British History: every monarch, prime minister and turning point, from Stonehenge to today

Skara Brae (c. 3180 to 2500 BC)

Skara Brae is a cluster of stone-built houses beside the Bay of Skaill on Mainland Orkney. Radiocarbon dates from excavations in the 1970s put its occupation at roughly 3180 to 2500 BC, about 600 years. Each house had a central hearth, a bed on either side and a stone dresser facing the door. The houses were joined by passages, some of them roofed. Today it is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site.

• V. Gordon Childe excavated the site from 1927 and in 1931 published it as 'Skara Brae, a Pictish Village in Orkney', first dating it to about 500 BC. Radiocarbon dates from the 1972 to 1973 excavations showed it was Neolithic, more than 2,500 years older than he had thought.
• The houses were once believed to be underground. They are now understood to be free-standing stone buildings packed round with midden (rubbish) for insulation, and drains ran beneath at least five of them.
• Why it was abandoned is still unsettled. A sudden sandstorm was the old explanation; Historic Environment Scotland says more recent research points to a gradual departure over 20 to 30 years, with a colder and wetter climate from about 2500 BC and social change or disease among the possible factors.

Sources: V. Gordon Childe, 'Final Report on the Operations at Skara Brae', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 65 (1931), 27-77 (excavation report); Historic Environment Scotland: The Story of Skara Brae; Wikipedia: Skara Brae

Stonehenge (c. 3000 to 1600 BC)

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain was built in stages. English Heritage dates the first work, a circular ditch and bank with the 56 Aubrey Holes, to about 3000 BC. Around 2500 BC the sarsen circle and horseshoe went up, with bluestones set between them. The central axis is aligned on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. Work and rearranging carried on into the Bronze Age, with the Y and Z holes dated by English Heritage to 1800 to 1500 BC.

• Most of the bluestones are linked to the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales, about 140 miles (230 km) away. A 2024 study matched the Altar Stone not to Wales but to the Orcadian Basin in north-east Scotland, a haul of roughly 430 miles (690 km).
• A 2020 study matched 50 of the 52 sarsens it sampled to West Woods, about 16 miles (26 km) to the north. A standing sarsen is around 13 feet (4 m) tall and weighs about 25 tons.
• In the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth told a different story: that Merlin took the Giants' Dance down at Killaraus in Ireland with engines, had it shipped to Britain and set it up again. It is a medieval legend, not evidence.
• Stonehenge was still visited in Roman Britain. English Heritage says it appears to have been frequently visited from AD 43, and Wikipedia reports late fourth-century coins and Roman pottery found there that suggest ritual or ceremonial use.

Sources: Darvill, Marshall, Parker Pearson and Wainwright, 'Stonehenge remodelled', Antiquity 86 (2012): excavation and radiocarbon sequence; Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Book 8, chapters 10 to 12 (medieval legend; Wikisource); English Heritage: History of Stonehenge; Wikipedia: Stonehenge

Caesar's Expeditions to Britain (55 and 54 BC)

While campaigning in Gaul, Julius Caesar sailed to Britain in 55 BC with a small force, and returned in 54 BC with five legions and about 2,000 cavalry. In his own Gallic War he says he sent a warship ahead to scout and that envoys from British states had already offered hostages. Caesar himself cited British help for the Gauls, and modern historians add prestige and the island's mineral wealth as other motives. The first expedition ended after storms damaged much of the fleet. In 54 BC he crossed the Thames against the war leader Cassivellaunus, but founded no province. In 54 BC Cassivellaunus gave hostages and agreed to an annual tribute, and Caesar went back to Gaul to winter there, leaving no garrison. Rome did not return in force until AD 43.

• In the first campaign a storm at full moon, with high tides the Romans had not reckoned on, flooded the warships hauled up on the beach and wrecked many transports, leaving the army without ships to get home.
• For 54 BC Caesar says more than 800 ships were off Britain at one time, counting vessels from the previous year and private ones.
• Caesar reports that the Britons kept hares, fowl and geese but thought it wrong to eat them, and that they used brass or iron rings of fixed weight as money.
• Caesar says he forbade Cassivellaunus to attack the Trinovantes and their king Mandubracius, whom he had restored. Whether the tribute was ever paid is unknown.

Sources: Caesar, Gallic War 4.21 (Perseus Digital Library); Caesar, Gallic War 4.29 (Perseus Digital Library); Caesar, Gallic War 5.8 (Perseus Digital Library); Caesar, Gallic War 5.12 (Perseus Digital Library); Caesar, Gallic War 5.22 (Perseus Digital Library); World History Encyclopedia: Julius Caesar; Wikipedia: Caesar's invasions of Britain

The Claudian Invasion (AD 43)

In AD 43 Emperor Claudius sent an army under Aulus Plautius across the Channel. Cassius Dio says the force crossed late in the season in three divisions, so no single landing could be stopped. After battles with Caratacus and Togodumnus and a halt at the Thames, Plautius sent for Claudius, who joined the army, took Camulodunum (Colchester) and received the submission of many tribes. Modern accounts give the pretext as restoring the exiled king Verica. Dio says an exile from Britain named Bericus persuaded Claudius to act. Claudius spent sixteen days in Britain, by Dio's count, and left Plautius to conquer the rest. The Senate gave him the name Britannicus and voted a triumph and two arches. The conquest of the island took decades.

• Dio says the soldiers were indignant at campaigning beyond the limits of the known world. When Claudius's freedman Narcissus tried to address them they shouted 'Io Saturnalia', and then followed Plautius.
• Equipment gathered for the campaign included elephants, according to Dio. He does not say how many reached Britain or whether any fought.
• Claudius was away from Rome for six months but in Britain for sixteen days. At his triumph, Dio says, he climbed the Capitol steps on his knees.
• Only the Second Augusta Legion, under Vespasian, is directly attested in the invasion. The Ninth, Fourteenth and Twentieth are known from the Boudican revolt and probably came too, but Wikipedia says it is unclear how many legions were sent.

Sources: Cassius Dio, Roman History 60.19 to 60.23 (LacusCurtius, Loeb translation); World History Encyclopedia: Claudius; World History Encyclopedia: Roman Britain; Wikipedia: Roman conquest of Britain

Caratacus (AD 43 to c. 51)

Caratacus (Caradog), war leader of the Catuvellauni, Catuvellauni · British resistance

Caratacus was a son of the Catuvellaunian king Cunobelinus and, with his brother Togodumnus, led the defence in AD 43. After defeats on the Medway and the Thames he took the war west to the Silures and Ordovices in Wales. Tacitus places his capture in the ninth year of the war, and the site of his last battle is still unknown.

How they rose: He belonged to the ruling dynasty of the Catuvellauni and shared rule with his brother Togodumnus after their father Cunobelinus died, some time before the invasion. Cassius Dio says Togodumnus was killed, and Caratacus became the main figure of resistance.

How they died: Caratacus was defeated by the governor Ostorius Scapula around AD 50, fled north, and was handed to the Romans by Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes. In Rome, Tacitus says, Claudius pardoned him, his wife and his brothers after a speech. When he died is not recorded.

• Tacitus says that before the final battle Caratacus reminded his men that their ancestors had driven off Caesar, and the tribes swore oaths not to give way.
• Caratacus's wife and daughter were captured in the battle, and his brothers surrendered. Tacitus says the praetorian cohorts stood under arms for his appearance in Rome.
• Tacitus has Caratacus argue that sparing him would make him a lasting monument to Roman mercy. Claudius pardoned him.
• Caer Caradoc and British Camp have both been named as the battle site, but Wikipedia argues British Camp does not fit Tacitus's description. Brampton Bryan and Blodwel Rocks have also been proposed.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 12.31 to 12.40 (LacusCurtius); Cassius Dio, Roman History 60.20 (LacusCurtius); World History Encyclopedia: Caratacus; Wikipedia: Caratacus

Boudica's Revolt (AD 60 to 61)

The Iceni king Prasutagus died leaving his kingdom jointly to Nero and his two daughters. Tacitus says Roman officials plundered the kingdom, flogged his widow Boudica and assaulted her daughters. The Iceni and the Trinovantes then rose while the governor Suetonius Paulinus was campaigning on Anglesey. Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans) were destroyed. Historians date the revolt to AD 60 or 61. Tacitus also blames anger at the veterans settled at Camulodunum, who seized native land, while Cassius Dio points instead to loans and confiscations. Paulinus chose a battlefield with a wood behind him and a narrow approach, and the Romans won. Tacitus says Boudica poisoned herself, while Cassius Dio says she fell sick and died, and the site of the battle is unknown.

• Tacitus says close on 70,000 Romans and allies died in the three towns, and about 80,000 Britons against some 400 Romans in the last battle. The Loeb editor's note on the LacusCurtius page calls the first estimate 'probably valueless' and the battle figures 'equally incredible'.
• Paulinus abandoned Londinium to save the wider province rather than defend it, according to Tacitus.
• The speeches Roman writers put in Boudica's mouth are invented, as Wikipedia notes. Her name is spelled Boudica or Boudicca in modern writing.
• The site of the last battle is unknown. Wikipedia says it was possibly in the West Midlands, and that the belief that Boudica was buried at King's Cross in London has no evidence behind it.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 14.29 to 14.39 (LacusCurtius); Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.1 to 62.12 (LacusCurtius); World History Encyclopedia: Boudicca; Wikipedia: Boudica

Agricola and Mons Graupius (AD 79 to 83 or 84)

Gnaeus Julius Agricola governed Britain in the late AD 70s and early 80s, and his campaigns took the army into Scotland. His son-in-law Tacitus wrote his life, and is the only ancient source for the climax, the battle of Mons Graupius, fought in AD 83 or perhaps 84. Tacitus says more than 30,000 Britons gathered under a chief called Calgacus, and that Agricola's auxiliaries, not the legions, did the fighting. Agricola, a Roman senator, took up the governorship when the conquest of Wales was nearly complete and the north was still open. After the battle Agricola was recalled to Rome and, according to Wikipedia, replaced by Sallustius Lucullus. Roman forces soon withdrew from the far north, a loss Tacitus summed up in the Histories as Britain subdued and immediately let go.

• Tacitus says Agricola's fleet sailed round the north for the first time, proving Britain an island, and that the sailors glimpsed Thule.
• Tacitus puts a speech in Calgacus's mouth in which Rome makes a solitude and calls it peace. Historians think Tacitus largely wrote it himself.
• Tacitus says about 10,000 of the enemy were killed and 360 of Agricola's men fell. World History Encyclopedia says Roman writers often inflated enemy losses, so the figures need caution.
• No one knows where the battle was fought. Wikipedia says Aberdeenshire sites near Bennachie and the Raedykes camp have been favoured, and Historic Environment Scotland left the battle out of its battlefield inventory because the location is uncertain.

Sources: Tacitus, Agricola 10 and 29 to 38 (Church and Brodribb translation, Fordham Internet Ancient History Sourcebook); Tacitus, Histories 1.2 (LacusCurtius, Loeb translation); World History Encyclopedia: Tacitus' Account of The Battle of Mons Graupius; Wikipedia: Battle of Mons Graupius

The Vindolanda Tablets (c. AD 97 to 105 (found 1973))

The Vindolanda tablets are thin wooden leaves written in carbon ink at a Roman fort in Northumberland. They date from the late first and early second century AD, most of them to about 95 to 105. The first were found in 1973 during excavations led by Robin Birley. As of 2023 more than 1,700 had been found, covering military records, letters and personal notes. Most are held by the British Museum.

• The excavators first took the earliest tablets for wood shavings. Infrared photography later revealed the writing.
• Tablet 291 is a birthday invitation from Claudia Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus, to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of the fort's commander Cerialis, for 11 September. A scribe wrote most of it, but the closing greeting is in a second hand, probably Severa's own, which makes it probably the earliest known Latin writing by a woman.
• In Tablet 628 a decurion named Masclus writes to the commander Flavius Cerialis that his fellow soldiers have no beer and asks him to order some sent.
• Tablet 164 calls the Britons 'Brittunculi', which the Roman Inscriptions of Britain commentary calls a patronising diminutive, roughly 'wretched little Britons'. Another tablet (346) lists socks, sandals and underpants.

Sources: Roman Inscriptions of Britain: Tab. Vindol. 291, birthday invitation (British Museum 1986,1001.64); Roman Inscriptions of Britain: Tab. Vindol. 628, request for beer; Roman Inscriptions of Britain: Tab. Vindol. 164, 'Brittunculi'; Archaeology magazine: Roman Writing Tablet; Wikipedia: Vindolanda tablets

Hadrian's Wall (AD 122 to c. 128)

Work on the wall began in AD 122, the year Hadrian visited Britain, and Wikipedia says it took about six years to build most of it. It runs about 73 modern miles (80 Roman miles) from Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend on the Tyne. English Heritage counts 80 milecastles, 156 turrets between them and 16 forts. Hadrian's biographer says he built it to separate the Romans from the barbarians. It was a frontier control as much as a barrier.

• Three legions did most of the building: the Second Augusta, the Sixth Victrix and the Twentieth Valeria Victrix, with auxiliary units joining as the job grew.
• The Historia Augusta says Hadrian was the first to build a wall, eighty miles long, to separate the barbarians from the Romans. The editor's note to the Loeb text puts its real length at about 73 and a half English miles.
• The wall has no true start or end: Roman forts and other posts carried on for about 25 miles down the Solway coast, though not as part of the wall.
• The original plan was a wall 10 Roman feet wide, but it was built 8 Roman feet (about 2.4 m) wide or narrower, and at its tallest it stood about 15 feet (4.6 m).

Sources: Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 11 (LacusCurtius, Loeb translation); English Heritage: Hadrian's Wall facts and FAQs; World History Encyclopedia: Hadrian's Wall; Wikipedia: Hadrian's Wall

The Antonine Wall (AD 142 to c. 162)

Under Antoninus Pius, the governor Lollius Urbicus defeated the Britons and built a second wall of turf, according to the Historia Augusta. It ran about 40 Roman miles (about 60 km) from Bo'ness on the Forth to Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde, with a turf rampart, a ditch and a series of forts. By the early 160s the army had pulled back to Hadrian's Wall, and the Antonine Wall was not reoccupied.

• The Bridgeness distance slab records that the Second Legion built 4,652 paces of the wall in honour of Antoninus Pius. It was found in 1868 lying face down, probably close to its original position.
• Its carvings show a horseman riding down four enemies, and a sacrifice of a bull, a sheep and a pig that marked the start of building.
• Some 19 or 20 distance slabs survive, each recording a length built by a legion.
• On 7 July 2008 the wall became part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, Scotland's first Roman one. The Forth and Clyde Canal was later dug across its line.

Sources: Historia Augusta, Life of Antoninus Pius 5 (LacusCurtius, Loeb translation); Roman Inscriptions of Britain: RIB 2139, the Bridgeness distance slab; University of Glasgow: Antonine Wall gains World Heritage Site status (2008); World History Encyclopedia: Antonine Wall

Carausius (c. 286 to 293)

Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, usurper emperor in Britain, Breakaway Britain · Usurper

Carausius, a Menapian from Belgic Gaul, held a naval command to clear Frankish and Saxon raiders from the Channel. He declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul around 286 or 287, and minted his own coins to claim legitimacy. Maximian's attempt to dislodge him around 288 or 289 failed. Eutropius says a peace was eventually arranged with him.

How they came to power: Eutropius says Carausius was of low birth but of good military reputation, and was given command at Bononia (Boulogne). He was suspected of keeping the booty taken from raiders, and when Maximian ordered him put to death he took the purple and seized Britain.

How it ended: After about seven years his supporter Allectus killed him in 293, according to Eutropius, and Allectus ruled Britain for three years before being defeated by Asclepiodotus, a praetorian prefect.

• One of his coins carries the words 'Expectate veni' ('Come, long-awaited one'), which Wikipedia says alludes to Virgil's Aeneid.
• Eutropius says a peace was at last arranged with Carausius because hostilities against a man so skilled in war were found to be futile.
• He held power by controlling the Channel fleet and by minting coins, including silver issues, so that people saw his face as that of a Roman emperor.
• Allectus, whom Wikipedia describes as Carausius's finance minister, is named by Eutropius only as one of his supporters. Both accounts agree that Allectus killed him.

