effect, since both had been assented to by William III, who was not the real king. Therefore Victoria had never been the real queen and so the Probate Act was not the law. Predictably, the judge ruled against him, and the point has never been argued in court since. Although the judge did not give detailed reasons for his decision, a counterpoint to the above argument has been advanced by academics: "One possible answer, deducible from rationalizations of later medieval practice when usurpations of the throne were not uncommon, is that... s a matter of State necessity... a de facto King had been regarded as competent to summon a lawful Parliament."
