BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE & ANCESTRAL CO
Steve Roberts
James I, as depicted on the ceiling of the Banqueting House, Whitehall,
by Peter Paul Rubens
I was having a conversation with my wife when she asked me who some of the Stuart monarchs were and how they were related to one another, so I drew up a family tree. This got me thinking, how notable the story of the Stuart family is – both as part of history generally, and as the account of one, remarkable, family story. If we include the reigns of the various Stuart monarchs (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, and arguably both Mary II and Anne) then we have a period that runs from 1603 to 1714. If we include the ones that didn’t quite make it (the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender), then the story of the Stuart dynasty leads on to 1746 and the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden, an event that effectively extinguished the Stuart cause once and for all.
A mini timeline of Stuart history
Tudor twilight
‘Divorced, beheaded, she died. Divorced, beheaded, survived’. Bear with me starting the familial history of the Stuarts with a schoolchild ditty about Henry VIII and his long-suffering six wives. It is relevant to our story.
Henry staked everything on securing the Tudor succession with a male heir, preferably a few of them. For all his tribulations he ended with just one, the lad who ruled as Edward VI, but died aged just 15. It was Henry’s daughters who then held sway, the youngest, Elizabeth I, bringing the curtain down on the Tudor dynasty when she died childless on 24 March 1603. What next?
It is correct that we start with Henry VIII. It was his desperate quest for a son that changed this country forever, as we broke with Rome and its Pope, and established Protestantism here in the English Reformation. This was one part of Henry’s legacy to the Stuarts. The other was the succession to the English throne. With no more Tudors, the crown was offered to a descendant of Henry’s elder sister, Margaret, who had married the Scottish king, James IV. It was their great-grandson, James VI, who headed south to become James I of England. He was Henry VIII’s great-great-nephew.
The wisest fool