Sources: Eutropius, Breviarium 9.21 and 9.22 (Watson translation, Tertullian Project); World History Encyclopedia: Roman Britain; Wikipedia: Carausius

Constantine Proclaimed at York (25 July 306)

The western emperor Constantius died at Eboracum (York) on 25 July 306, after a campaign against the Picts. The troops there acclaimed his son Constantine as Augustus. Wikipedia reports that the Alamannic king Chrocus, who served Constantius, proclaimed him first, and that Constantius had declared his support for Constantine before he died. Galerius, the senior emperor, refused the full title: Constantine received that of Caesar and Severus that of Augustus. Constantine won Rome at the Milvian Bridge in 312 and was sole emperor by 324.

• Eutropius, writing in the later fourth century, says Constantius died in Britain at York and that Constantine was proclaimed emperor in Britain.
• Eusebius, who wrote a life of Constantine, says Constantius died in his own palace on the imperial couch. The main text does not name York. The translator's note says Constantine's arrival 'seems to imply' York but that other accounts make Boulogne probable.
• World History Encyclopedia says Constantine campaigned in Britain against the Picts with his father and earned the title 'Britannicus Maximus' there for the second time.
• No contemporary histories or biographies of Constantine survive, according to Wikipedia, and the ancient sources were shaped by official propaganda.

Sources: Eutropius, Breviarium 10.1 and 10.2 (Watson translation, Tertullian Project); Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.21 (Bibliothek der Kirchenvater, English translation); World History Encyclopedia: Constantine I; Wikipedia: Constantine the Great

The End of Roman Rule (407 to c. 410)

In 407 the soldiers still in Britain proclaimed Constantine III, who took troops to Gaul. Zosimus says the Britons took up arms against raiders and expelled the Roman magistrates, which Wikipedia dates to 409 or 410. Zosimus also says the emperor Honorius wrote to the cities of Britain urging them to look to their own security. Historians still debate who ended Roman rule, and whether it was a single break or a gradual one.

• Roman coinage stops arriving in large numbers after about 402, and around 401 to 402 Stilicho is said to have stripped Hadrian's Wall of troops.
• Zosimus's passage (6.10) does not mention Rome or the year 410. Wikipedia gives 410 as the date of Honorius's rescript.
• Some historians argue Honorius's rescript was addressed to the Bruttii in southern Italy, not Britain, and that 'Britannia' is a copying error. Critics call that speculative, and Gildas is cited as independent support for the Britain reading.
• Historians disagree on who caused the break. Mommsen held that Rome gave Britain up, while Michael Jones argued that usurpers and poor administration drove the Britons from Rome. E. A. Thompson proposed a peasant revolt, for which critics say there is no direct textual support, though it is not impossible.

Sources: Zosimus, New History 6.10 (Green and Chaplin translation, Livius.org); Zosimus, New History 6.5 (Livius.org); Zosimus, New History 6.2 (Livius.org); World History Encyclopedia: Roman Britain; Wikipedia: End of Roman rule in Britain

The Anglo-Saxon settlement (c. 410 to c. 650)

Roman rule in Britain is traditionally dated to end in 410, leaving the island without imperial protection. Over the next two centuries, settlers from across the North Sea (Bede names Angles, Saxons and Jutes) established kingdoms in the lowlands, while British-speaking kingdoms survived in the west and north. How many people actually moved, and how violent it was, is still argued. The written sources are late and patchy, so historians lean on archaeology and, now, ancient DNA.

• Bede, writing nearly three centuries later, names Vortigern as the king who invited the newcomers and puts the arrival in the reign of the emperor Marcian, about 449 to 455. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says 449, and other early sources give 428 or 441.
• Excavations such as the cemetery at Spong Hill suggest Germanic-style material culture appeared before 450. Some historians argue that many Britons simply adopted the new way of life without Germanic ancestry.
• A 2022 ancient-DNA study (Gretzinger and colleagues, in Nature) found large-scale immigration of men and women into eastern England and estimated that about 25 to 47 percent of the modern English gene pool has a northern continental origin, highest in Sussex, the East Midlands and East Anglia.

Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book I (ch. 15, on the Angles, Saxons and Jutes), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; English Heritage: Introduction to Early Medieval England (c. 410 to 1066); Wikipedia: Anglo-Saxons

St Patrick (5th century (traditional dates; exact years uncertain))

St Patrick, Romano-British missionary to Ireland, Missionary · Britain and Ireland

Patrick was born in Britain near the end of Roman rule. His father was a deacon and local official. Two short Latin works survive in his name: the Confessio and a letter to the soldiers of Coroticus. They are the main evidence for his life, and the later saintly stories were added long after. He is Ireland's chief patron saint, though he was never formally canonised by a pope.

How they rose: He says that at about sixteen he was seized by Irish raiders and spent six years as a herdsman in Ireland before escaping by ship. After study, probably in Gaul, he returned to Ireland as a bishop. The Irish annals date his arrival to 432, but they were compiled much later.

How they died: He died in Ireland; his feast day is 17 March. The annals give death years of 461/2 and 492/3, and most scholars now favour about 493, though some accept about 460.

• In the Confessio he writes that his father was Calpornius and that as a captive he tended sheep every day.
• The famous story that he drove the snakes from Ireland is a later legend; Ireland never had snakes, and the earliest written version of the shamrock story dates only to 1726 (earlier shamrock links appear on coins of the 1680s).
• Church leaders in Britain summoned him to answer accusations, and the Confessio is partly his defence of his mission.

Sources: St Patrick's Confessio, English text (confessio.ie); World History Encyclopedia: Saint Patrick; Wikipedia: Saint Patrick

Augustine's mission to Kent (597 to 604)

Augustine of Canterbury and the Gregorian mission, 597, Missionary · Kent

Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine, prior of a Roman monastery, to preach to the English. He landed on the Isle of Thanet in 597. King Aethelberht of Kent, whose Frankish wife Bertha was already a Christian, allowed the monks to preach and gave them the church of St Martin in Canterbury. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury and founded the abbey that later bore his name.

How they rose: Gregory chose him in 595 to lead the mission. Bede says Gregory sent him with 'several other monks' and that Aethelberht was then the powerful king of Kent.

How they died: He died on what is probably 26 May 604, though some sources say 605, after consecrating Laurence as his successor.

• Bede tells that Gregory once saw fair-haired English boys for sale in Rome and joked that they were 'Angles' but looked like angels. Bede adds puns on the Deiri ('de ira', rescued from wrath) and King Aelle ('Alleluia'). It is Bede's retelling, written long afterwards.
• The date of Aethelberht's baptism is uncertain. A later tradition says Whit Sunday, 2 June 597, but nothing contemporary confirms it. By 601 Gregory was writing to him as a baptised Christian.
• Around 603 Augustine met British bishops south of the Severn. In the account usually told, he failed to rise to greet them, and they refused to accept him as their archbishop.

Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book I (chs. 23 and 25 on the mission and Aethelberht; ch. 26 on St Martin's church), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II (ch. 1: Gregory and the English boys; ch. 2: Augustine and the British bishops), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; English Heritage: Early Medieval, Religion; Wikipedia: Augustine of Canterbury

The Sutton Hoo ship burial (c. 625 (found 1939))

Sutton Hoo, by the River Deben in Suffolk, is an early medieval cemetery. Mound 1 covered a ship about 27 metres long, with a burial chamber holding a helmet, shield, sword, lyre, gold and garnet fittings, and silver plate from the Eastern Roman Empire. A purse held 37 gold Frankish coins, which place the burial in roughly the years 610 to 635, often given as about 625. The leading candidate for the dead man is King Raedwald of East Anglia, but his identity has never been proved.

• Among the silver were two spoons, one inscribed 'Saulos' and the other 'Paulos', the Greek forms of Saul and Paul, the names of the apostle before and after his conversion.
• In the 1960s chemical analysis of the soil showed high phosphate levels where the chamber floor had been, indicating that a body had decomposed there, so the mound was not an empty memorial.
• Bede says Raedwald was baptised in Kent but, swayed by his wife and others, kept in one temple an altar to Christ and a smaller altar for offerings to devils.

Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II (ch. 15, on Raedwald's two altars), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; National Trust: A brief history of Sutton Hoo; Wikipedia: Sutton Hoo

The Synod of Whitby (664)

At Abbess Hild's monastery at Whitby, King Oswiu of Northumbria heard two sides argue over how to calculate Easter: the Irish-influenced practice of Colman, bishop of Lindisfarne, and the Roman practice defended by Wilfrid. Oswiu's own court was split, because his queen, Eanflaed, came from Kent and followed Rome. Bede, our main source, gives the debate at length.

• In one year, the Easter dispute meant the king was feasting while his queen was still keeping Lent and Palm Sunday.
• Oswiu's decision turned on Peter. Colman agreed that Christ gave Peter the keys of heaven, and admitted Columba had no such grant. Oswiu said he would not contradict the door-keeper, lest Peter shut the gates against him.
• Whitby's double monastery of men and women, run by Hild, sent five bishops out into the Church (among them Bosa and John of Beverley) and sheltered the lay brother Caedmon, the first English poet whose name we know.

Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book III (ch. 25, the Synod of Whitby), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; English Heritage: How the Synod of Whitby Settled the Date of Easter; English Heritage: St Hild of Whitby; Wikipedia: Synod of Whitby

Bede (c. 673 to 735)

The Venerable Bede, monk and historian of Jarrow, Monk and historian · Northumbria

Bede spent his life at the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria. He wrote Bible commentaries, saints' lives and works on time and nature. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished around 731, is the main narrative source for England before 731. He also helped popularise dating years from the birth of Christ, the system we still use.

How they rose: He was born on the monastery's lands and, at seven, was handed to Abbot Benedict to be raised. He became a deacon at nineteen and a priest at thirty, and says that study, teaching and writing were his delight.

How they died: He died at Jarrow on 26 May 735, according to a letter from his pupil Cuthbert. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Avalon edition) records the death under 734. His remains were moved to Durham Cathedral about 1020.

• In his last days, according to his pupil Cuthbert's letter, he was dictating an English translation of the Gospel of John, and later accounts say he finished it shortly before he died.
• His chronological work On the Reckoning of Time (completed in the 720s) helped spread Anno Domini dating across medieval Europe; the system itself came from Dionysius Exiguus.
• In 1899 Pope Leo XIII named him a Doctor of the Church; he was the first native of Great Britain to receive the title.

Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book V (ch. 24, Bede's note on himself), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook; World History Encyclopedia: Bede; Wikipedia: Bede

Offa of Mercia (757 to 796)

Offa, King of Mercia, Kingdom of Mercia

Offa ruled Mercia for about forty years. He dominated Kent and Sussex and became overlord of East Anglia. In 787 he secured a new archbishopric at Lichfield, which reduced Canterbury's power, and had his son Ecgfrith consecrated king. He is remembered for Offa's Dyke, which the monk Asser attributed to him, and for his coinage. Modern historians debate whether he aimed at English unity.

How they came to power: He came to power after the killing of King Aethelbald in 757, defeating the rival claimant Beornred; the Chronicle (entry for 755) says he put his rival to flight and took the government.

How it ended: He died on 29 July 796. Chronicle manuscripts disagree on the year (794 or 796) but agree he reigned forty years. He may be buried at Bedford, though that is uncertain. His son Ecgfrith lasted only about 141 days.

• His gold coin copies an Abbasid dinar of 774 (157 AH), down to an Arabic-style inscription, with 'OFFA REX' stamped alongside.
• His wife Cynethryth is the only Anglo-Saxon queen shown on coins.
• The section of Offa's Dyke now thought to be original runs about 64 miles (103 km). The Chronicle puts the beheading of King Aethelberht of East Anglia under 792; other sources say 794.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eighth Century (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); National Trails: Offa's Dyke Path (the dyke built in the 8th century on King Offa's order); Wikipedia: Offa of Mercia

The Lindisfarne raid (8 June 793)

On 8 June 793 pagan raiders from Scandinavia attacked the monastery on Lindisfarne, the holy island off Northumbria. It was not the first Viking landing in Britain (three ships had come to the Wessex coast a few years earlier), but it shocked Europe and is often taken as the start of the Viking Age. The Chronicle called it the 'harrowing inroads of heathen men', and Alcuin, a Northumbrian scholar at Charlemagne's court, wrote that the church of St Cuthbert was 'spattered with the blood of the priests of God'.

• The Chronicle says omens came first: 'immense sheets of light', whirlwinds and 'fiery dragons' in the sky, followed by famine.
• Sicga, a nobleman who had led the murder of King Aelfwald of Northumbria in 788, died by his own hand in February 793 and was buried on Lindisfarne in April, about six weeks before the raid.
• A 9th-century carved stone found on the island, the Domesday Stone, shows seven armed warriors on one face and the Last Judgement on the other, and English Heritage links it to the memory of the raid.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eighth Century, entry for 793 (Avalon Project); Alcuin's letter to King Aethelred of Northumbria, 793 (translated excerpt, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); English Heritage: The Viking Raid on Lindisfarne; Wikipedia: Viking raid on Lindisfarne

Kenneth MacAlpin (c. 843 to 858)

Kenneth MacAlpin (Cinaed mac Ailpin), king of the Picts and of Dal Riata, House of Alpin · Scotland

Kenneth was a Gaelic king of Dal Riata, in western Scotland, who also became king of the Picts. Scottish tradition makes him the founder of the kingdom later called Alba. Sources give few details of how he took Pictland, and Viking raids on the islands and the Pictish lands probably shaped events. Some modern historians think the unification came about half a century after his death, and that the idea of him as the first king was promoted later.

How they came to power: Later king-lists make him king of Dal Riata from about 841; the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba says he ruled Pictland for sixteen years. Modern historians generally date his Pictish kingship from 843, though some sources give 848.

How it ended: He died at Forteviot in Perthshire in 858, on 8 February by the usual reckoning, though some historians prefer 13 February. The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba says he died of a tumour. His brother Donald I succeeded him.

• The Annals of Ulster record his death in a single entry with that of Aethelwulf, king of the Saxons, and call him 'king of the Picts', not king of Scots or Alba.
• The story of 'MacAlpin's treason', in which Picts were killed at a feast at Scone, was written down in the 12th century and is probably not reliable history.
• The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, probably written in Scotland in the early 11th century, begins its list of kings with him.

Sources: The Annals of Ulster, year 858 (CELT, University College Cork); Undiscovered Scotland: Kenneth I (Cinaed mac Ailpin); Wikipedia: Kenneth MacAlpin

The Great Heathen Army and the Danelaw (865 to 878 (the Danelaw lasted into the 10th century))

A coalition of Scandinavian warriors, mostly Danes, invaded England in 865. The Chronicle places the winter quarters in East Anglia in 866. The army took York, defeated East Anglia, and conquered Mercia; its leaders later shared out land in Northumbria. Only Wessex held out. The region where Danish law and custom held became known as the Danelaw, covering Yorkshire, the eastern Midlands and East Anglia.

• East Anglia's King Edmund is said to have supplied the army with horses in exchange for peace. He was killed around 869 to 870 and later honoured as Edmund the Martyr.
• At Repton, where the army wintered in 873 to 874, remains of at least 249 people were found; a 2018 study dated them to the late 9th century.
• Norse words entered English from the Danelaw, among them 'law', 'sky', 'window', 'they', 'them' and 'their', and place names ending in -by and -thorp still map the settlement.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ninth Century (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); English Heritage: Introduction to Early Medieval England (c. 410 to 1066); Wikipedia: Great Heathen Army

Alfred the Great (871 to 899)

Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, House of Wessex

Alfred became king of Wessex in 871 in the middle of the Viking wars. After a surprise attack in early 878 he took refuge on the island of Athelney, then rallied the shire levies and won at Edington. He built a network of fortified towns (burhs) and a navy, collected laws, and had key Latin works translated into English. He is known as 'the Great', an epithet first recorded centuries after his death.

