Meanwhile another event, more directly bearing on the fortunes of the House of Hanover, took place in England. The Act of Settlement was passed by Parliament, and though this Act did not specify the Duchess Sophia and her heirs by name, it expressly excluded any Roman Catholic prince from ascending the throne, and vested the crown in the Protestant succession. William and Mary were childless, Anne was in feeble health (the Duke of Gloucester, her short-lived son, was not yet born), and so it seemed in the course of nature that, if the Protestant succession were upheld, the crown must ultimately devolve on Sophia or her children as the Protestant descendants of the Stuarts in the line of succession. William also intimated that, when occasion served, he would do more in the matter. The Duchess Sophia received the news with the liveliest feelings of joy, and even Ernest Augustus was not insensible to the importance which accrued thereby to the House of Hanover. Prince George Louis remained unmoved; he had not forgotten his unsuccessful mission to England seven years before. Prince Max, always in opposition, avowed himself an ardent Jacobite; the other young princes probably did not trouble about the matter at all. In default of a more sympathetic audience, therefore, the Duchess Sophia turned again to her daughter-in-law, Sophie Dorothea, and expatiated on the brilliant possibilities before her. Poor Sophie Dorothea, who was ill and unhappy, proved even more indifferent than her husband; the prospect of the English crown was much too vague to allure her, and England was little more than a name. The Duchess Sophia had again occasion to remonstrate with her daughter-in-law on her lack of interest in a matter which affected not herself only, but her children. By way of emphasising the importance of the Act of Settlement, William appointed Sir William Dutton Colt to be Envoy Extraordinary to the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Brunswick-Lüneburg. Colt was charged with the mission of representing England at the courts of Hanover, Celle, and Brunswick, and of keeping their respective princes well disposed towards the great Alliance. No easy task, it must be admitted; for all the princes pulled different ways, and the perpetual journeys from Hanover to Celle, and Celle to Brunswick, to say nothing of following the Duke of Celle in his ceaseless movements to Brockhausen, Wienhausen, and Göhre, would have worn out any but a strong man. As it was, we soon find Colt complaining of the “perpetual motion” of the court of Celle.