Scottish and English monarchs had been linked by many centuries of war, inter-marriage and diplomacy. Pre-medieval Scotland was a mix of peoples. North of the Forth were the Picts, or 'painted people', who fought the Romans in the 1st century AD.

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was born at Greenwich on 7 September 1533. When her mother was executed three years later, the little princess was banished from court as an unwanted bastard, but restored to the family by Henry’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr.

Edward VI (1547-53)
Henry VIII died leaving a sickly son, not quite ten, to be tussled over by rival magnates. Edward VI was intelligent and – had he been older and healthier – might have balanced the powerful forces contesting for control of the kingdom. He was entrusted to the care of his uncle, Edward Seymour, who governed England as Protector until 1552 when he was ousted by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick (later Duke of Northumberland).

The youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Catherine of Aragon was wellaware that her role as Henry’s queen was to bear children. A son arrived in 1511, but sadly lived only a few weeks. Five other pregnancies produced only one surviving child, Mary, in 1516.

Henry VII (1485-1509)
Henry Tudor was born in 1457. His father Edmund Tudor was already dead and his teenage mother, Margaret Beaufort, soon remarried. Through the Beaufort family line, Henry claimed descent from the Lancastrian “sire”, John of Gaunt.

The Tudors reigned over England as it transformed from a war-torn medieval kingdom into a dynamic, economically vibrant proto-modern state. For many historians, medieval England ends on Bosworth’s battlefield. Henry VII was a “managerial” monarch; Henry VIII a “Renaissance man”; Elizabeth I a woman of rare gifts, the inspiration to a nation broadening its horizons through exploration, investigation, innovation and an explosion of artistic talent.

By the summer of 1485 Richard III’s mind was troubled and not just by the recent deaths of his son and wife. Gossip was abroad that the king already had his mind set on marrying his niece, Elizabeth of York – to strengthen his grip on the Crown.

Edward V (1483)
Edward V, never crowned, is remembered as one of the two “Princes in the Tower”. He was born in 1470, during the Wars of the Roses, when his mother had sought sanctuary in Westminster Abbey and his father Edward IV had fled abroad.

Though never called “Kingmaker” in his lifetime, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (1428-71) was, during the Wars of the Roses, the most important power-broker in England. A great-great-grandson of Edward III (and potential claimant to the throne), he gained vast wealth by marrying Anne Beauchamp, the richest heiress of the age.