How they came to power: Born in Wantage in 849, the fifth son of King Aethelwulf, he became king when his brothers died in turn. The Chronicle says nine general battles were fought south of the Thames in the year he took over.

How it ended: He died on 26 October 899, aged about 50, and was buried at Winchester.

• The tale of Alfred burning the cakes is a legend: the first written account appears about a century after his death.
• After Edington, the Danish leader Guthrum and 29 of his chief men were baptised about three weeks later, with Alfred as Guthrum's sponsor.
• He learned Latin in his late thirties, and no part of Wessex lay more than about 20 miles from one of his burhs.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ninth Century, entries for 871 and 878 (Avalon Project); The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century, entry for 901 (Alfred's death 'six nights before the mass of All Saints'; Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Alfred 'The Great' (r. 871-899); Wikipedia: Alfred the Great

Athelstan (924 to 939)

Athelstan (Aethelstan), first King of England, House of Wessex

Athelstan inherited Wessex and Mercia from his father Edward the Elder. In 927 he took York from the Vikings and became king of a realm covering the English kingdoms, and rulers across Britain accepted his overlordship. His laws sought one coinage across his lands and ordered trade to be carried on in towns. Many historians call him the first king of England.

How they came to power: He was Edward's heir, and was crowned at Kingston upon Thames on 4 September 925 after months of resistance in Wessex. In 927 he seized York after the death of its Viking king Sihtric, whom he had linked to his family by marrying him to a sister.

How it ended: He died at Gloucester on 27 October 939, without children, and was buried at Malmesbury Abbey. His half-brother Edmund succeeded him.

• The Chronicle's 926 entry names Howel of West Wales, Constantine of the Scots, Owen of Monmouth and Aldred of Bamburgh as rulers who ratified an agreement with him by oaths at 'Emmet' (Eamont).
• He married several half-sisters to rulers in Europe, including Eadgyth, who wed Otto, later Holy Roman Emperor.
• A charter of 934 calls him king of the English, raised by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole kingdom of Britain.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); The Royal Family: Athelstan (r. 924-939); English Heritage: Early Medieval, Power and Politics; Wikipedia: Aethelstan

The Battle of Brunanburh (937)

In 937 King Athelstan defeated an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin, Constantine II of the Scots, and Owain of Strathclyde. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commemorates it in verse. The English invasion of Scotland in 934 had led the enemies to unite. The battle's location is disputed, with over forty candidates proposed; Bromborough on the Wirral is the best known.

• The Chronicle's prose says five kings and seven earls were slain, and its poem says Constantine fled north; later Irish annals add that Constantine lost a son.
• A tradition recorded in the early 12th century says Athelstan prayed at the shrine of St John at Beverley before the battle and afterwards granted the town privileges; it is not established fact.
• Historians disagree about whether it settled anything: Alex Woolf calls it a pyrrhic victory, since Olaf took Northumbria without resistance after Athelstan's death in 939.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century, entry for 937 (Avalon Project); Battlefields Trust: Battle of Brunanburh; Wikipedia: Battle of Brunanburh

Hywel Dda (c. 942 to c. 950 (ruling parts of Wales earlier))

Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), king in Wales, House of Dinefwr · Wales

Hywel ruled most of Wales in the 940s, though Morgannwg and Gwent kept their own rulers. He kept the peace with the English kings by accepting their overlordship. He is credited with having Welsh customary law codified, and the laws that carry his name stayed in use until the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 to 1542. Scholars note that none of the surviving law manuscripts is contemporary with him.

How they came to power: He inherited Seisyllwg (Ceredigion and the Tywi valley) from his father Cadell, gained Dyfed through marriage, and took Gwynedd after Idwal Foel was killed in 942.

How it ended: He died in 949 or 950.

• The Chronicle's 926 entry lists 'Howel, King of West-Wales' first among the kings who ratified an agreement with Athelstan at Emmet.
• The Dictionary of Welsh Biography calls his pilgrimage to Rome in 928 one of the outstanding incidents of his life, and says he is the only Welsh prince known to have minted his own silver pennies.
• The earliest surviving law manuscript dates from the late 12th century. The tradition of a law-making assembly at Whitland, with six representatives from each commote, is told in the prologues; the Dictionary of Welsh Biography dates it to about 945, but some modern accounts doubt it happened as told.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century, entry for 926 (Avalon Project); Dictionary of Welsh Biography: Hywel Dda; Wikipedia: Hywel Dda

Edgar (959 to 975)

Edgar the Peaceful, King of England, House of Wessex

Edgar was a young king who worked with Archbishop Dunstan and other reformers on a major revival of Benedictine monasteries. His coinage was uniform across the kingdom, and his laws covered Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria. No Viking attacks are recorded in his reign. His coronation at Bath in 973, many years after he took the throne, is the first recorded in any detail.

How they came to power: He was king of Mercia and the Danelaw from 957 and became king of all England in 959 when his brother Edwy died, probably avoiding a civil war.

How it ended: He died on 8 July 975 and was buried at Glastonbury Abbey.

• His wife Aelfthryth was crowned queen at the 973 ceremony; the royal family's history page calls her the first consort to be crowned queen of England.
• The famous tale of kings rowing him on the River Dee at Chester in 973 is told by twelfth-century writers; the Chronicle itself says six kings promised to be his allies, and some historians read the meeting as a parley between equals.
• Historians disagree about his legacy: some see the disorder after his death as a reaction to his tight control.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century, entries for 959 and 973 (Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Edgar (r. 959-975); Wikipedia: Edgar, King of England

Aethelred the Unready (978 to 1013 and 1014 to 1016)

Aethelred II, 'the Unready', King of England, House of Wessex

Aethelred came to the throne as a boy after the murder of his half-brother. Viking raids resumed in the 980s and grew heavier, and England began paying large tributes (the Danegeld) after Maldon in 991. He ordered the killing of Danes in England in 1002, and in 1013 Sweyn of Denmark drove him into exile in Normandy. His reign also produced many law codes and notable religious writing.

How they came to power: He succeeded in 978 after King Edward was killed at Corfe; the Chronicle says Edward was slain at eventide at Corfe-gate. The royal family's page says Aethelred's retainers killed him, but no source from the time names the killers. He was consecrated at Kingston in 979.

How it ended: He returned in 1014 when Sweyn died, and died in London on 23 April 1016. He was buried in Old St Paul's, and his tomb was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

• 'Unready' is a pun on his name: Aethelred means 'noble counsel' and 'unraed' means 'ill counsel'. The epithet is first recorded in the early thirteenth century.
• The Chronicle says the king gave an order to slay all the Danes in England, on St Brice's Day, 13 November 1002. Historians think the killings were probably limited in scope.
• Tribute rose from 10,000 pounds in 991 to 16,000 in 994, 24,000 in 1002, 36,000 in 1007 and 48,000 pounds of silver in 1012.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eleventh Century, entry for 1002 (Avalon Project); The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tenth Century, entries for 978 and 979 (Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Ethelred II 'The Unready'; Wikipedia: Aethelred the Unready

Cnut the Great (1016 to 1035)

Cnut the Great, King of England, Denmark and Norway, House of Denmark

Cnut took part in his father Sweyn's 1013 conquest and fought on after Sweyn's death. He divided England into large earldoms and kept English law and government largely unchanged. He also became king of Denmark and of Norway, so England became the centre of a North Sea empire. In 1027 he travelled to Rome for the coronation of the emperor Conrad II, and afterwards styled himself king of England, Denmark, Norway and part of Sweden.

How they came to power: He defeated Edmund Ironside at Assandun in October 1016. The Chronicle says the two became allies and sworn brothers, and Edmund died on St Andrew's day that year. Cnut was crowned in London in 1017 and married Aethelred's widow, Emma of Normandy.

How it ended: The Chronicle says he died at Shaftesbury, on 12 November 1035. He was buried at Winchester. His empire did not outlive him.

• The story of Cnut and the waves is often retold as arrogance, but the version on the royal family's history page has him showing courtiers that he could not stop the tide, rejecting their flattery.
• His 1018 Danegeld, about 72,000 pounds plus 10,500 from London, was the last Danegeld, and he kept 40 ships as a standing force.
• His bones were later scattered during the English Civil War and reburied out of order.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eleventh Century, entries for 1016 and 1035 (Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Canute 'The Great' (r. 1016-1035); English Heritage: Early Medieval, Power and Politics; Wikipedia: Cnut

Macbeth (1040 to 1057)

Macbeth (Mac Bethad mac Findlaich), King of Scotland, House of Moray · Scotland

Macbeth was the son of Findlaech, ruler of Moray, and became king of Scotland in 1040 after Duncan I was killed in a campaign into Moray, near Elgin. His seventeen-year reign was largely peaceful. In 1054 Siward, earl of Northumbria, invaded Scotland, and the Annals of Ulster record heavy losses on both sides. Macbeth was succeeded by his stepson Lulach.

How they came to power: Duncan led an expedition into Moray and was killed at Pitgaveny near Elgin, probably on 14 August 1040. Some sources make Macbeth a cousin of Duncan through Malcolm II's family.

How it ended: The Annals of Ulster record him as killed in battle under 1058; most accounts say he died at Lumphanan in 1057, and the Prophecy of Berchan has him dying at Scone days later. He was buried on Iona, according to tradition.

• Marianus Scotus reports that around 1050 Macbeth made a pilgrimage to Rome and gave money to the poor.
• The Annals of Ulster record that in 1054 a battle between the men of Scotland and the English left 3,000 Scots and 1,500 English dead.
• Shakespeare's play drew mainly on Holinshed's Chronicles of 1577 and is not accurate history; the Prophecy of Berchan calls the real king 'the generous king of Fortriu'.

Sources: The Annals of Ulster, year 1054 (CELT, University College Cork); The Annals of Ulster, year 1058 (CELT, University College Cork); Undiscovered Scotland: Macbeth, King of Alba; Wikipedia: Macbeth, King of Scotland

Edward the Confessor (1042 to 1066)

Edward the Confessor, King of England, House of Wessex

Edward was the son of Aethelred and Emma of Normandy and spent about twenty-five years in exile, mostly in Normandy. He became king in 1042 and married Edith, daughter of the powerful Earl Godwin, in 1045. A quarrel with the Godwin family in 1051 to 1052 ended with their return. He founded Westminster Abbey. His marriage produced no children, and historians still debate whether he promised the throne to William of Normandy.

How they came to power: He succeeded his half-brother Harthacnut in 1042; the Chronicle says Harthacnut died at Lambeth as he stood drinking.

How it ended: He died on 5 January 1066 and, in the Chronicle's words, was buried on twelfth-day (6 January) in the same minster. Harold Godwinson was crowned the same day.

• Westminster Abbey was consecrated on 28 December 1065, but Edward was too ill to attend.
• Pope Alexander III canonised him on 7 February 1161.
• In the crisis of 1051, the Norman churchman Robert of Jumieges was briefly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury before the Godwins returned.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eleventh Century, entries for 1042 and 1065 (Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Edward III 'The Confessor' (r. 1042-1066); Wikipedia: Edward the Confessor

Harold II (January to October 1066)

Harold Godwinson, Harold II, last Anglo-Saxon king of England, House of Godwin

Harold was the son of Earl Godwin and became earl of East Anglia around 1045 and of Wessex in 1053. He led campaigns against Gruffydd ap Llywelyn of Wales in 1062 to 1063. His brother-in-law Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066, and Harold was crowned the next day. He faced rival claims from Harald Hardrada of Norway and William of Normandy.

How they came to power: After Edward's death on 5 January 1066, Harold was confirmed as king by the witan and crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 January. The Chronicle says he held the kingdom forty weeks and one day.

How it ended: He defeated Hardrada at Stamford Bridge on 25 September, then was killed at Hastings on 14 October 1066 by William of Normandy's army; the fight itself belongs to the next era.

• Norman sources say Harold swore an oath supporting William's claim around 1064, but historians dispute whether it happened.
• Whether he died from an arrow to the eye is debated: sources conflict, and the arrow in the Bayeux Tapestry may be a later restoration.
• His burial place is disputed, with legends favouring Waltham Abbey and another proposal being Bosham church.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eleventh Century, entries for 1065 and 1066 (Avalon Project); The Royal Family: Harold II (r. Jan - Oct 1066); Wikipedia: Harold Godwinson

The Battle of Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066)

King Harald Hardrada of Norway and Harold's exiled brother Tostig landed in the north, and on 20 September defeated a northern English army at Fulford and took York's surrender. King Harold marched about 185 miles from London in four days and caught the invaders at Stamford Bridge. Hardrada and Tostig were both killed. The battle is traditionally said to mark the end of the Viking Age, though Scandinavian campaigns in Britain and Ireland went on for decades.

• The Chronicle names the dead as Harald the Fair-hair'd, King of Norway, and Earl Tosty. William landed at Pevensey three days later.
• The Chronicle reports an invasion fleet of 300 ships, and Snorri Sturluson over 200 warships, but only 24 ships were needed to carry the survivors home.
• Modern estimates for the Norwegian army run from about 7,000 to 11,000 men, with only about 3,000 engaged late in the fight.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eleventh Century, entry for 1066 (Avalon Project); English Heritage: Introduction to Early Medieval England (c. 410 to 1066); Wikipedia: Battle of Stamford Bridge

The Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066)

On 14 October 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, met King Harold Godwinson near Hastings, at the place now called Battle. The fight lasted from about nine in the morning until dusk. The English army was almost entirely infantry, fighting on foot in a shield wall. The Normans had cavalry, archers and infantry. Harold died late in the day, and the road to Westminster lay open.

• William of Malmesbury, writing decades later, says William had three horses killed under him but fought on until night brought the victory.
• The Bayeux Tapestry shows a figure with an arrow in his eye beside the words 'Here King Harold has been killed', but it is unclear which figure is meant to be Harold. Historians disagree about how he really died.
• Nobody knows the true size of either army. Estimates vary widely, from roughly 5,000 to 13,000 men on each side, and the old Norman claim of 776 ships is thought exaggerated.

Sources: William of Malmesbury: The Battle of Hastings, 1066 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: Battle of Hastings; Wikipedia: Battle of Hastings

William I (1066 to 1087)

William I 'the Conqueror', King of England, Norman dynasty

William was born around 1027, the illegitimate son of Robert I of Normandy, and became duke as a child. After Hastings he took years to secure England, building castles and giving land to his Norman followers. He had a vast royal forest set aside and laid down severe forest laws. In 1085 to 1086 he ordered the survey that became Domesday Book. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a mixed verdict: stern and greedy, but also wise and good at keeping order.

How they came to power: He claimed Edward the Confessor had promised him the crown. Harold Godwinson was crowned instead in January 1066, and William defeated and killed him at Hastings on 14 October. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

How it ended: He died on 9 September 1087 at Rouen, after being injured during his campaign against Mantes in northern France, and was buried at Saint-Etienne in Caen, the abbey he had founded. England passed to his son William II and Normandy to his eldest son Robert.

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that under his forest laws anyone who killed a hart or a hind was to be blinded.
• The same chronicler says that if William had lived two years longer he would have conquered Ireland without a battle.
• He was born around 1027 in Falaise and is sometimes called 'the Bastard' because he was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert I.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's Assessment of William I (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: William the Conqueror; Wikipedia: William I of England

The Domesday Book (1085 to 1086)

At Christmas 1085 William I held court at Gloucester and decided to find out who held what across his kingdom. Commissioners went through the shires in 1086, and the results were written up in Latin. Great Domesday covers most of England. Little Domesday, a more detailed separate volume, covers Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. The survey omits London, Winchester, Northumberland, Durham and much of the north-west.

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the survey was so thorough that not one ox, cow or pig escaped notice.
• The name comes from the 'day of judgement': Richard FitzNeal wrote around 1179 that its decisions, like the Last Judgement, could not be appealed.
• It also records who held each manor as of 5 January 1066, the day before Harold's coronation, which makes it a snapshot of the old English order.

