British kings and queens
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Stuart kings and queens. (2026). In Q-files Encyclopedia, History, British kings and queens. Retrieved from
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Accessed 27 Jul. 2026.
Stuart kings and queens 2026. History, British kings and queens. Retrieved 27 July 2026, from
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History, British kings and queens, s.v. "Stuart kings and queens," accessed July 27, 2026.
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Stuart kings and queens
James I (1603–1625)
Elizabeth I’s aunt, Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, had married James IV of Scotland. When Elizabeth died in 1603 without any children, the English throne passed to Margaret’s great-grandson, James VI of Scotland, (who was also the son of Mary, Queen of Scots). As James I of England, he became the first of the new line of Stuart kings that ruled both countries until 1714.
James I held a strong belief in the Divine Right of Kings: a king had absolute freedom to rule and his only responsibility was to God. As a result of this and his constant need to raise money, he often came into conflict with Parliament. Following the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 in Europe, financial pressures forced James to summon Parliament in 1621. The House of Commons insisted on discussing England’s foreign policy in general, but James forbade it.
James was no supporter of the Puritans (devout Protestants who believed in greater "purity" of worship in their religion) and also disappointed the Catholics, who had hoped to be given more freedoms than during Elizabeth I's reign. In 1605, a Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, known as the Gunpowder Plot, to be carried out by Guy Fawkes and others, was uncovered. During James's reign, a new version of the Bible, the King James Bible (1611), was published.
Charles I (1625–1649)
Charles I came to the throne in 1625 as king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Rebellions against his religious policies broke out in Scotland in 1639 and Ireland in 1641. In England, Charles’s disagreements with Parliament over the right to levy taxes and his refusal to consult Parliament led to war in 1642 after Charles tried to arrest five MPs. These three separate wars, in Scotland, Ireland and England, were once known as the English Civil War but are better called the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
In England, the war was fought between the Cavalier supporters of the king and the Parliamentarians, known as Roundheads. By 1649, the English Parliament, supported by the New Model Army under the command of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), had defeated Charles in a series of battles, most notably Naseby in 1645, but Charles refused to negotiate to end the war. In January 1649, the English Parliament tried and executed Charles for waging war against his own country.
Charles II (1660–1685)
After Cromwell's death, his son Richard took over but could not hold on to power. So in 1660 the monarchy was restored and Charles I’s son, Charles II, who had been in exile in France and the Netherlands, became king. The Restoration, as the return of monarchy was called, did not return all the powers to the king that his father had wielded, and Charles was often short of money. The early years of Charles's reign saw a plague which hit the country in 1665 (70,000 died in London alone) and the Great Fire of London in 1666 which destroyed St Paul's along with much of central London. War with the Dutch broke out in 1665, leading to the surprise Dutch attack in 1667, during which Dutch ships sailed up the River Thames and sunk nearly all the ships in the English fleet. Charles was a fun-loving king who kept his throne in difficult times, and he was also a great patron of the arts and sciences.
Throughout Charles's reign, religious toleration dominated the political scene. Worried that the royal family might be thought “too Catholic” (both his wife Catherine of Braganza and brother James were devout Catholics), Charles agreed that James's daughter, Mary, should marry the Protestant William of Orange. A Protestant himself, Charles became a Roman Catholic on his deathbed.
James II (1685–1688)
Charles II had no legitimate children (but dozens of illegitimate ones). When died in 1685 he was succeeded by his Catholic brother, James II (James VII of Scotland). James intended to restore Catholicism to Britain. Ruling without Parliament, James appointed Catholics to senior positions in government and the army and dismissed judges who refused to support the abolition of laws penalizing Catholics. In 1688 his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a Catholic son and heir, also called James (later known as the “Old Pretender” and father of “Bonnie Prince Charlie”). Alarmed at this prospect, Protestant lords rose in revolt and offered the crown to the Protestant husband of James's elder daughter, Mary (by James's first and Protestant wife, Anne Hyde), a Dutchman called William of Orange.
William landed with his army in Torbay in November 1688 and marched on London, gaining support on the way. This event has come to be known as the “Glorious Revolution”. James then fled to France, allowing William and his wife Mary to take the throne in 1689 as joint monarchs. James attempted to regain the throne by landing a French army in Ireland, but he was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. James spent the rest of his life in exile in France, dying there in 1701.
William III (1689–1702) & Mary II (1689–1694)
In 1689, Parliament declared that James II had abdicated by deserting his kingdom. Mary, James’s elder daughter Mary and her husband William were offered the throne as joint monarchs, Mary II and Willliam III.
Mary and William accepted the Bill of Rights, an Act of Parliament of 1689, which laid down limits on the powers of the monarch and set out the rights of Parliament, including the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech in Parliament (thus preventing all the abuses of power which James II and the other Stuart kings had committed). All Catholics were excluded from the throne. However, the monarch could still summon and dissolve Parliament, appoint and dismiss Ministers, veto (not allow) legislation and declare war.
England, and later the United Kingdom, now had a system of government called a constitutional monarchy. Parliament's power would now steadily increase while the Crown's went into decline. The Bill of Rights also established the succession, but by 1700 Mary had died childless and her sister Anne's only surviving child had also died. The Act of Settlement of 1701 was therefore passed to secure the Protestant succession to the throne, and to ensure that parliamentary government continued.
Anne (1702–1714)
Anne was the second daughter of James II and sister to Mary II. Anne had 17 pregnancies but only one child survived: William, who died of smallpox aged just 11. Anne was a close friend of Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough. Sarah's husband John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, commanded the English Army in the War of Spanish Succession, winning a series of major battles with the French and gaining massive prestige for England. It was during Anne's reign (1707) that the United Kingdom of Great Britain was created by the Union of England and Scotland. From now on, a British Parliament would sit at Westminster, and there would be a common flag and coinage. Scotland, however, kept its own established Church and its legal and educational systems.
After Anne's death, by the Act of Settlement, the succession went to the nearest Protestant relative of the Stuart line. This was Sophia, Electress of Hanover, daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, James I 's only daughter. Sophia died a few weeks before Anne, and so the throne passed to her son George.
Consultant: Philip Parker
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