Charles I Stuart

Robert II was the first Stewart king of Scots, reigning from 1371 until his death in 1390. He was the son of Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland, and Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert the Bruce, and it was through his mother that the crown eventually reached the Stewart line. Born at Paisley in 1316 and orphaned as an infant, he acted as Guardian of Scotland during the long absences and captivity of his uncle David II, and succeeded him in 1371 at the age of fifty-five. His reign saw renewed border warfare with England and a growing reliance on his sons to govern in his name. By his first wife, Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, he was the father of Robert III, and every later Stewart and Stuart monarch descends from him.

James I was king of Scots from 1406 until 1437, though he spent the first eighteen years of his reign as a prisoner in England. Born at Dunfermline in 1394, the youngest son of Robert III and Annabella Drummond, he was captured at sea in 1406 while being sent to France and held at the English court, where he received an excellent education and is generally credited with the long courtly poem The Kingis Quair. Ransomed in 1424, he returned with his English wife Joan Beaufort and ruled with fierce energy, curbing the great magnates, reforming parliament and taxation, and destroying the rival Albany Stewarts. His reign ended when he was killed at Perth in February 1437, and his six-year-old son succeeded as James II.

James II was king of Scots from 1437 to 1460. Born at Holyrood in 1430 to James I and Joan Beaufort, he was six when he came to the throne, and his minority was dominated by the rivalries of the Livingston, Crichton and Douglas families. Taking power in his own right in the later 1440s, he broke the overmighty Black Douglases in a series of campaigns that ended with their forfeiture in 1455, and greatly strengthened the crown's lands and finances. He was an enthusiast for the new siege artillery of the age, and it was at the siege of the English-held Roxburgh Castle in August 1460 that he was killed when one of his own guns burst. His son succeeded as James III.

James III was king of Scots from 1460 to 1488. The son of James II and Mary of Guelders, he was about eight at his accession and grew into a cultivated but unpopular ruler, more interested in the arts, music and architecture than in the hunting and campaigning his nobility expected. His marriage to Margaret of Denmark in 1469 brought Orkney and Shetland into the Scottish crown in place of her unpaid dowry, a lasting gain. His attempts at friendship with England, his reliance on low-born favourites and his quarrels with his own brothers repeatedly set the magnates against him, and he was overthrown and killed in 1488 after the Battle of Sauchieburn, fought in the name of his eldest son, who became James IV.

James IV was king of Scots from 1488 to 1513 and is usually reckoned the most successful of the Stewart kings. The son of James III and Margaret of Denmark, he came to the throne at fifteen after the rebellion that ended his father's reign, and spent his life atoning for it. He was a genuine Renaissance prince: a linguist, a patron of the poets William Dunbar and Robert Henryson, a founder of the College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and of Scotland's first printing press, and the builder of the great warship the Michael. His marriage to Margaret Tudor in 1503, the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, eventually carried his descendants to the English throne. He was killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.

James V was king of Scots from 1513 to 1542. Born at Linlithgow Palace in 1512 to James IV and Margaret Tudor, he was seventeen months old when his father was killed at Flodden, and his long minority was fought over by his mother, the Earl of Angus and the Duke of Albany. Ruling in his own right from 1528, he built up the crown's revenues, taxed the church heavily and rebuilt Falkland, Stirling and Linlithgow in the new Renaissance manner. He kept Scotland's French alliance and Catholic allegiance against the pressure of his uncle Henry VIII, marrying first Madeleine of Valois and then Mary of Guise. He died at Falkland Palace in December 1542, days after the birth of his daughter Mary, Queen of Scots.

Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was the daughter of Margaret Tudor by her second marriage to Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and therefore a niece of Henry VIII with a real place in the English succession. Born at Harbottle Castle in Northumberland in 1515, she was raised largely at the English court and was close to her cousin Mary I. Her marriage in 1544 to Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, joined two claims to the Scottish and English thrones, and she worked tirelessly to advance them, promoting the marriage of her son Lord Darnley to Mary, Queen of Scots in 1565. That ambition twice landed her in the Tower of London. She died in 1578, grandmother of the future James VI and I.

Sophia of Hanover was the granddaughter of James VI and I through whom the British crown passed to the House of Hanover. The twelfth child of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was born in exile at The Hague in 1630 and grew up in a household famous for its learning; she corresponded for years with the philosopher Leibniz and was a notable intellectual figure in her own right. In 1658 she married Ernest Augustus, who became the first Elector of Hanover. The English Act of Settlement of 1701 named her and her Protestant descendants heirs to the throne after Queen Anne. She died in June 1714, weeks before Anne, and her son became King George I.

Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, was the son of Princess Anne and Prince George of Denmark and, for eleven years, the only surviving heir of the Protestant Stuart line. Born at Hampton Court Palace in July 1689, in the first year of the reign of his uncle William III, he was created Duke of Gloucester and given a household of his own at Campden House in Kensington, where the philosopher John Locke advised on his education and Bishop Gilbert Burnet served as his tutor. He was known for drilling a company of boys as his own miniature army. His death at Windsor in July 1700, shortly after his eleventh birthday, left the Protestant succession without an heir and led directly to the Act of Settlement of 1701.

Charles Edward Stuart, remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie and as the Young Pretender, led the last Jacobite rising and is the most romanticised figure of the family. Born in Rome in 1720, the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart and Maria Clementina Sobieska, he landed on Eriskay in the Hebrides in July 1745 with only a handful of companions, raised the clans at Glenfinnan, took Edinburgh, won the Battle of Prestonpans and marched as far south as Derby before turning back. The rising ended at Culloden in April 1746, after which he spent five months as a fugitive in the Highlands, famously aided by Flora MacDonald, before escaping to France. He died in Rome in 1788.

Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York, was the last legitimate descendant of James II and VII in the male line and the final Stuart claimant to the British throne. Born in Rome in 1725, the younger son of James Francis Edward Stuart and Maria Clementina Sobieska, he went to France in 1745 to help organise support for his brother's rising, then took holy orders and was created a cardinal in 1747, a step that effectively ended any practical hope of a Stuart restoration. He served for decades as Bishop of Frascati and was a generous patron and church reformer. After his brother's death in 1788 Jacobites styled him Henry IX. He died at Frascati in 1807, and the direct line ended with him.