Sources: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: The Domesday Book, 1086 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The National Archives: Domesday Book research guide; World History Encyclopedia: Domesday Book

William II (1087 to 1100)

William II 'Rufus', King of England, Norman dynasty

William Rufus was the Conqueror's son, nicknamed for his red hair and ruddy complexion. He put down a revolt led by his uncle Odo of Bayeux in 1088. In 1091 he invaded Normandy and forced his brother Robert to a settlement, and in 1096 Robert pledged the duchy to him to raise money for the First Crusade. Church writers disliked him: he kept bishoprics and abbacies vacant to collect their income and clashed with Archbishop Anselm. In 1097 he began Westminster Hall.

How they came to power: As the Conqueror's son, he took England in 1087 while his older brother Robert Curthose received Normandy.

How it ended: He died on 2 August 1100 in the New Forest, struck by an arrow while hunting. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says he was shot by one of his own men. Later writers named Walter Tirel, who fled at once. His brother Henry was in the party, rode to seize the treasury at Winchester and was crowned within days.

• Historians still disagree on whether his death was an accident or a murder. Some scholars find the murder theory credible, while others note that hunting accidents were common and the evidence is thin.
• Westminster Hall, begun in 1097, was among the largest halls in Europe when it was built.
• Archbishop Anselm went into exile in 1097, and William kept the archbishopric's revenues until his death.

Sources: Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle attributed to Peter of Blois: William Rufus and Henry I (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: William II of England; Wikipedia: William II of England

Henry I (1100 to 1135)

Henry I 'Beauclerc', King of England, Norman dynasty

Henry was the Conqueror's youngest son and received no great inheritance. As king he issued a coronation charter promising to end his brother's abuses, defeated his brother Robert at Tinchebrai in 1106 and held Normandy for the rest of his reign. He built up the Exchequer and royal judges who travelled the country. He is remembered, too, for how many children he acknowledged outside marriage: at least nine illegitimate sons and thirteen daughters.

How they came to power: William Rufus died in the New Forest on 2 August 1100 with Henry in the hunting party. Henry raced to Winchester, secured the treasury and was crowned on 5 August. His Charter of Liberties promised to restore the law of Edward the Confessor and end unjust payments.

How it ended: He died on 1 December 1135 at Saint-Denis-en-Lyons in Normandy after a week of illness and was buried at Reading Abbey. The Royal Family site repeats the tradition that he fell ill from eating too many lampreys, but it says only 'allegedly'. He had made the barons swear in 1127 to accept his daughter Matilda, and many broke the oath.

• In 1120 the White Ship sank, drowning his only legitimate son and heir, William Adelin, and many nobles, and leaving the succession uncertain.
• His 1100 charter is often described as a model for Magna Carta, and the Fordham edition says it closely resembles it.
• He kept his captured brother Robert Curthose a prisoner for the rest of Robert's life.

Sources: Charter of Liberties of Henry I, 1100 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Henry I; Wikipedia: Henry I of England

Stephen (1135 to 1154)

Stephen of Blois, King of England, House of Blois

Stephen, a grandson of the Conqueror, was crowned on 22 December 1135, despite his earlier oath to support Matilda. Her invasion in 1139 began a civil war that later historians named the Anarchy. Stephen was captured at Lincoln on 2 February 1141 and exchanged for her half-brother Robert of Gloucester that November. Fighting was mostly sieges and raids, and powerful barons gained ground. Henry of Huntingdon describes famine, plunder, and castle-building lords.

How they came to power: Henry I died without a surviving legitimate son. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 22 December 1135 with the support of his brother Henry of Blois, who argued the oath to Matilda could be set aside for the kingdom's stability.

How it ended: In 1153 Stephen and Matilda's son Henry agreed a settlement (called the Treaty of Winchester or of Wallingford) by which Henry would succeed him. Stephen's own son Eustace died that year. Stephen died at Dover on 25 October 1154 and was buried at Faversham Abbey.

• In 1120 Stephen got off the White Ship just before it sank, the disaster that created the succession crisis he later exploited.
• The Peterborough continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says men claimed Christ and his saints slept during these years, a picture of the Anarchy's horror. Modern historians question how far the chaos has been exaggerated and how accurate the name 'Anarchy' is.
• Stephen's attempt to have his son Eustace crowned during his own lifetime was refused by Pope Eugene III.

Sources: Henry of Huntingdon: Chronicle, the reign of Stephen (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); Historic UK: King Stephen and The Anarchy; Wikipedia: Stephen, King of England

Henry II (1154 to 1189)

Henry II 'Curtmantle', King of England, Plantagenet (Angevin) dynasty

Henry II was born in 1133 at Le Mans, the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and Empress Matilda, and married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. He used juries and travelling judges, laying foundations of English common law. The Assize of Clarendon (1166) strengthened the system. His quarrel with Thomas Becket ended in Becket's murder in 1170 and damaged his name. His sons rebelled in 1173 and 1174, and again in 1188 and 1189.

How they came to power: The 1153 Treaty of Wallingford named him Stephen's heir. When Stephen died in 1154, Henry was crowned king of England.

How it ended: He died at Chinon in 1189 while at war with his son Richard, who had allied with Philip II of France. Roger of Hoveden says Henry asked for the list of barons who had deserted him and found his youngest son John at the top. He was buried at Fontevraud.

• Peter of Blois, who knew him, wrote in 1177 that Henry spent most of the day on his feet and sat only to ride or eat.
• The same letter says his hair was red, though age and grey had altered its colour, and that he was in no danger of going bald, though there was a tonsure of hair on top.
• Hoveden reports that, after his death, he was plundered of his riches and all deserted him, and that as Richard approached the body, blood was said to flow from its nostrils.

Sources: Peter of Blois: Description of Henry II, 1177 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); Roger of Hoveden: The Last Days and Death of Henry II, 1189 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Henry II; World History Encyclopedia: Henry II of England

The Murder of Thomas Becket (29 December 1170)

Thomas Becket was Henry II's chancellor from 1155 and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. He then defended the Church's rights against the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), fled to France after a council at Northampton, and spent about six years in exile. He returned in December 1170. Four knights loyal to Henry killed him in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December. Pope Alexander III made him a saint in 1173, and Henry did public penance at his tomb in 1174.

• The eyewitness Edward Grim was holding Becket when the first blow fell, and the same stroke cut his arm.
• The famous line 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' is not in the contemporary accounts and is a later retelling. Simon Schama prefers Edward Grim's version, and the Wikipedia article says the familiar wording was invented in 1740.
• Henry VIII destroyed Becket's shrine at Canterbury in 1538. It had been one of Europe's great pilgrimage sites.

Sources: Edward Grim: Account of the Murder of Thomas Becket, 1170 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: Thomas Becket; Wikipedia: Thomas Becket

Richard I (1189 to 1199)

Richard I 'the Lionheart', King of England, Plantagenet (Angevin) dynasty

Richard was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He took the cross and left in 1190 on the Third Crusade, winning at Arsuf and Jaffa against Saladin but not recovering Jerusalem. On the way home he was captured and handed to Emperor Henry VI. A ransom of 150,000 marks freed him in 1194. He spent the rest of his reign fighting Philip II of France and built Château Gaillard.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father in 1189 after fighting him alongside Philip II of France. Roger of Hoveden's account of his coronation at Westminster says Archbishop Baldwin anointed him and that citizens of London served in the cellars and of Winchester in the kitchen.

How it ended: He was struck by a crossbow bolt while besieging the castle of Châlus-Chabrol and died of the gangrenous wound on 6 April 1199. His body is at Fontevraud and his heart at Rouen Cathedral.

• He may have spent as little as six months of his ten-year reign in England.
• Historians once criticised him for neglecting England, but modern scholars call that view anachronistic, because Normandy and Anjou were the heart of his realm.
• John plotted against him during the captivity, and Richard was recrowned at Winchester in 1194 after his release.

Sources: Roger of Hoveden: The Order of Coronation of Richard I, 1189 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Richard I; Wikipedia: Richard I of England

John (1199 to 1216)

John 'Lackland', King of England, Plantagenet (Angevin) dynasty

John was the youngest son of Henry II and was nicknamed Lackland because he was not expected to inherit land. He lost Normandy and most of the Angevin lands in 1204. A dispute with Pope Innocent III over the Archbishop of Canterbury brought an interdict in 1208 and his excommunication in 1209. John raised money with scutage, reliefs and the sale of offices. After defeat at Bouvines in 1214, rebel barons forced him to seal Magna Carta in 1215. Modern historians see him as a hard-working administrator and capable general, but also as cruel and spiteful.

How they came to power: He succeeded Richard I in 1199 and was crowned at Westminster on 27 May.

How it ended: Civil war followed Magna Carta, and the barons invited Prince Louis of France to take the throne. John died of dysentery at Newark Castle in the night of 18 to 19 October 1216, aged 49, and was buried at Worcester Cathedral.

• In 1213 John surrendered England and Ireland to the pope and agreed to hold them as a vassal, paying 1,000 marks a year.
• His loss of land in France earned him the nickname 'Softsword'.
• The World History Encyclopedia says there is little historical evidence for Robin Hood, and that John's role in the legend is probably a later addition.

Sources: King John: Concession of England to the Pope, 1213 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: King John of England; Wikipedia: John, King of England

Magna Carta (15 June 1215)

On 15 June 1215 King John sealed a charter at Runnymede, near Windsor, drawn up with the help of Archbishop Stephen Langton. It was a settlement with the barons, not a plan for democracy. Clause 39 says no freeman is to be imprisoned or destroyed except by lawful judgement, and clause 40 says right and justice are not to be sold, refused or delayed. Pope Innocent III annulled it, and war followed. The charter was reissued in 1216, 1217 and 1225, and Edward I confirmed it in 1297.

• Four copies of the 1215 charter survive: two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Castle and one at Salisbury Cathedral.
• Only a few clauses of the 1297 version, three by the usual count, are still in force in England and Wales today, and none of the 1215 text is itself in force.
• Freemen were less than a quarter of the population, so most people had no direct protection, and many historians now see the 'charter of liberty for all' as a later reading.

Sources: Magna Carta, 1215 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); World History Encyclopedia: Magna Carta; Wikipedia: Magna Carta

Henry III (1216 to 1272)

Henry III, King of England, Plantagenet (Angevin) dynasty

Henry III was nine when he became king and reigned for 56 years, the longest of any medieval English monarch. He adopted Edward the Confessor as his patron and rebuilt Westminster Abbey. His reliance on relatives from Poitou and costly ventures, including a plan to win Sicily for his son, angered the barons. In 1258 they forced the Provisions of Oxford on him. Simon de Montfort led the opposition in the Second Barons' War.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father John in October 1216 in the middle of the First Barons' War, and was crowned at Gloucester. William Marshal led the regency.

How it ended: Montfort captured Henry at Lewes in 1264, but his son Edward defeated and killed Montfort at Evesham in 1265. Henry died in 1272 and was buried in Westminster Abbey before the high altar. Miracles were reported at his tomb, but he was never made a saint.

• The Tower of London kept a royal menagerie in his reign, and it included an elephant.
• Matthew of Westminster, who disliked the rebellion, says Montfort's head, hands and feet were cut off after Evesham.
• In 1253 he introduced the Statute of Jewry, and he taxed the Jewish community heavily.

Sources: Matthew of Westminster: Simon de Montfort's Rebellion, 1265 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Henry III; Wikipedia: Henry III of England

Simon de Montfort's Parliament (January to March 1265)

Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, led the barons who had forced the Provisions of Oxford on Henry III. In January 1265 he summoned a parliament at Westminster to win support. It met from 20 January into mid-March. Two knights came from each county, and two burgesses from major towns including York, Lincoln, Sandwich and the Cinque Ports. About 23 nobles and 120 churchmen were also summoned. Montfort was killed at Evesham later that year.

• The exact number of burgesses is unknown, so 'two from every borough' overstates the evidence.
• Montfort's son Henry also died at Evesham, along with Hugh Despenser and several other barons, according to Matthew of Westminster.
• Matthew of Westminster says Prince Edward's side lost only one knight and two esquires at Evesham.

Sources: Matthew of Westminster: Simon de Montfort's Rebellion, 1265 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); History Hit: How Simon de Montfort and Rebellious Barons Led to the Birth of English Democracy; Wikipedia: Simon de Montfort's Parliament

Edward I (1272 to 1307)

Edward I 'Longshanks', King of England, Plantagenet dynasty

Edward I, nicknamed Longshanks for his height of about 6 ft 2 in, went on crusade in 1270 and was crowned in 1274. He conquered Wales in 1277 and 1282 to 1283 and built great stone castles, including Caernarfon and Conwy. He expelled Jewish people from England in 1290. After Eleanor of Castile died that year, he set up twelve memorial crosses. His wars in Scotland, from 1296, earned him the name Hammer of the Scots. His 1295 summons brought knights and townsmen to Parliament.

How they came to power: He was on crusade when Henry III died in 1272 and returned to England in 1274 for his coronation.

How it ended: He died on 7 July 1307 at Burgh by Sands near Carlisle, aged 68, on his way to another Scottish campaign. He was buried at Westminster Abbey. He left his son Edward II a war with Scotland and heavy debts.

• His 1295 writ for Parliament carried the wording that what affects all should be approved by all.
• In 1296 he took the Stone of Scone to Westminster and had a chair made to hold it.
• The Eleanor crosses were set up, one at each stop of her funeral procession.

Sources: Three Summonses to the Parliament of 1295 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: Edward I of England; Wikipedia: Edward I of England

Edward I's Conquest of Wales (1277 to 1284)

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd, took the title Prince of Wales in 1258 and was recognised by Henry III in the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery. When he refused to pay homage to Edward I, Edward invaded in 1277, and the Treaty of Aberconwy left Llywelyn only western Gwynedd. In 1282 Llywelyn's brother Dafydd rebelled and Llywelyn joined him. Llywelyn was killed near Builth on 11 December 1282, traditionally at Cilmeri, and Dafydd was captured and executed in 1283. The Statute of Rhuddlan (1284) set up English-style counties.

• Accounts differ on how Llywelyn died. By some accounts he was separated from his army and killed in a trap, perhaps after being lured away from it. The Welsh chronicle Brut y Tywysogion says only that he and his foremost men were slain.
• Edward built castles at Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech. The conquest cost around £173,000, which increased the need for taxes and so the role of Parliament.
• In 1301 Edward gave the title Prince of Wales to his son, the future Edward II, and it became the customary title of the English heir.

Sources: The Statutes of Wales, ed. Ivor Bowen (1908): introduction quoting and summarising the Statute of Rhuddlan, 1284 (Internet Archive); Coflein (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales): Irfon Bridge, Battle of Orewin Bridge, with Brut y Tywysogion text; Wikipedia: Edwardian conquest of Wales

William Wallace (1297 to 1305)

Sir William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, Scottish resistance

Little is firmly known about Wallace's early life. In 1297 he killed the English sheriff of Lanark and joined the uprising against Edward I. With Andrew Moray he won the Battle of Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297, when the Scots attacked as half the English army was crossing a narrow wooden bridge over the Forth. He became Guardian of Scotland, then resigned after defeat at Falkirk on 22 July 1298.

How they rose: He rose to prominence as a leader of the 1297 revolt. At Stirling Bridge the earl of Surrey and Hugh de Cressingham led the English, and Cressingham was killed.

How they died: A Scottish knight loyal to Edward I betrayed him near Glasgow in August 1305. He was tried in London and executed at Smithfield on 23 August 1305. The hostile chronicle Flores Historiarum says his head was shown on London Bridge and his quarters sent to four parts of Scotland.

• Andrew Moray was mortally wounded at Stirling Bridge and died within weeks, so the victory was a joint one.
• The Lanercost Chronicle says a strip of Cressingham's skin was taken to make a sword belt.
• The 1995 film Braveheart leaves the bridge out of the Stirling Bridge battle altogether.

Sources: Flores Historiarum: On William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, c. 1307 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: William Wallace; Wikipedia: Battle of Stirling Bridge

Robert the Bruce (1306 to 1329)

Robert I, King of Scots, House of Bruce

Robert Bruce was born in 1274 and became Earl of Carrick in 1292. He changed sides several times in the early wars, siding with England in 1296 and again in 1302. After killing John Comyn in Dumfries, he was crowned at Scone in March 1306, then beaten at Methven and forced into hiding. By 1309 he had beaten the Comyns and MacDougalls and held a parliament at St Andrews. His victory at Bannockburn in 1314 largely secured his throne.

