JAMES I'S ELDEST SON, Prince Henry, died in 1612, leaving his brother Charles as heir to the throne. Slightly built, with a hesitation in his speech, Charles grew to be reserved yet courteous, interested in the arts, and a lover of horses and hunting. He proved a dutiful husband to Henrietta Maria, the French wife he married soon after becoming king on 27 March 1625.

JAMES - SON OF HENRY STUART, Lord Darnley, and Mary Queen of Scots - became King James VI of Scotland in 1567, the year after his birth. He then waited patiently for Elizabeth I to die, when the thrones of England and Scotland might be joined, and in 1589 married Anne of Denmark. The couple had seven children.

IN 1603, ENGLAND WAS READY to welcome its first Scottish monarch, and James I was equally ready to embrace London's pleasures after the dourness of Calvinist Scotland. The union of Crowns promised a new and greater Britain. Yet under the Stuarts, England - and to a lesser extent Scotland - was almost torn apart by religious and political division. The Jacobean age (from Jacobus, Latin for James) was a darker, more questioning time than the era of Tudor optimism.

JAMES III (1460-1488)
BORN IN 1451, JAMES III was still a child when crowned in Kelso Abbey. His mother Mary of Gueldres ruled as regent until her death in 1463, after which her son fell under the influence of the Boyd family until his marriage in 1469 to Margaret of Denmark. The king's brothers -Alexander, Duke of Albany and John, Earl of Mar - were arrested in 1479, suspected of plotting against him. Mar died suspiciously.

HOUSE OF BRUCE ROBERT I (THE BRUCE) (1306-1329)
IN 1312, THE DECLARATION OF ARBROATH affirmed Scottish independence and after Edward III came to the English throne in 1327, Bruce's army the English until Edward also acknowledged Scottish sovereignty. A dying man by 1328, Bruce asked Sir James Douglas to take his heart to the Holy Land when his body was buried in Dunfermline Abbey. But Douglas was killed in Spain, and the heart was brought back for burial in Melrose Abbey.

AFTER ALEXANDER Ill's DEATH in 1286, Scotland was plunged into dynastic strife with 13 claimants to the throne. England's powerful Edward I tried to take advantage of Scottish turmoil. Asked to pick a king, he chose John Balliol, great-grandson of David I.

MALCOLM IV (THE MAIDEN) (1153-1165)
BORN IN 1142, a year before Henry II became King of England, Malcolm was forced in 1157 to renounce his rights to Northumbria. His nickname refers to his vow of chastity.

MALCOLM III (CANMORE) (1058-93)
His RIVALS DISPOSED OF, Malcolm (born around 1031) gained the throne. Canmore (Gaelic ceann Моr) means 'big head' or 'great chief. After the defeat of his father, Duncan, Malcolm had fled to Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. In England he may have met Margaret, sister of the ousted English heir Edgar Atheling, for in 1069 he married her as his second wife.

House of Alpin Kenneth Macalpin (843 - 859)
IN 834, A BATTLE involving Alpin, King of the Dalriada Scots, and Eoghann, King of the Picts, left both leaders dead. The man who proved strong enough to enforce a claim to both kingdoms was Kenneth MacAlpin, son of the Scots king and descended through his mother from the Pictish royal house. In 843 he became ruler of the Picts and Scots in a Celtic kingdom known as Scotia.