Stuart Family
Stuart, or Stewart, a Scottish royal family. Its members ruled Scotland for 343 years, 1371–1714, and England from 1603 to 1714, except for the period between the second war of the Great Rebellion and the Restoration (1649–60).
The period of the Stuart dynasty in 17th-century England was crucial in the shaping of the British monarchy. James I and Charles I believed in the divine right of kings and considered their authority absolute. Opposition to this concept led to armed rebellion and the beheading of Charles. Later, the adherence of James II to Roman Catholicism led to another revolution, this one bloodless. Parliament, in turn, began its own rise to supreme governmental authority.
In the 12th century Walter Fitz-Alan, an ancestor of the Stuarts, was made steward of Scotland, a hereditary administrative position from which the family took its name. The sixth steward, also named Walter, married Margery, daughter of Robert I of Scotland and a sister of David II; their son succeeded his uncle as Robert II in 1371, founding the Stewart dynasty.
In 1503 James IV of Scotland married a sister of Henry VIII of England. Their son James V was the last king of the direct Stewart line; he was succeeded by his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots (who adopted the French spelling, Stuart). Through her grandmother, Mary was heir to Queen Elizabeth of England, and her son, James VI of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth to the English throne (as James I) in 1603, joining the two kingdoms under a single monarch.
Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, saw England and Scotland united as Great Britain, 1707. At Anne's death in 1714, the throne passed to the House of Hanover. Efforts to gain the throne for Anne's half-brother James were ended by the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Henry Cardinal York, a son of James, died in 1807, the last legitimate male descendant.