How they came to power: In early 1306 Bruce struck down John Comyn, a rival claimant, in the Greyfriars church at Dumfries. Flores Historiarum, a hostile English chronicle, says he killed him at the altar. Bruce was excommunicated and crowned king of Scots at Scone on 25 March 1306.

How it ended: He died at Cardross on 7 June 1329 and was succeeded by his son David II. His body is buried at Dunfermline Abbey, his heart at Melrose Abbey and his embalmed viscera at Dumbarton.

• England recognised Scottish independence and Bruce as king only in 1328, in the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.
• The excommunication that followed the Dumfries killing was lifted only in October 1328.
• Flores Historiarum, a hostile source, says Bruce won noble support by claiming hereditary right to the kingdom.

Sources: Flores Historiarum: On William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, c. 1307 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: Robert the Bruce; Wikipedia: Robert the Bruce

Edward II (1307 to 1327)

Edward II, King of England, Plantagenet dynasty

Edward II favoured a small circle, chiefly Piers Gaveston, whom the barons seized and executed in 1312. His defeat by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314 was followed by famine and rising criticism. Hugh Despenser the Younger became his close adviser. Opposition barons exiled the Despensers in 1321, and Edward brought them back, then defeated the barons and executed the earl of Lancaster in 1322. His rule fell apart in 1326.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father Edward I in July 1307. In 1301 he had been given the title Prince of Wales.

How it ended: His wife Isabella invaded England in 1326 with Roger Mortimer. Edward was captured in Wales that November and forced to give up the throne in January 1327. He died at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327, probably murdered on the new regime's orders.

• The Vita Edwardi Secundi was written by a contemporary and says the king was refused entry to Stirling Castle after Bannockburn.
• Historians say the exact nature of his relationship with Gaveston is uncertain: friends, lovers or sworn brothers.
• His son Edward III was only 14 when crowned in 1327.

Sources: The Battle of Bannockburn, 1314, according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi (De Re Militari); The Royal Family: Edward II; Wikipedia: Edward II of England

The Battle of Bannockburn (23 to 24 June 1314)

In June 1314 Edward II marched north to relieve Stirling Castle, besieged by the Scots. On the first day Robert the Bruce killed the English knight Henry de Bohun in single combat. On the second day the Scots advanced in dense pike formations called schiltrons, which Bruce used to attack, something earlier Scottish commanders had not done. The English were driven back, many were killed or captured, and Edward fled. The Vita Edwardi Secundi blames English pride.

• Numbers are uncertain. The Scots were probably about 7,000 and the English army was much larger, though estimates vary widely; the contemporary Vita claims 40,000 Scots.
• Edward was refused entry to Stirling Castle after the rout, and escaped by sea from Dunbar to Berwick.
• The earl of Gloucester charged too early, partly through a quarrel over precedence with the earl of Hereford, according to the Vita.

Sources: The Battle of Bannockburn, 1314, according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi (De Re Militari); World History Encyclopedia: Robert the Bruce; Wikipedia: Battle of Bannockburn

The Declaration of Arbroath (6 April 1320)

The Declaration of Arbroath is a Latin letter of 6 April 1320 from the barons and community of Scotland to Pope John XXII. It asks him to recognise Scottish independence and Robert the Bruce as king, after Bruce's excommunication. Its best-known passage says that while a hundred of them remain alive they will not submit to English domination. It also says they would replace a king who handed Scotland to England.

• The surviving file copy in the National Records of Scotland has 19 seals out of a possible 50 or so.
• It is generally believed that Bernard of Kilwinning, the chancellor and abbot of Arbroath, wrote it.
• Historians disagree on its meaning. Some read it as an early contract theory of kingship, others as propaganda for Bruce's cause. Recent scholarship suggests it drew on the 1317 Irish Remonstrance.

Sources: Translation: Declaration of Arbroath (Wikisource); National Records of Scotland: The Declaration of Arbroath; Wikipedia: Declaration of Arbroath

Edward III (1327 to 1377)

Edward III, King of England, Plantagenet dynasty

Edward III was crowned at 14 and took personal control on 19 October 1330, when he seized Roger Mortimer at Nottingham Castle. In 1337 he created the Duchy of Cornwall to give the heir an income of his own, and the same year claimed the French throne, helping start the Hundred Years' War. He won at Crécy on 26 August 1346. The Order of the Garter was founded probably in 1348. By 1360 he controlled over a quarter of France, but most gains were lost by 1375.

How they came to power: His father was forced to abdicate in January 1327, and the 14-year-old Edward was proclaimed on 25 January and crowned on 1 February.

How it ended: He died of a stroke on 21 June 1377 at Sheen Palace, aged 64, and was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson Richard II.

• Froissart says that at Crécy Edward would not send help to his son, the Black Prince, and told them to let him win his spurs that day.
• Froissart's blind king of Bohemia asked to be led into the fight; his knights tied their bridle reins together, and Froissart says they were found dead the next day, still tied.
• The Black Death killed a third or more of England's people during his reign.

Sources: Froissart: Battles of Crécy and Poitiers (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Edward III; Wikipedia: Edward III of England

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 to 1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer, poet and civil servant, Poet · London

Chaucer was born in London in the early 1340s into a family of vintners. He served at court, was captured in France in 1360, worked as a diplomat, and was controller of customs for the port of London for about twelve years from 1374. His works include The Book of the Duchess, Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. He helped establish Middle English as a literary language when French and Latin dominated.

How they rose: He entered a noble household as a page, which brought him into the court circle that included John of Gaunt. Edward III ransomed him after his capture in 1360.

How they died: He died in October 1400, traditionally on 25 October, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first writer buried in what became Poets' Corner.

• Chaucer planned around 120 Canterbury tales and finished 24, so the work is unfinished.
• In 1379 Thomas Staundon sued him over his employment of Cecily Chaumpaigne, alleging a breach of the Statute of Labourers, but the case was never pursued.
• About two thousand English words are first recorded in his manuscripts.

Sources: Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems (Project Gutenberg); World History Encyclopedia: Geoffrey Chaucer; Wikipedia: Geoffrey Chaucer

The Black Death (1348 to 1349)

The plague reached England in June 1348, through a seaman arriving at Weymouth from Gascony. It reached London by autumn and the whole country by summer 1349, and it faded by December 1349. A figure of 40 to 60 percent of the population is widely accepted, though estimates range from about 20 to over 62 percent. Labour became scarce and wages rose. Parliament answered with the Ordinance of Labourers (1349) and the Statute of Labourers (1351), which tried to freeze wages.

• The 1351 statute itself complains that servants were idle and unwilling to serve after the pestilence without excessive wages.
• Serfdom was virtually extinct in England by about 1400, and the tensions contributed to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
• The plague halted English campaigns in the Hundred Years' War, and no major campaign was launched in France until 1355.

Sources: The Statute of Labourers, 1351 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); World History Encyclopedia: Black Death; Wikipedia: Black Death in England

Richard II (1377 to 1399)

Richard II, King of England, Plantagenet dynasty

Richard II was born in Bordeaux in 1367, the son of the Black Prince, and became king at ten. At 14 he met the Peasants' Revolt rebels at Mile End and Smithfield. In 1387 a group of nobles called the Lords Appellant seized power and had his allies condemned in 1388. He rebuilt Westminster Hall with the hammer-beam roof of Hugh Herland, and the Wilton Diptych shows him venerating the Virgin.

How they came to power: His grandfather Edward III died in June 1377 and Richard succeeded at ten.

How it ended: While Richard was in Ireland in 1399 Henry Bolingbroke landed, captured him and forced him to give up the crown at the end of September. Richard died at Pontefract Castle around 14 February 1400, probably starved, though the manner is uncertain. Henry V later had him reburied at Westminster Abbey.

• He succeeded his grandfather at ten, and the early years of his reign were governed by regency councils shaped by his uncles John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock.
• The cantilevered hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall, ordered in his reign, was technically innovative and is regarded as a masterpiece of medieval timber building.
• He died around 14 February 1400 at Pontefract, and the Royal Family site says only that it was either murder or self-starvation.

Sources: Adam of Usk: English battles and campaigns (De Re Militari); The Royal Family: Richard II; Wikipedia: Richard II of England

The Peasants' Revolt (May to July 1381)

Parliament passed a third poll tax in November 1380 at 12 pence for everyone over 15. Trouble began in Essex on 30 May 1381, and rebels led by Wat Tyler reached Blackheath on 12 June. They entered London on 13 June and destroyed John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace. At Mile End on 14 June the 14-year-old Richard II agreed to most demands, while others killed Archbishop Sudbury in the Tower. At Smithfield on 15 June Tyler was stabbed by Mayor William Walworth, and the crowd dispersed.

• Richard revoked the charters of freedom he had granted on 2 July. Many rebel leaders were executed; estimates run from about 150 hanged to at least 1,500 killed or executed by November.
• A letter attributed to the priest John Ball, preserved in the British Library, uses coded names such as Johan Nameless and Peres Ploughman.
• The World History Encyclopedia notes that the rebels did not seek to depose Richard II. Their quarrel was with his advisers and officials.

Sources: Letter to the Community in Essex, John Ball, 1381 (Wikisource); World History Encyclopedia: Peasants' Revolt; Wikipedia: Peasants' Revolt

Henry IV (1399 to 1413)

Henry IV, King of England, House of Lancaster

Henry Bolingbroke, born at Bolingbroke Castle, was the son of John of Gaunt and a grandson of Edward III. He was exiled by Richard II, returned in 1399 and became the first Lancastrian king, crowned on 13 October 1399. Not everyone accepted his claim, and Charles VI of France never did. He faced the Epiphany Rising of 1400, the revolt of Owain Glyndwr from 1400 and the Percy rebellions. In 1403 he beat the Percys at Shrewsbury, where Hotspur died. In 1401 Parliament passed De heretico comburendo against the Lollards.

How they came to power: While Richard II was in Ireland in 1399 Henry returned, captured him and had Parliament accept his claim. Adam of Usk, who was there, is a key eyewitness.

How it ended: He suffered from a skin disease and recurring severe attacks whose cause historians debate. He died at Westminster in March 1413 in the Jerusalem Chamber and was buried at Canterbury Cathedral.

• Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 plays on a prophecy that he would die in Jerusalem, and he died in a room called the Jerusalem Chamber.
• Adam of Usk recorded that the captive Earl of Douglas, who had killed two men dressed as the king at Shrewsbury, was dismayed to learn that a third Henry still lived and had won the day.
• Charles VI of France never accepted him as king.

Sources: Adam of Usk: English battles and campaigns (De Re Militari); The Royal Family: Henry IV; Wikipedia: Henry IV of England

Owain Glyndwr (1400 to c. 1415)

Owain Glyndwr, Prince of Wales, Welsh revolt

Owain Glyndwr was a Welsh nobleman who was proclaimed Prince of Wales at Glyndyfrdwy on 16 September 1400. The Welsh annals record victories at Hyddgant and Pilleth, where Edmund Mortimer was captured in 1402. By 1404 he held parliaments at Machynlleth and Harlech and controlled most of Wales. In 1406 his Pennal Letter sought French support and proposed two universities and an independent Welsh church. The English retook most of the country, and Aberystwyth and Harlech fell by 1409.

How they rose: He rose to prominence as a leader of the revolt against Henry IV. The annals say that in 1400 the king's lords tried to seize him and he escaped into the woods.

How they died: He was never captured. The annals say he vanished on St Matthew's Day in 1415 and that 'seers maintain' he did not die. Modern accounts place his last sighting around 1412 and his death about 1416.

• He appears in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 as Owen Glendower.
• His son Gruffydd was captured at Pwll Melyn in 1405, which the annals call the turning point.
• Henry V, as a teenage prince, fought in the campaign against him.

Sources: Welsh Annals on the rebellion of Owain Glyn Dwr, 1400 to 1415 (De Re Militari); Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales): Owain Glyndwr and a timber from Sycharth; Wikipedia: Owain Glyndwr

Henry V (1413 to 1422)

Henry V, King of England, House of Lancaster

Henry V was born at Monmouth in 1387 and fought beside his father at Shrewsbury in 1403, where he was wounded in the face. He invaded France in 1415, captured Harfleur and won at Agincourt, then conquered Normandy between 1417 and 1419. The 1420 Treaty of Troyes made him heir to Charles VI of France. He married Catherine of Valois that June. He backed English over French in official documents and acted firmly against the Lollards.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father Henry IV in March 1413.

How it ended: He died of dysentery on 31 August 1422 at Bois de Vincennes in France, aged 35, leaving a nine-month-old son, Henry VI.

• Under Article 6 of the Treaty of Troyes the French crown was to pass to Henry and his heirs after Charles VI.
• Under Article 24 the two kingdoms were to be ruled by one person, with each keeping its own laws and customs.
• Article 29 bound Henry and Philip of Burgundy never to make peace with Charles the Dauphin.

Sources: Hundred Years War: Treaty of Troyes, 1420 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Henry V; World History Encyclopedia: Henry V of England

The Battle of Agincourt (25 October 1415)

On 25 October 1415, Saint Crispin's Day, Henry V's army fought a larger French force near Azincourt. English and Welsh archers made up nearly 80 percent of the army, and they planted sharpened stakes. The French attacked across muddy ground. Around 6,000 French fighting men were killed, most of them nobles, and at least 112 English are named dead. Numbers are disputed: modern estimates are about 6,000 to 8,000 English against 12,000 to 25,000 French.

• Henry ordered most prisoners killed when he feared the French would rally. One historian argues the aim was to terrify them and that fewer died than reported.
• Three French dukes, nine counts and an archbishop died, along with the constable, Charles d'Albret.
• The story that the French threatened to cut off archers' fingers is open to question.

Sources: Monstrelet: Battle of Agincourt, 1415 (De Re Militari); World History Encyclopedia: Battle of Agincourt; Wikipedia: Battle of Agincourt

Henry VI (1422 to 1461 and 1470 to 1471)

Henry VI, King of England, House of Lancaster

Henry VI inherited the thrones of England and France as an infant and was crowned in England in 1429 and in Paris in 1431. England lost Normandy in 1450, and Jack Cade's rebellion the same year showed the unrest at home. Cade's proclamation demanded the removal of the duke of Suffolk's circle. By 1453 Calais was the only English possession left in France. That year the king suffered a breakdown lasting about a year and a half.

How they came to power: He became king in 1422 when his father died, and was crowned in England in 1429. He is the only English king crowned in both England and France.

How it ended: Edward IV deposed him in 1461. He was restored in 1470 but captured again after the Battle of Tewkesbury, where his son died. He died in the Tower of London in May 1471; the official line said melancholy, but his murder on Edward IV's orders is widely suspected.

• He founded Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, and All Souls College, Oxford.
• Richard III later moved his body to St George's Chapel at Windsor.
• Jack Cade's rebels said they would not rob or plunder and would go home once their grievances were met.

Sources: Jack Cade: Proclamation of Grievances, 1450 (Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook); The Royal Family: Henry VI; Wikipedia: Henry VI of England

The Wars of the Roses (1455 to 1487)

The Wars of the Roses were a dynastic conflict between Lancastrian and Yorkist branches of Edward III's descendants. They were made up of intermittent battles, skirmishes and executions, not continuous war. Henry VI's weak rule, losses in France and powerful nobles with private armies caused them. The first battle was at St Albans on 22 May 1455. Edward IV took the throne after Towton in 1461 and again after Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. The last Yorkist resistance ended at Stoke Field in 1487.

• The name came into common use only in the early 19th century, after Sir Walter Scott's 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein. In Shakespeare's time people called it the civil wars.
• A Paston letter of 21 to 22 May 1455 gives an account of the first battle, and a follow-up of 25 May reports the deaths of the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford.
• Most of the population was largely unaffected, though many noble families were destroyed.

