restore Stuart claimants to the Throne, supported by those who recognised the Jacobite succession. The House of Hanover nonetheless remained undeposed, and the Crown descended in accordance with the appointed rules. In 1801, following the Acts of Union 1800, the separate crowns of Great Britain and Ireland were merged and became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Between 1811 and 1820, when George III was deemed unfit to rule, the Prince of Wales (later George IV) acted as his regent. Some years later, the Regency Act 1830 made provision for a change in the line of succession had a child been born to William IV after his death, but this event did not come about. On the death of William IV in 1837, his 18-year-old niece Victoria succeeded to the throne. After a 63-year reign, often known as the Victorian era, she was succeeded in 1901 by her eldest son Edward VII. On his death, his second son acceded to the throne as George V (Edward's first son Prince Albert Victor died during an influenza pandemic in 1892). Edward VIII was proclaimed King on the death of his father, George V, in January 1936, Edward opened Parliament in November, but abdicated in December 1936, and was never crowned. Edward had desired to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorcee, but the Church of England, of which the British Sovereign is Supreme Governor, would not authorize the marriage of divorcees. Consequently, Parliament passed His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, by which Edward VIII ceased to be Sovereign "immediately upon" his royal assent as King being signified in Parliament on 11 December. The Act provided that he and his descendants, if any, were not to have any "right, title or interest in or to the succession to the Throne". Edward died childless in 1972. Edward's abdication was "a demise of the Crown" (in the words of the Act), and the Duke of York, his brother who was then next in the line, immediately succeeded to the throne and to its "rights, privileges, and dignities", taking the regnal name George VI. He in turn was succeeded in 1952 by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II. By that time, the monarch of the United Kingdom no longer reigned in the greater part of Ireland (which had become a republic in 1949), but was the monarch of a number of independent sovereign states (Commonwealth realms).