Henry, Prince of Wales, died from typhoid fever on 6 November 1612. His death was a major blow to the Stuart dynasty. Henry was popular at court, and showed great promise. The Stuart succession was now secured only in Prince Charles, who was a sickly child.

Charles I (1600-1649) was born to James VI of Scotland (1566-1625) and his wife, Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), on 19 November 1600. He was their third child, after Prince Henry (1594-1612) and Princess Elizabeth (1596-1662). Read more.

Civil war broke out after Charles I (1600-1649) refused to comply with demands made by the Long Parliament in 1641. In January 1642, Charles attempted to arrest five members of the Commons on treason charges. The attempt failed, and Charles fled into the north. Read more.

Charles I (1600-1649) was captured at Oxford by parliamentary forces in 1646. He was eventually brought to trial at Westminster Hall on 20 January 1649. Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a king. Nonetheless, he was declared guilty on 27 January and was publicly executed outside Banqueting House in Whitehall on 30 January 1649.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to his death in 1658. Cromwell was born to Robert Cromwell (d. 1617) and Elizabeth Steward (d. 1654) in Huntington on 25 April 1599. Read more.

Richard Cromwell (1626-1712) acceded his father, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), as Lord Protector of England in September 1658. He did not inherit his father’s authority. The army, led by General George Monck, soon moved against him. Richard renounced his position nine months after acceding.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) died on 3 September 1658. His son and successor, Richard (1626-1712), did not command the confidence of the New Model Army as his father had. After reigning as Lord Protector for just seven months, Richard was deposed by the New Model Army in the spring of 1659. Read more.

The Exclusion Crisis was a political episode that ran from 1679 through 1681, in the reign of Charles II (1630-1685). Charles’s brother and heir apparent, James, Duke of York (1633-1701) had converted to Roman Catholicism. In a climate intensely hostile to Catholicism, the prospect of a Catholic succession to the throne was unpopular. Read more.

James II and VII (1633-1701) was born the third child and second son of Charles I (1600-1649) and his French consort Henrietta Maria (1609-1669). James spent much of his youth with his father at Oxford during the civil wars, before he was captured and taken prisoner to London. Read more.

After Charles II’s sudden death on 6 February 1685, Monmouth began plotting once again with exiled British dissidents. On 11 June 1685 Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis with three ships and eighty-three men. On the march through the West Country, Monmouth recruited an army. He intended to depose his Catholic uncle and re-establish protestant rule. Read more.

The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 was the usurpation of James II (1633-1701) by his nephew and son-in-law William of Orange (1650-1702) and daughter Mary (1662-1694). James’s Catholicism had proved deeply unpopular, as the earlier Exclusion Crisis (1679-1681) and Monmouth Rebellion (1685) demonstrated. Read more.

William III and Mary II were declared king and queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland on 13 February 1689, and were hurriedly crowned in Westminster Abbey on 11 April. William’s first move as king was to bring British resources into conflict with Louis XIV. Read more.

Mary II (1662-1694) contracted smallpox in the autumn of 1694, and died on 28 December. She was buried after an elaborate funeral at Westminster Abbey. Read more.

William, Duke of Gloucester, was born in 1689. He was Anne’s only child to survive infancy. From birth his health was precarious. He contracted pneumonia after his eleventh birthday on 24 July 1700, and died on 30 July. His death was the end of the protestant Stuart dynasty.

The Act of Settlement was passed by parliament in 1701, necessitated by the death of Anne’s only surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester (1689-1700). It decreed that, upon the death of Anne without an heir of her body, the British throne should pass to the protestant House of Brunswick. Read more.

Upon James II’s death in September 1701, Louis XIV of France proclaimed James Francis Edward Stuart as ‘James III’, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in direct contravention of the treaty of Ryswick (1697). Read more.

Anne acceded upon William II’s death on 8 March 1702. She was greeted as a native English queen after William’s foreign reign, and was immediately popular with Tories, who welcomed renewed Stuart rule. Unlike her sister, Anne cultivated her duties as queen regnant. Read more.

In March 1708 James Francis Edward sailed from Dunkirk with six-thousand French troops, with the intention of landing in the Firth of Forth. The expedition was thwarted by bad weather and the British navy. Despite James’s protests, the French fleet chose to retreat, and the British government clamped down on the Scottish Jacobites. Read more.

Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714. An invitation was immediately dispatched to George I in Hanover, advising him to come to England immediately to avoid a Jacobite rising. George arrived at Dover on 18 September and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 20 October. Stuart reign in Britain was over.