Sources: The Paston Letters, Volume 3, letter 283: The Battle of St. Albans, 1455 (Project Gutenberg); World History Encyclopedia: Wars of the Roses; Wikipedia: Wars of the Roses

Edward IV (1461 to 1470 and 1471 to 1483)

Edward IV, King of England, House of York

Edward IV was Duke of York's son, and after his father's death at Wakefield he won at Mortimer's Cross and Towton, the bloodiest battle fought on English soil. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 angered Warwick the Kingmaker. Warwick and Edward's brother Clarence restored Henry VI in 1470, and Edward fled to Flanders. He returned in 1471, beat Warwick at Barnet and the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury. In 1475 he made a profitable deal with Louis XI at Picquigny.

How they came to power: After Towton in 1461 Henry VI and his queen fled to Scotland and Edward claimed the throne.

How it ended: He died suddenly in April 1483 and left a 12-year-old son, Edward V.

• A Paston letter from 18 January 1469 shows Edward ordering Sir John Paston to stop gathering armed men in a dispute with the Duke of Norfolk.
• William Caxton set up England's first printing press at Westminster in 1476, and Edward was a patron of books.
• The tale that his brother Clarence was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine is likely a joke attributed to Edward himself, though Clarence was executed for treason in 1478.

Sources: The Paston Letters, Volume 5, letter 698: Edward IV to John Paston, 1469 (Project Gutenberg); The Royal Family: Edward IV; Wikipedia: Edward IV of England

Edward V (April to June 1483)

Edward V, King of England, House of York

Edward V was born on 2 November 1470 at Cheyneygates beside Westminster Abbey, where his mother had taken sanctuary. He became king on 9 April 1483 when his father died, and his uncle Richard of Gloucester was named Protector. Richard had the boy's maternal relatives arrested at Stony Stratford. Edward entered the Tower on 19 May and his brother Richard joined him on 16 June.

How they came to power: He succeeded Edward IV on 9 April 1483 and was never crowned. His coronation was repeatedly postponed.

How it ended: After a sermon on 22 June claimed Edward IV's marriage invalid, an assembly declared Richard king on 25 June. Edward and his brother were last seen in the summer of 1483 and are presumed dead. How and when are unknown.

• Titulus Regius, the 1484 Act, says Edward IV had made a precontract with Eleanor Butler, and it calls his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville a 'pretensed' marriage.
• He was born in sanctuary at Westminster, where his mother had fled.
• He reigned about two and a half months.

Sources: Titulus Regius, 1484 (Wikisource); The Royal Family: Edward V; Wikipedia: Edward V of England

The Princes in the Tower (Summer 1483)

Edward V, aged 12, and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, aged 9, were lodged in the Tower by their uncle Richard of Gloucester. Parliament's Titulus Regius declared them illegitimate. They were last seen in the summer of 1483. In 1674 workmen found two child skeletons under a staircase at the Tower, and Charles II had them buried in Westminster Abbey. A 1933 examination could not prove who they were, and no DNA test has been done.

• Richard III is the most commonly suspected, though the evidence is circumstantial. Henry VII and the Duke of Buckingham have also been named.
• Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the princes, but most historians consider them impostors.
• The Royal Family site says the boys were 'never seen again' and that historians still debate who was responsible.

Sources: Titulus Regius, 1484 (Wikisource); The Royal Family: Edward V; Wikipedia: Princes in the Tower

Richard III (1483 to 1485)

Richard III, King of England, House of York

Richard was born in 1452 at Fotheringhay and became Duke of Gloucester, a capable soldier and administrator. He married Anne Neville in 1472. As king he created the Council of the North and the College of Arms, and his one Parliament passed reforms against corruption. Laws written entirely in English were passed in his reign. His reliance on northern allies cost him support in the south, and Buckingham's rebellion failed in October 1483.

How they came to power: On Edward IV's death he was named Protector of Edward V. Evidence of an earlier marriage contract was used to declare Edward IV's children illegitimate, and Richard took the throne on 26 June 1483. Parliament confirmed his title in January 1484 through Titulus Regius.

How it ended: Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven in August 1485. Richard was killed at Bosworth on 22 August, the last English king to die in battle. His remains were found in Leicester in 2012 and reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.

• His skeleton showed scoliosis, a sideways curve of the spine, but a 2014 analysis suggested it did not cause a major deformity that clothes could not hide, so the Tudor image of a hunchbacked monster is a myth.
• The skeleton showed about eleven wounds, most of them to the skull, consistent with battle injuries.
• He had Henry VI's body moved to St George's Chapel at Windsor, according to the Royal Family site.

Sources: Titulus Regius, 1484 (Wikisource); The Royal Family: Richard III; Wikipedia: Richard III of England; World History Encyclopedia: Richard III of England

The Battle of Bosworth (22 August 1485)

On 22 August 1485 Henry Tudor, who had landed at Milford Haven, met Richard III near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William held back until the fight was under way, then Sir William's men attacked Richard. Richard led a mounted charge at Henry, but the Earl of Northumberland did not move and the king was cut off. Polydore Vergil says he was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies. Richard was the last English king killed in battle. Henry was crowned on 30 October and the Tudor dynasty began.

• Polydore Vergil, Henry VII's historian, says Thomas Stanley saw Richard's crown on the field and set it on Henry's head. The hawthorn-bush story is a later legend.
• In 2009 researchers suggested the battle was fought about two miles south-west of the Ambion Hill site that the visitor centre used.
• Richard's body was shown in Leicester and buried at Greyfriars. His grave was lost until 2012.

Sources: Polydore Vergil, Three Books of English History, ed. Henry Ellis (Camden Society, 1844): the account of Bosworth (find in a library: WorldCat); World History Encyclopedia: Battle of Bosworth; Wikipedia: Battle of Bosworth Field

Henry VII (1485 to 1509)

Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, Tudor dynasty

Henry Tudor founded the dynasty that ruled England for 118 years. He came to the throne after the Wars of the Roses with a weak claim, and he knew it. His reign was spent on security: he put down pretenders such as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, curbed the private armies of the nobles, and rebuilt the royal finances. He also arranged marriages that tied the Tudors to Spain and to the Scottish crown. He left a full treasury and a settled succession.

How they came to power: He was born at Pembroke Castle after his father, Edmund Tudor, had died, and spent about 14 years in exile in Brittany. He landed in Pembrokeshire on 7 August 1485 and defeated Richard III at Bosworth on 22 August. He married Elizabeth of York in 1486, which joined the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims.

How it ended: He died of tuberculosis at Richmond Palace on 21 April 1509 and was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII. His eldest son Arthur had died in 1502 and his wife Elizabeth in 1503.

• He was the last English king to win his throne on a battlefield.
• He formed the Yeomen of the Guard in 1485. The royal family's own website calls it the oldest military corps still in existence.
• Royal income rose from an annual average of about 52,000 pounds to about 142,000 pounds by the end of his reign, according to the royal family's website.

Sources: Francis Bacon, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII (1622; ed. J. R. Lumby, Cambridge, 1885, Internet Archive); The Royal Family: Henry VII; Wikipedia: Henry VII of England

Henry VIII (1509 to 1547)

Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland, Tudor dynasty

Henry came to the throne young, learned and popular. His search for an annulment from Catherine of Aragon, so that he could remarry and have a male heir, led to the break with the Pope and the making of the Church of England. His reign also saw war with France and Scotland, the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, a much larger navy, and the dissolution of the monasteries. In his later years his health was poor and he ordered a series of executions.

How they came to power: He was the second son of Henry VII. He became heir when his brother Arthur died in 1502 and was made Prince of Wales in 1504. He succeeded in 1509 and married Catherine of Aragon the same year.

How it ended: He died in London on 28 January 1547, and his only surviving son, Edward VI, succeeded him. Of his six marriages, two were annulled (Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves). Two queens were beheaded: Anne Boleyn, whose marriage was also declared void two days before her execution, and Katherine Howard. Jane Seymour died after childbirth, and Catherine Parr outlived him.

• In 1521 the Pope gave him the title Defender of the Faith for a book he wrote attacking Martin Luther.
• He expanded the navy from 5 to 53 ships, according to the royal family's website.
• He was a musician and composer, but the song Greensleeves is almost certainly not his work.

Sources: The Act of Supremacy, 1534 (Tudor History, primary text); The Royal Family: Henry VIII; Royal Museums Greenwich: Who were Henry VIII's wives?; Wikipedia: Henry VIII

The Battle of Flodden (September 9, 1513)

James IV of Scotland invaded Northumberland in support of France, in the War of the League of Cambrai. An English army under Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, met him near Branxton. The Scots carried long pikes supplied by France; the English had bills, archers and light field guns. The Scottish formation lost its order advancing downhill into marshy ground, and the shorter English bills did better in the close fighting. James IV was killed, along with several earls, two abbots, a bishop and an archbishop.

• James IV was the last British monarch to die in battle.
• The Scottish dead included his own illegitimate son, Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of St Andrews.
• Historians disagree on the numbers: estimates of Scottish dead run from about 5,000 to 14,000, and English dead from about 1,500 to 1,700.

Sources: Henry Weber, ed., The Battle of Flodden Field (appendix includes Hall's and Pitscottie's accounts and Pope Leo X's letter to Henry VIII); Oxford Companion to British History: Flodden, battle of (Encyclopedia.com); Wikipedia: Battle of Flodden

Thomas Cromwell (1532 to 1540)

Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Chief Minister · Henry VIII

Cromwell began as a servant of Cardinal Wolsey and entered royal service after Wolsey fell in 1529. He became Henry VIII's chief minister and drove the legal break with Rome through Parliament. He compiled the Valor Ecclesiasticus, a survey of Church wealth, and the visitations of the monasteries that justified their closure. His power rested entirely on the king's favour.

How they rose: He was born around 1485, the son of Walter Cromwell of Putney, who brewed beer; the National Archives says Walter's notoriety as a lawbreaker is largely the product of misunderstanding the records, which show minor offences. Thomas was elected an MP in 1523, became Clerk of the Hanaper in 1532, and was later made Master of the Jewel House.

How they died: He was made Earl of Essex and Lord Great Chamberlain in April 1540, arrested at the Privy Council in June, accused of heresy and treason, and attainted by Parliament while held in the Tower. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540, the day Henry married Katherine Howard.

• After his arrest it was announced that he could be called only Thomas Cromwell, cloth carder, stripping away his honours.
• His nephew Richard Williams took the Cromwell name and became the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell.
• Henry is reported to have lamented the execution later and blamed his ministers' false accusations for pushing him into it.

Sources: The National Archives: the dissolution of the monasteries (Valor Ecclesiasticus E 344/22, SP 1/95 and other records); The National Archives: Thomas Cromwell; Wikipedia: Thomas Cromwell

Anne Boleyn (1533 to May 19, 1536)

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, Queen consort · Henry VIII

Anne spent nearly seven years in France, at the court of Queen Claude, before returning to England. Henry VIII's wish to marry her was a central driver of his break with Rome. They married in 1533 and she was crowned that June. Her only surviving child was the future Elizabeth I. Her fall in 1536 came quickly. Most historians doubt the charges, and they disagree about how far it was the work of Thomas Cromwell.

How they rose: Her birth year is disputed, about 1501 or about 1507. Henry married her in a secret ceremony on 14 November 1532 and repeated it on 25 January 1533. Archbishop Cranmer declared Henry's first marriage void in May 1533.

How they died: She was taken by barge to the Tower on 2 May 1536 and charged with adultery, incest and treason. On 15 May she was tried before peers under the Duke of Norfolk as Lord High Steward, and the trial record shows each peer found her guilty. Her marriage was declared void on 17 May, and on 19 May she was beheaded by an expert swordsman brought from France, whom Henry had chosen in place of burning. In her last speech she did not admit guilt.

• She was crowned with St Edward's Crown, normally used only for monarchs, and was the last queen consort of England crowned separately from her husband.
• When Elizabeth was born in 1533, announcements already prepared with the word prince were altered to princess, and a planned tournament was cancelled.
• Her remains in the Tower chapel of St Peter ad Vincula were identified in 1876 and reburied the next year.

Sources: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 10 (1536), ed. J. Gairdner: trial record of Anne Boleyn, 15 May 1536 (British History Online); The National Archives: King's Bench records, Anne Boleyn's trial (KB 8/9); The National Archives: Thomas Cromwell (his part in her fall, 1536); Wikipedia: Anne Boleyn

The Break with Rome and the Act of Supremacy (1533 to 1534)

Henry VIII sought an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When the Pope refused, Archbishop Cranmer declared the marriage void in 1533. Parliament then passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, naming the king and his heirs the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England. It gave the king authority to reform religious errors and abuses, overriding any foreign authority. It is the legal base of the English Reformation.

• The National Archives holds the original Act (C 65/143) and a set of signatures renouncing the Pope's supremacy from 1534 (E 36/64).
• Mary I's Parliament repealed the supremacy in November 1554 (the See of Rome Act) and restored papal authority.
• Elizabeth I's Act of Supremacy in 1559 changed the title: she became Supreme Governor, not Supreme Head, of the Church of England.

Sources: The Act of Supremacy, 1534 (Tudor History, primary text); The National Archives: the dissolution of the monasteries (Act of Supremacy C 65/143); The Royal Family: Mary I; Wikipedia: Acts of Supremacy

The Laws in Wales Acts (1536 and 1543 (the Acts of 1535 and 1542 by their short titles))

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 declared Wales incorporated and united with England. It made English law the law of Wales, abolished the Marcher lordships as political units, and joined their lands to existing shires or formed new ones, including Monmouthshire, Brecknockshire, Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire. Wales then had 13 counties and was represented in Parliament by 26 members. The 1542 Act set up the Court of Great Sessions, a separate Welsh system of courts. Courts were to work in English, though most people spoke Welsh.

• The name Acts of Union was popularised by the historian O. M. Edwards in 1901; each Act's short title has been Laws in Wales Act since 1948.
• Justices of the peace were introduced, nine to a county, according to Wikipedia; each county also had a sheriff.
• Both Acts were mostly repealed in the 1990s: the 1535 Act on 21 December 1993, and the 1542 Act except section 47, which was repealed on 3 January 1995.

Sources: Laws in Wales Act 1535 (legislation.gov.uk); Laws in Wales Act 1542 (legislation.gov.uk); Senedd Research: The Constitution, Wales in the United Kingdom (Members' Research Service quick guide, 2007); WJEC: The Acts of Union, 1536 and 1543 (history teaching resource); Wikipedia: Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542

The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536 to 1540)

After making himself head of the Church, Henry VIII turned to its wealth. Thomas Cromwell's Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1534 to 1535 valued Church income across the country, and visitors reported on the monasteries. The first Act of 1536 closed smaller houses with incomes under 200 pounds a year, and a second Act in 1539 reached the rest. Monasteries owned around a quarter of the nation's landed wealth, and much of it was sold to fund the wars of the 1540s. About 625 monastic communities were dissolved.

• The Valor Ecclesiasticus, the greatest survey of Church property since 1291, was compiled in 1534 to 1535, and the National Archives still holds the returns (E 344/22).
• Monks on average received pensions of about 5 pounds a year and nuns about 3 pounds.
• A 1535 report in the National Archives (SP 1/95) alleged that monks at Bath were morally corrupt, but the Archives notes that such charges may have been an excuse for dissolution.

Sources: The National Archives: the dissolution of the monasteries (Valor Ecclesiasticus E 344/22 and other records); Historic UK: Dissolution of the Monasteries; English Heritage: Tudor England; Wikipedia: Dissolution of the Monasteries

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 to 1567 (died 1587))

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, House of Stewart

Mary was raised in France and married the Dauphin, becoming queen consort of France in 1559. Widowed in 1560, she returned to a largely Protestant Scotland as a Catholic monarch. Her marriage to Lord Darnley, the murder of her secretary David Rizzio, Darnley's death in 1567 and her quick marriage to Bothwell cost her the support of the Scottish lords. As a great-granddaughter of Henry VII she was a standing claimant to the English throne.

How they came to power: She succeeded her father James V when he died on 14 December 1542, within about a week of her birth at Linlithgow. She was crowned on 9 September 1543, and regents ruled for her, including her mother Mary of Guise.

