Henry VIII Tudor

Catherine of Valois was a French princess who became queen of England as the wife of Henry V and, by her second marriage, the grandmother of Henry VII. Born in Paris in 1401, the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria, she was married to Henry V in 1420 under the Treaty of Troyes, which was meant to settle the Hundred Years' War by making her husband heir to the French throne. Their only child succeeded as Henry VI of England at the age of nine months. Widowed at twenty, Catherine formed a lasting union with Owen Tudor, a Welshman of her household, and their sons Edmund and Jasper Tudor grew up under the protection of their royal half-brother. She died in 1437 and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, was an English nobleman and soldier of the Lancastrian royal house and the father of Lady Margaret Beaufort. Born in 1404, he was a grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, through Gaunt's marriage to Katherine Swynford, whose children were legitimated by parliament but later barred from the succession by a clause of doubtful authority. Captured in France as a young man at the Battle of Bauge, he spent some seventeen years as a prisoner of war before being ransomed. He was created Duke of Somerset in 1443 and given command of an expensive expedition to France that achieved nothing and ended in his disgrace at court. He died in 1444, leaving his infant daughter Margaret as his heiress and, through her, the Tudor line.

Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was the English magnate whose claim to the throne opened the Wars of the Roses and whose sons became Edward IV and Richard III. Born in 1411, he inherited vast estates and a double descent from Edward III, through his father Richard of Conisburgh and his mother Anne Mortimer. He served as the king's lieutenant in France and in Ireland and twice as Lord Protector during the incapacity of Henry VI, pressing his case against the court party led by Queen Margaret of Anjou. In October 1460 parliament recognised him as heir to the throne in place of the king's son, but he died at the Battle of Wakefield that December. Through his granddaughter Elizabeth of York his blood passed into the Tudor line.

Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, was an English noblewoman remembered as the matriarch of the House of York, mother of two kings and great-grandmother of Henry VIII. Born at Raby Castle in County Durham in 1415, the youngest daughter of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Joan Beaufort, she married Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and bore him at least twelve children, among them Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard III. Widowed in 1460, she outlived her husband by thirty-five years and most of her children, living in careful devotional retirement at Berkhamsted Castle with a household routine modelled on a religious rule. She died in 1495, having seen her granddaughter Elizabeth of York crowned queen to the first Tudor king.

George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was an English prince of the House of York, a younger brother of Edward IV and Richard III and the father of Margaret Pole. Born at Dublin Castle in 1449 while his father served as the king's lieutenant in Ireland, he was created Duke of Clarence at his brother's coronation in 1461. In 1469 he married Isabel Neville, elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and joined his father-in-law's rebellion against the king before changing sides again and being reconciled. Relations with Edward IV broke down once more after Isabel's death, and he was attainted by parliament and died in the Tower of London in February 1478. His daughter Margaret carried the Plantagenet bloodline into the Tudor century.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was an English noblewoman and one of the last of the House of Plantagenet, a first cousin of Elizabeth of York and for many years a trusted figure at the court of Henry VIII. Born in 1473 to George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville, she was married to Sir Richard Pole, a loyal servant of Henry VII, and bore five children, among them Cardinal Reginald Pole. Henry VIII restored her to the earldom of Salisbury in her own right in 1513, a rare distinction for a woman, and appointed her governess to Princess Mary, to whom she remained devoted through the years of Mary's disgrace. Her family's opposition to the king's religious policy brought her attainder in 1539 and her death at the Tower of London in 1541.

James V was king of Scots from 1513 to 1542, the son of James IV and Margaret Tudor and the father of Mary, Queen of Scots. Born at Linlithgow Palace in 1512, he succeeded before his second birthday and spent his minority under a succession of regents and, from 1525, in the custody of his stepfather the Earl of Angus, from whom he escaped in 1528 to rule in his own right. He rebuilt royal finances, kept Scotland aligned with France and with Rome against the reformation pursued by his uncle Henry VIII, and remodelled the palaces of Falkland and Stirling in the new Renaissance style. His first wife, Madeleine of Valois, died soon after their marriage; his second, Mary of Guise, bore him a daughter six days before his own death at Falkland Palace in December 1542.

Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was an English and Scottish noblewoman, the daughter of Margaret Tudor and the Earl of Angus and the grandmother of James VI and I. Born at Harbottle Castle in Northumberland in October 1515 while her mother was in flight from Scotland, she was brought up largely at the English court as a favoured niece of Henry VIII and a close companion of Princess Mary. She was twice imprisoned for making marriage arrangements without royal consent before marrying Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, in 1544. Her persistent dynastic manoeuvring secured the marriage of her son Lord Darnley to Mary, Queen of Scots, uniting the two strongest claims to the English succession. She died in London in 1578.

Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, born Frances Brandon, was an English noblewoman, the elder daughter of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon and the mother of Lady Jane Grey. Born in July 1517, she was a granddaughter of Henry VII and stood high in the line of succession under the terms of Henry VIII's will, which preferred her line over the Scottish descendants of his elder sister Margaret. She married Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, later Duke of Suffolk, and had three surviving daughters: Jane, Catherine and Mary. After the collapse of her daughter's claim to the throne in 1553 and her husband's attainder the following year, she was pardoned by Mary I, remarried and lived quietly until her death in 1559. She was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen of England in July 1553 and held the throne for nine days, the shortest reign in English history. Born at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire in 1537, the eldest daughter of Henry Grey and Frances Brandon and a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, she was among the best-educated women of her generation, reading Latin and Greek and corresponding with continental reformers; the scholar Roger Ascham left a famous account of finding her reading Plato while her family hunted. In May 1553 she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, and on the death of Edward VI she was named queen under his device for the succession. Support collapsed within days in favour of Mary I. She died at the Tower of London in February 1554, aged about seventeen.

Lady Catherine Grey was an English noblewoman whose claim to the English succession turned her marriage into a matter of state. Born in 1540, the second daughter of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, and Frances Brandon, she was a great-granddaughter of Henry VII and, after the death of her elder sister Lady Jane Grey, the senior heir to the throne under the will of Henry VIII. Her first marriage, to Lord Herbert, was annulled after the failure of her sister's claim in 1553. In 1560 she married Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, in secret and without the queen's consent; when her pregnancy revealed the match, Elizabeth I had both imprisoned in the Tower of London and the marriage declared invalid. She had two sons and died in custody at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk in 1568.