Margaret 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.

Mary I was queen of England and Ireland from 1553 to 1558, the first woman to rule the kingdom in her own right. Born at Greenwich in 1516, the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, she was declared illegitimate after her parents' marriage was annulled and spent years separated from her mother and out of favour at court. Restored to the succession by her father's will in 1544, she took the throne in 1553 with wide popular support after the attempt to install Lady Jane Grey collapsed within days. She married Philip II of Spain in 1554 and devoted her reign to restoring papal authority and Catholic worship in England, a campaign whose severity against Protestants dominated her later reputation. She died childless at St James's Palace in November 1558.

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.

James VI and I was king of Scots from 1567 and king of England and Ireland from 1603, the first monarch to rule both kingdoms and the successor who followed the last of the Tudors. Born at Edinburgh Castle in June 1566 to Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley, he became king of Scotland at thirteen months after his mother's abdication and was brought up by regents and tutors, among them the scholar George Buchanan. Descended from Henry VII through both of his parents, he succeeded Elizabeth I in March 1603 in the peaceful transfer known as the Union of the Crowns. A prolific author on kingship and witchcraft, he commissioned the Authorised King James Version of the Bible. He died at Theobalds House in 1625.