How it ended: Held at Loch Leven Castle, she was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of her infant son James VI. After defeat at Langside on 13 May 1568 she fled to England, where Elizabeth held her for about 18 and a half years. Tried in October 1586 over the Babington plot, she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, aged 44.

• Rizzio was seized in her presence and stabbed to death in an adjoining room in March 1566, when she was six months pregnant.
• In the eyewitness account by Robert Wynkfeilde, a small dog crept under her clothes at the execution and would not leave her.
• The Casket Letters, said to be from her to Bothwell, were used against her in 1568; National Museums Scotland says it cannot be settled whether the silver casket in its collection was the letters' casket, and historians still argue over the letters' authenticity.

Sources: Wynkfeilde's Account of the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, 8 February 1587 (Luminarium); World History Encyclopedia: Mary, Queen of Scots; National Museums Scotland: the Casket Letters and the Mary, Queen of Scots casket; Historic UK: Biography of Mary Queen of Scots

Edward VI (1547 to 1553)

Edward VI, King of England and Ireland, Tudor dynasty

Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and came to the throne at nine. Government was run by councils: first his uncle Edward Seymour as Lord Protector, then John Dudley. The Church moved firmly to Protestantism, with the Books of Common Prayer of 1549 and 1552, English services, and permission for clergy to marry. The reign also saw the Prayer Book Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall and Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk over enclosures. He read Greek and Latin and kept a journal of his reign.

How they came to power: He was born at Hampton Court on 12 October 1537; his mother died days later. He became king in January 1547, on the death of Henry VIII, and a regency council governed.

How it ended: He died at Greenwich on 6 July 1553, aged 15; many historians accept tuberculosis, and poisoning rumours have no supporting evidence. Shortly before, he drew up a Devise for the Succession naming Lady Jane Grey, rather than his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, as heir.

• His journal records the execution of the Duke of Somerset in 1552 in one flat line: "the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill".
• The surviving draft of his Devise for the Succession is partly erased and altered.
• Debasement of the coinage under his councils caused economic trouble, though confidence had returned by 1552.

Sources: King Edward VI's Devise for the Succession, 1553 (Luminarium); The Royal Family: Edward VI; Wikipedia: Edward VI

Lady Jane Grey (July 10 to 19, 1553)

Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England (disputed), Tudor dynasty

Jane was a great-granddaughter of Henry VII and one of the most learned women of her day. In May 1553 she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland. When Edward VI died, the council proclaimed her queen. Support swung quickly to Mary Tudor, and Jane was deposed after nine days. Historians treat her reign as disputed, and some lists of monarchs leave her out.

How they came to power: Edward VI named her heir in his Devise, and Northumberland had married his son to her in May 1553. The Council recognised her claim on 10 July, four days after Edward died.

How it ended: She was deposed on 19 July when the council switched to Mary, and was convicted of treason on 13 November 1553. Mary at first spared her, but Wyatt's Rebellion against the Spanish marriage in January 1554 revived the sentence. She was beheaded at the Tower on 12 February 1554, after Guildford, aged 16 or 17.

• Her birth year is uncertain: 1536 or 1537.
• The scholar Roger Ascham visited her, and she was known as one of the most learned women of her day.
• Her own father abandoned her cause when the country rallied to Mary, the royal family's website records.

Sources: King Edward VI's Devise for the Succession, 1553 (Luminarium); The Royal Family: Lady Jane Grey; Wikipedia: Lady Jane Grey

Mary I (1553 to 1558)

Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland, Tudor dynasty

Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She was declared illegitimate in 1533, restored to the succession in 1544, and removed again by Edward before his death. As queen she restored Catholicism, brought back papal supremacy and revived the heresy laws. About 280 to 300 Protestants were burned (Wikipedia says more than 280, royal.uk around 300), which gave her the name Bloody Mary, though historians now debate how fairly that name describes her. Her marriage to Philip of Spain was childless and unpopular, and it led to Wyatt's Rebellion.

How they came to power: After Edward VI's death, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen. Mary gathered support in East Anglia, the council switched sides, and Jane was deposed after nine days. Mary entered London in August 1553, aged 37.

How it ended: She died on 17 November 1558 at St James's Palace, possibly of cancer, and her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded. The French had captured Calais that January. She had had a false pregnancy in 1554 and 1555.

• She was the first queen regnant of England, ruling in her own right rather than through a husband.
• Philip became King of Spain in 1556, two years after their marriage, but spent most of the marriage on the continent.
• After the annulment of her parents' marriage in 1533 she was declared illegitimate, and she returned to the line of succession only through the Third Succession Act of 1544.

Sources: The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary (ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Society, 1850; transcription); The Royal Family: Mary I; Wikipedia: Mary I of England

Elizabeth I (1558 to 1603)

Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, Tudor dynasty

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She came to the throne in a country split by religion and managed it with a compromise: the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559 made her Supreme Governor of the Church and required the Book of Common Prayer. The Pope excommunicated her in 1570. Her reign saw war with Spain, voyages of exploration, the founding of the East India Company in 1599, and a flowering of English theatre and poetry. She governed with William Cecil and toured the country on royal progresses.

How they came to power: She became queen on 17 November 1558 when Mary I died, and was crowned on 15 January 1559, on a date chosen by the astrologer John Dee. In 1554 she had been held in the Tower and then at Woodstock during Wyatt's Rebellion.

How it ended: She died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603, aged 69. She had never married, and James VI of Scotland succeeded as James I of England.

• A Tacitus translation at Lambeth Palace was confirmed as her own work in 2019.
• Her motto was video et taceo, I see and keep silent.
• She made at least 25 royal progresses, touring the country, and the day of her accession was a national holiday for about two hundred years.

Sources: Elizabeth I: speech to the troops at Tilbury, 1588 (Lapham's Quarterly); The Royal Family: Elizabeth I; Wikipedia: Elizabeth I

William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616)

William Shakespeare, playwright and poet, Playwright and poet · Stratford and London

Shakespeare wrote about 39 plays, 154 sonnets and several long poems. He worked in London as actor, writer and part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men, and was a shareholder in the Globe, built in 1599. Thirty-six of his plays were collected in the First Folio of 1623, put together by fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell. Few personal records survive, and the gaps have invited many theories, including that others wrote the works.

How they rose: He was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare; his birth date is unknown. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway. Between about 1585 and 1592, the period biographers call his lost years, he became an actor and writer in London.

How they died: He died in Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church. His will, held at the National Archives, leaves his wife Anne his second-best bed.

• The second-best bed is often read as an insult, but the National Archives notes that the best bed was customarily an heirloom for the heir, and Anne may have been better provided for than the will suggests.
• His will contains three of the six surviving examples of his signature.
• His traditional birthday of 23 April is unproven: the parish register records only the baptism, on 26 April.

Sources: Shakespeare's baptism, Stratford parish register (Internet Shakespeare Editions); The National Archives: The story of William Shakespeare (his will, PROB 1/4); Historic UK: William Shakespeare; Wikipedia: William Shakespeare

Drake's Circumnavigation (December 1577 to September 1580)

Drake left Plymouth in December 1577 on the Pelican with a small fleet and 164 men. He passed through the Strait of Magellan, raided Spanish settlements and ships on the Pacific coast of South America, and took the treasure ship Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, nicknamed Cacafuego. In June 1579 he claimed a stretch of the northern California coast for Elizabeth as Nova Albion. He crossed the Pacific, sailed home by the Cape of Good Hope and reached Plymouth on 26 September 1580. Only one ship, the Victoria of Magellan's expedition under Elcano, had completed the circuit before him, in 1522.

• The flagship Pelican was renamed Golden Hind in honour of Christopher Hatton. About 59 men were still aboard when she came home, out of about 164 who set out.
• The queen's half-share of the cargo is said to have exceeded the Crown's income for the entire year.
• Drake charged his co-commander Thomas Doughty with mutiny and had him beheaded on 2 July 1578. The story of Drake finishing a game of bowls before the Armada is probably untrue: it was first printed about 37 years later.

Sources: Francis Pretty, Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World (Project Gutenberg); Historic UK: Sir Francis Drake; Wikipedia: Francis Drake

The Spanish Armada (July to August 1588)

Philip II of Spain sent the Armada, under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to cover an invasion of England by the Duke of Parma's army from the Netherlands. Lord Howard of Effingham led the English fleet, with Drake as vice admiral. The English sent eight fireships into the Armada at anchor off Calais on the night of 7 to 8 August by the Gregorian calendar (28 July in the English calendar of the time), scattering it. At Gravelines the next day they fought at close range with broadsides. The Armada retreated north around Scotland and Ireland, and storms wrecked many ships. Historians call the campaign a major propaganda win but strategically inconclusive.

• The Armada left Lisbon with about 141 ships (other counts give about 130); the English fleet was about 226.
• About 28 ships were lost to storms, mostly on the west coast of Ireland, and an estimated 5,000 men died, according to Wikipedia; other estimates of Spanish deaths run from 9,000 to over 20,000.
• The galleass La Girona was wrecked in County Antrim on 26 October with about 1,300 aboard; nine survived.

Sources: Elizabeth I: speech to the troops at Tilbury, 1588 (Lapham's Quarterly); English Heritage: Tudor England (Tilbury Fort and the Armada); Historic UK: The Spanish Armada, 1588; Wikipedia: Spanish Armada

James VI and I (1603 to 1625 (King of Scots from 1567))

James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland, House of Stuart

James was born in Edinburgh Castle in 1566 and became King of Scots as a baby. He ruled Scotland for 57 years, the longest reign of any Scottish monarch, before taking the English throne. In October 1604 he adopted the style "King of Great Britain", though England and Scotland kept separate parliaments and laws. His reign saw the Gunpowder Plot and the King James Bible. He also wrote on kingship and on witchcraft.

How they came to power: He became King of Scots on 24 July 1567, aged 13 months, when his mother Mary was forced to abdicate. From 1601 Robert Cecil corresponded with him in secret to prepare a smooth succession, and when Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603 he was proclaimed king in London the same day. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25 July 1603.

How it ended: He died on 27 March 1625 at Theobalds House, Hertfordshire, aged 58, after years of arthritis and gout. His son Charles I succeeded him.

• James wrote Basilikon Doron, a book of advice on kingship, in 1597 to 1598 for his son Prince Henry, who was about four. It was published in 1599.
• He took part in the North Berwick witch trials and wrote Daemonologie (1597), which is said to have supplied background for Shakespeare's Macbeth. After 1599 his views on witchcraft became more sceptical.
• Robert Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister, had been writing to him in secret since 1601. When she died, James was proclaimed king in London on the same day, 24 March 1603, and the succession passed smoothly.

Sources: James I, The Political Works, ed. C. H. McIlwain, Introduction ch. II: quotes his Basilikon Doron and his 1603-04 address to Parliament (Perseus Digital Library); Speeches of James I, including his 1604 speech to Parliament (Glasgow University Library Special Collections, Book of the Month, September 2003); James I (r. 1603-1625) (royal.uk); Wikipedia: James VI and I

The Union of the Crowns (24 March 1603)

On 24 March 1603 Elizabeth I died and James VI of Scotland became James I of England and Ireland. It was a personal union: each kingdom kept its own parliament and legal system. James wanted a fuller union, but both countries resisted. A commission of English and Scottish MPs in 1604 made only limited progress, and in 1605 the question was reported as dropped for the time being. The kingdoms of England and Scotland were not merged until the Acts of Union of 1707.

• In his first speech to the English Parliament, on 19 March 1604, James cast himself as the husband and the island as his lawful wife. The Commons still refused the full union he wanted.
• James proclaimed a new Union Flag on 12 April 1606. The Scots made their own version with the crosses arranged the other way round, and that version was used in Scotland until 1707.
• Scots who followed the king south competed for posts at court, which fed English mockery and resentment. In 1609 James had a law passed against satires that slandered England.

Sources: James I, Political Works, Introduction ch. II: James's first address to his English Parliament (Perseus Digital Library); Speeches of James I, including his 1604 speech to Parliament (Glasgow University Library Special Collections); James I (r. 1603-1625) (royal.uk); Wikipedia: Union of the Crowns

The King James Bible (1604 to 1611)

After the Hampton Court Conference of January 1604, James I agreed to a new English Bible. Fifty-four scholars were approved and about 47 did the work, mostly clergymen of the Church of England. It was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the lectern Bible in parish churches and appeared in 1611. It remains known in Britain as the Authorised Version.

• About 84 per cent of the King James New Testament matches William Tyndale's earlier translation word for word, according to one estimate.
• No record of the official authorisation survives. It was probably ordered by the Privy Council, whose registers for 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire.
• In the "Wicked Bible" of 1631 the printers left out the word "not" from the Seventh Commandment, and they were fined 300 pounds. Later printings of the King James text added about 1,500 misprints.

Sources: The Translators to the Reader, preface to the 1611 King James Version (Christian Classics Ethereal Library); Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible (Folger Shakespeare Library, Folgerpedia); Wikipedia: King James Version

The Gunpowder Plot (November 1605 to January 1606)

Robert Catesby led a group of Catholic conspirators who planned to blow up the House of Lords at the state opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. An anonymous letter delivered on 26 October warned Lord Monteagle to stay away. Guards searched the undercroft beneath the Lords at midnight on 4 to 5 November and found Guy Fawkes with 36 barrels of gunpowder. The surviving plotters were tried on 27 January 1606 and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

• When Fawkes was arrested he gave his name as John Johnson, an alias he also used elsewhere. The National Archives teaching resource includes his examinations.
• The Monteagle letter was delivered on 26 October 1605 in a disguised hand with no name. Its author has never been reliably identified. Francis Tresham, Monteagle's brother-in-law, has long been suspected, and Monteagle himself and the minister Salisbury have also been proposed.
• On 6 November 1605 James authorised torture, writing that the gentler tortures were to be used first. Fawkes confessed on 7 November, and his shaky signature on the confession is still faintly visible.

Sources: The Gunpowder Plot: documents including the Monteagle letter and Fawkes's examinations (The National Archives, education resources); The Monteagle Letter (The National Archives); What is Bonfire Night? (English Heritage); Wikipedia: Gunpowder Plot

Charles I (1625 to 1649)

Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, House of Stuart

Charles was born in Dunfermline in 1600 and became king on 27 March 1625. He clashed with Parliament over taxation and religion. After the Petition of Right of 1628 he ruled without Parliament from 1629 to 1640, raising money through customs duties and ship money. A new prayer book in Scotland in 1637 led to the Bishops' Wars, and the Long Parliament of 1640 moved against his advisers. In January 1642 he tried to arrest five MPs in the Commons and then left London.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father James I on 27 March 1625. He was born in Dunfermline Palace, Fife, as the second son of James VI and Anne of Denmark.

How it ended: He lost the civil war by 1646 and was tried for high treason. He refused to plead and was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall on 30 January 1649.

• Charles had a stammer for the whole of his life, and his speech was slow to develop.
• Ship money, a levy extended from coastal towns to inland counties in peacetime, raised 104,000 pounds in 1634, and the writ of 1635 demanded 208,000. In 1637 the judges ruled for the king against John Hampden, who had refused to pay, by seven to five.
• In January 1642 he went into the House of Commons to arrest five MPs and a peer. The men had already fled, and the attempt is generally seen as a serious breach of parliamentary privilege.

Sources: The Petition of Right, 1628 (legislation.gov.uk, catalogued as 1627 c. 1); Why Charles I was executed (London Museum); King Charles I (Historic UK); Wikipedia: Charles I of England

The English Civil Wars (August 1642 to September 1651)

Historians usually split the fighting into the first war (1642 to 1646), the second (1648 to 1649) and a third phase against Scotland (1650 to 1651). Disputes over religion, taxation and the king's powers led to war, and fighting also spread to Scotland and Ireland. Parliament's New Model Army broke the royalists at Naseby on 14 June 1645. The last battle was Worcester on 3 September 1651.

• English Heritage puts the deaths at up to 200,000, or about 4.5 per cent of the population. The National Army Museum gives about 250,000 for Britain, nearly 5 per cent, and says deaths in Ireland may have been 15 to 20 per cent of its population.
• The New Model Army, formed in 1645 from three older Parliamentarian armies, was a full-time, regularly paid national force. Its officers were promoted by ability rather than birth.
• According to Wikipedia, 120,000 to 150,000 soldiers were in the field during campaign seasons, a higher share of the population than in Germany during the Thirty Years' War.

