James I
(1566-1625)
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Charles I Elizabeth Stuart
(1600-1649) (1596-1662)
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Henry Stuart Charles II Mary Henrietta Stuart James II
Prince of Wales Duke of York Princess Royal Duke of York
(1594-1612) (1630-1685) (1631-1660) (1633-1701)
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William III = Queen Mary Queen Anne
(1650-1702) (1662-1694) (1665-1714)
The birth of the House of Stuart
James Stuart who had been James VI King of Scots since the year 1567 was the son of Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany (formerly known as the Lord Darnley) and Mary, Queen of Scots. Since his great-grandfather (on his mother's side) James IV had married Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII he was the nearest living relative of the reigning Queen of England Elizabeth I and succeeded her as the ruler of England on her death in 1603.
James I married Anne of Denmark in 1589, a marriage that produced the following issue;
four daughters, three of whom, Margaret Stuart (died 1600), Mary Stuart (died 1607) and Sophia Stuart (died 1606) did not survive childhood; the only surviving daughter being Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662) who married Frederick V, King of Bohemia (and known as the Winter King);
and four sons, an unnamed son who died at birth in 1603 and Robert Stuart, Duke of Kintyre died in 1602 aged three months, and two sons who survived into adulthood, being;
Charles I succeeded his father as king in 1625 and married Henrietta Maria of France. This marriage produced five daughters, two of whom Anne Stuart (died 1640) and Katherine Stuart (died 1639) perished in infancy and three of whom survived;
and four sons, one of whom Charles Stuart, Duke of Cornwall died at birth on the 13th May 1629, and three surviving sons;
The Restored Stuarts
Charles I famously got himself into an argument with Parliament and was deposed and executed in 1649. The English experimented with a republic for a time but eventually got bored with that idea and in 1660 invited Charles II to return as king.
Charles II married Catherine of Braganza but all three of their children died and birth and remained unnamed. Charles was rather more successful with his many mistresses such as Catherine Pegge, Lucy Walter, Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynn, Louise de Kéroualle and Moll Davies by whom he had a number of children. (See Charles II, his mistresses and his children.) Unfortunately none of these children counted in terms of the succession, hence on Charles' death the crown passed to his brother James, Duke of York now James II.
James II was married twice, firstly in 1660 to Anne Hyde who bore him a total of eight children. Six of these children died in infancy, two daughters Henrietta Stuart (died 1669) and Katherine Stuart (died 1671) and four sons namely;
The two surviving children were both daughters, both of whom were destined to succeed their father on the throne, namely;
In 1673 James II married for the second time to the fifteen year old Mary of Modena (he was aged forty at the time). They had a total of twelve children, five of whom died at birth and where unnamed, and four daughters Katherine Stuart (died 1675), Isabel Stuart (died 1681), Elizabeth Stuart (died 1678), Charlotte Stuart (died 1682) and one son Charles Stuart (died 1677), all of whom failed to survive into adulthood. The two surviving children one son and one daughter were;
The Last Stuarts
Like his father James II got into a spot of bother with Parliament, and faced with an invasion led by his daughter and son-in-law and the desertion of the army he fled to the continent and effectively abandoned the throne leading to the Glorious Revolution in 1688.
As noted above Mary Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Charles I had married William II, Prince of Orange and their only child William III married his cousin Mary Stuart eldest daughter of James II. Both William and Mary therefore had a claim on the throne and although Mary was technically deemed the heir, they ruled together as William and Mary (at least until Mary's death in 1694) and are often shown as the one and only representatives of the House of Orange on the throne of England.
Unfortunately all of their three children died at birth and therefore on William's death in 1702 the succession passed to Anne, born 1665, the second daughter of James II and Anne Hyde. Queen Anne married George Oldenburg, Prince of Denmark and this marriage produced a total of eighteen children, thirteen of whom were unnamed as they were stillborn, three daughters, two Marys and an Anne, and a son George who died in infancy and William, Duke of Gloucester who died shortly after his eleventh birthday on the 30th July 1700.
Accordingly when Anne herself died in 1714 at forty-nine years of age, after a lifelong battle with porphyria she had no surviving issue. Parliament in its search for an acceptable Protestant monarch settled on the descendants of the aforementioned Elizabeth Stuart daughter of James I in the form of George, Elector of Hanover.