Sources: The Petition of Right, 1628: an earlier dispute over taxation and arrest (legislation.gov.uk, catalogued as 1627 c. 1); The English Civil Wars: History and Stories (English Heritage); British Civil Wars (National Army Museum); Wikipedia: English Civil War

The execution of Charles I (20 to 30 January 1649)

Parliament set up a High Court of Justice to try Charles for treason. The trial opened in Westminster Hall on 20 January 1649. He refused to plead and denied the court's authority. On 27 January the court declared him guilty and sentenced him to death. Three days later he was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall.

• Charles asked for an extra shirt so the crowd would not see him shiver in the cold and mistake it for fear.
• The executioner and his assistant wore masks and wigs and were never publicly named. Richard Brandon, the common hangman, is judged the likeliest candidate, though he reportedly denied it throughout his life.
• The death warrant carries Oliver Cromwell's signature. The number of signatories is given differently: the London Museum says 59 men signed, while the UNESCO register entry describes fifty signatures and seals.

Sources: Death Warrant of King Charles I, 1649 (UNESCO Memory of the World UK register entry, Parliamentary Archives); Why Charles I was executed (London Museum); Wikipedia: Execution of Charles I

Oliver Cromwell (1653 to 1658)

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, Commonwealth and Protectorate

Cromwell was born in Huntingdon in 1599 and sat in Parliament for Huntingdon and later Cambridge. In the civil war he commanded cavalry known as the Ironsides and became second in command of the New Model Army in 1645. He signed Charles I's death warrant and led campaigns in Ireland (1649) and Scotland (1650). His rule rested on the Instrument of Government, a written constitution that shared power between the Lord Protector and Parliament.

How they came to power: On 16 December 1653 he became Lord Protector under the Instrument of Government. Article XXXIII of that document named him Protector for life. In 1657 Parliament offered him the crown, and he declined it.

How it ended: He died on 3 September 1658 and his son Richard succeeded him, but Richard resigned in 1659. After the Restoration his body was dug up and hanged at Tyburn on 30 January 1661, twelve years to the day after Charles I's execution.

• His head was displayed on a spike at Westminster Hall until about 1685. It then passed through private hands for nearly three centuries.
• The head was finally buried in the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960.
• The Instrument of Government required a Parliament every third year, and it set a standing force of 10,000 horse and dragoons and 20,000 foot. It also allowed Parliament to make a bill law if the Protector withheld consent for 20 days.

Sources: The Instrument of Government, 1653 (Fordham Internet Modern History Sourcebook); The Instruments of Government 1653 (The History of England podcast website); Oliver Cromwell (Historic UK); Wikipedia: Oliver Cromwell

Charles II (1660 to 1685)

Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, House of Stuart

Charles was proclaimed king of Scots in 1649 and lost the Battle of Worcester in 1651. He spent about nine years in exile before the Restoration. His reign saw the reopening of the theatres, the founding of the Royal Society and the Royal Observatory, the Great Plague and the Great Fire. Parliament passed the Clarendon Code to enforce Anglican worship, although Charles preferred tolerance. Late in the reign the Exclusion Crisis of 1679 gave rise to the Whig and Tory parties.

How they came to power: He issued the Declaration of Breda on 4 April 1660, promising a general pardon and liberty for tender consciences, and entered London on 29 May 1660, his thirtieth birthday. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.

How it ended: He dissolved Parliament in 1681 and ruled without one until he died at Whitehall on 6 February 1685. He had no legitimate children, and his brother James II succeeded him.

• After Worcester he hid in an oak at Boscobel on 6 September 1651 while soldiers searched the wood below. The Penderel brothers who helped him received pensions, and their descendants still do.
• By the secret Treaty of Dover (1670) he promised Louis XIV that he would convert to Catholicism at some future date.
• He acknowledged at least twelve illegitimate children but had none with his wife Catherine of Braganza.

Sources: The Declaration of Breda, 4 April 1660 (constitution.org); History of Boscobel House and the Royal Oak (English Heritage); King Charles II (Historic UK); Wikipedia: Charles II of England

The Great Plague of London (1665 to 1666)

The outbreak began in the spring of 1665 and killed about 100,000 people in roughly eighteen months, by one estimate almost a quarter of London's population. The official Bills of Mortality counted 68,596 plague deaths in 1665, which is probably around 30,000 short. Houses with plague were marked with a red cross and watched, and households with a death were shut up for 40 days. Wealthier residents and the court left the city.

• On 7 June 1665 Pepys saw houses in Drury Lane marked with a red cross and the words "Lord have mercy upon us". He bought roll tobacco to smell and chew, which eased his fear of infection.
• The City ordered a cull of dogs and cats. Some accounts suggest this let the rats that carried the fleas multiply, so the cull may have prolonged the epidemic.
• Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) is a novel. Defoe was about five years old at the time of the plague.

Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, June 1665 (Wikisource); Bills of Mortality: tracking disease in early modern London (The Lancet, 2020, via PubMed Central); The Great Plague 1665 (Historic UK); Wikipedia: Great Plague of London

The Great Fire of London (2 to 5 September 1666)

The fire began shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September 1666 at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. Thomas Farriner was the king's baker, and he thought he had put the fire out. Strong winds and timber houses fed it. It destroyed about 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, Old St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal Exchange. There was no fire service, so people fought it with buckets and by pulling down houses to make firebreaks.

• Six deaths are officially recorded, though some historians argue the true number was higher because deaths from exposure and bodies consumed by the heat went uncounted.
• A French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confessed to starting the fire and was hanged on 29 October 1666. He was later shown to have reached London only two days after the fire began.
• Pepys buried his Parmesan cheese in a pit in the garden on 4 September. Earlier, on 2 September, he wrote that pigeons, loath to leave their houses, hovered about the windows until their wings burned and they fell.

Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, September 1666 (Wikisource); Facing up to catastrophe: The Great Fire of London (Ian Archer, Faculty of History, University of Oxford); The Great Fire of London FAQs (The Monument); The Great Fire of London (London Fire Brigade); Wikipedia: Great Fire of London

James II and VII (1685 to 1688)

James II of England and Ireland and VII of Scotland, House of Stuart

James was born in 1633 and served as Lord High Admiral under his brother. As Duke of York he gave his name to New York. He became king on 6 February 1685 and defeated his nephew the Duke of Monmouth at Sedgemoor. About 250 rebels are usually said to have been executed after the Bloody Assizes led by Judge Jeffreys. He issued Declarations of Indulgence in 1687 and 1688 and increased the standing army, which worried many Protestants.

How they came to power: He succeeded his brother Charles II on 6 February 1685, as Charles had no legitimate children.

How it ended: After the birth of his son on 10 June 1688 and the landing of William of Orange in November, he tried to flee to France in December. He threw the Great Seal into the Thames and was caught in Kent, but William let him escape on 23 December. He lost the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 16 September 1701, aged 67.

• His prosecution of the Seven Bishops ended with their acquittal on 30 June 1688, and the verdict damaged his authority.
• Catholics never made up more than about 10 per cent of his army, but his promotion of Catholic officers alarmed Protestants.
• The Bill of Rights of 1689 recites about a dozen grievances against him (13 by one count) and declares that he abdicated the government.

Sources: Bill of Rights, 1688 (1 Will and Mar Sess 2 c 2) (legislation.gov.uk); The 'Glorious Revolution' (National Army Museum); Jacobites: A timeline (National Library of Scotland); Wikipedia: James II of England

Newton's Principia (Summer 1687)

Newton's Principia presented his three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation, in three books. It grew out of a 1684 question from Edmond Halley about planetary orbits. Newton first wrote a short tract and then expanded it over about two and a half years. It was written in Latin and presented to the Royal Society, whose president Samuel Pepys licensed it for printing in 1686.

• The Royal Society had spent its book budget on De Historia Piscium, a book on fishes, so Edmond Halley paid the printing costs himself. He was later repaid partly in unsold copies of that book.
• Robert Hooke claimed priority for the inverse-square idea, which delayed publication. Newton rejected the claim and even threatened to hold back the third book, until Halley persuaded him to go ahead.
• Newton began developing his core ideas in 1666, when plague closed Cambridge and sent him to the countryside for about two years. Estimates of the first edition range from about 500 to 750 copies, and revised editions followed in 1713 and 1726.

Sources: Newton's Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte (Project Gutenberg); July 5, 1687: Newton's Principia is published (Astronomy magazine); #26 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Pembroke College, Oxford); Wikipedia: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

The Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights (November 1688 to December 1689)

William of Orange landed at Brixham, near Torbay, on 5 November 1688, with about 14,000 soldiers. James's army outnumbered his two to one at Salisbury, but desertions left it fragmented, and by 10 December only 4,000 of the 30,000 men ordered to gather there remained. James fled the country, and few people died. In 1689 William and Mary became joint monarchs, and the Bill of Rights received royal assent on 16 December 1689.

• The Bill of Rights declares that suspending laws without Parliament, taxing without Parliament and keeping a peacetime army without its consent are illegal. It also bans excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments.
• The Act bars Roman Catholics from the throne. Its succession rules were amended on 26 March 2015 under the Perth Agreement, but the bar on a Catholic monarch remains.
• The Bill of Rights influenced the US Bill of Rights, and its ban on cruel and unusual punishments appears again in the Eighth Amendment.

Sources: Bill of Rights, 1688 (1 Will and Mar Sess 2 c 2) (legislation.gov.uk); The 'Glorious Revolution' (National Army Museum); William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688, by Jan Wyck (Royal Museums Greenwich); Wikipedia: Bill of Rights 1689

William III (1689 to 1702)

William III of England and Ireland and II of Scotland, Prince of Orange, House of Orange · House of Stuart (joint reign)

William was born in The Hague on 4 November 1650, eight days after his father died, and was Prince of Orange from birth. He became stadtholder of the Dutch provinces in 1672. He married his first cousin Mary on 4 November 1677. As king he fought the Nine Years' War (1688 to 1697) against France, and he won the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. His reign also saw the founding of the Bank of England and the Act of Settlement of 1701.

How they came to power: He landed at Brixham on 5 November 1688, the day after his 38th birthday. He and Mary were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689.

How it ended: After Mary's death in December 1694 he ruled alone. He died on 8 March 1702 at Kensington Palace, aged 51, after a fall from his horse, and his sister-in-law Anne succeeded him.

• The Act of Settlement of 1701 placed the Hanoverians next in line after Anne.
• The Orange Order in Northern Ireland is named after him.
• A key motive for taking the throne, according to the National Army Museum, was to secure English troops, ships and resources for his war against Louis XIV.

Sources: Bill of Rights, 1688 (1 Will and Mar Sess 2 c 2): the crown offered to William and Mary (legislation.gov.uk); William Of Orange (Historic UK); William II and III (r. 1689-1702) and Mary II (r. 1689-1694) (royal.uk); The 'Glorious Revolution' (National Army Museum); Wikipedia: William III of England

Mary II (1689 to 1694)

Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, House of Stuart (joint reign with William III)

Mary was born in 1662 at St James's Palace, the eldest daughter of the future James II. She married William of Orange on 4 November 1677, when she was 15. She ruled jointly with William as queen regnant from 1689 and governed alone while he was away on campaign. She was reluctant to rule, writing that her heart was not made for a kingdom. She backed the founding of Greenwich Hospital and endowed the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1693.

How they came to power: After James II fled, Parliament offered the throne to Mary and William together. She was crowned beside William on 11 April 1689.

How it ended: She died of smallpox at Kensington Palace on 28 December 1694, aged 32, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 5 March 1695. She left no children.

• While William was in Ireland in 1690 she wrote to him at every available post, sometimes daily. Thirty-five of her letters survive in "William's Chest".
• She wrote that she must "grin when my heart was ready to break" and that she would try to appear cheerful in public.
• Mary and William were among the original stockholders of the Bank of England in 1694.

Sources: Mary II's love letters to William III (The National Archives); History of the Bank of England (Bank of England); William II and III (r. 1689-1702) and Mary II (r. 1689-1694) (royal.uk); Wikipedia: Mary II

The Battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690 (Old Style; 12 July New Style))

The battle was fought at a ford on the River Boyne, near Drogheda. About 36,000 Williamites faced about 23,500 Jacobites. The Williamites won, and casualties were about 2,000, roughly three-quarters of them Jacobite. William's commander the Duke of Schomberg was killed. James left Ireland for France and never returned, although the war went on until the Treaty of Limerick in 1691.

• On 30 June, the day before the battle, William was wounded in the shoulder by Jacobite artillery while he scouted the fords.
• According to Wikipedia, Catholic institutions among William's continental allies celebrated the victory with bell-ringing, because it helped the League of Augsburg against Louis XIV.
• The Twelfth of July originally marked the Battle of Aughrim (1691). The Boyne was combined with it after the Orange Order was founded in 1795.

Sources: The Journal of John Stevens, a Jacobite officer's account of the war in Ireland, 1689 to 1691 (CELT, University College Cork); Jacobites: A timeline (National Library of Scotland); Battle of the Boyne (Encyclopedia.com); Wikipedia: Battle of the Boyne

The Glencoe Massacre (13 February 1692)

Highland clans had to swear an oath of allegiance to William and Mary by 1 January 1692. MacIain of Glencoe took the oath on 6 January at Inveraray, six days late, and was excluded from the indemnity. About 120 soldiers under Robert Campbell of Glenlyon had been housed with the MacDonalds. On 13 February they attacked at three settlements. A commission of inquiry in 1695 considered whether participants had exceeded their orders.

• The order sent to Glenlyon on 12 February told him to put all to the sword under seventy and to make sure the old fox and his sons did not escape. It said the order was by the King's special command.
• The numbers are disputed. The traditional figure is 38 killed outright. Modern research estimates about 30, and the MacDonalds themselves claimed about 25. Others died of exposure after fleeing into the snow; the National Library of Scotland puts that at 40, but the total cannot be known exactly.
• National Trust for Scotland archaeologists are surveying the three lost settlements, Achtriachtan, Achnacon and Inverrigan. An estimated 70 to 80 people lived in them.

Sources: Order to Glenlyon of 12 February 1692, as printed in Glencoe: Myth and Reality (Electric Scotland); Orders given to Capt. Robert Campbell, 1692: scan and transcription (Wikimedia Commons); Archaeologists Trace 'Lost Settlements' of 1692 Glencoe Massacre (Smithsonian Magazine); Jacobites: A timeline (National Library of Scotland); Massacre of Glencoe (Glencoe Folk Museum); Wikipedia: Massacre of Glencoe

The founding of the Bank of England (27 July 1694)

The Bank was created by royal charter on 27 July 1694 as a private bank to act as the government's banker and fund the war against France. William Paterson proposed it, and Charles Montagu steered it through Parliament. The subscribers' loan of 1.2 million pounds was serviced at 8 per cent plus a 4,000 pound management charge. The Bank opened on 1 August 1694 at Mercers' Hall in Cheapside.

• The 1.2 million pounds was raised in 12 days from 1,268 subscribers.
• It opened with 17 clerks and two gatekeepers, and Sir John Houblon was its first Governor.
• It was privately owned by stockholders until it was nationalised in 1946, and it has been on Threadneedle Street since 1734.

Sources: Bank of England Act 1694 (legislation.gov.uk); History (Bank of England); Wikipedia: Bank of England

The Darien scheme (1695 to 1700)

The Scottish Parliament created the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies on 26 June 1695, with a 31-year trade monopoly. William Paterson proposed a colony on the Isthmus of Darien in Panama. Five ships and about 1,200 people left Leith in July 1698, and the colony of New Caledonia was abandoned in July 1699. A second expedition arrived in November 1699, and the settlers left for good in 1700.

• Only about 300 of the 1,200 first-expedition settlers survived. National Museums Scotland puts the cost of the whole venture at about 2,000 lives.
• The money lost was about a quarter of Scotland's liquid capital, according to National Museums Scotland. The NatWest Group heritage page puts the subscribed 400,000 pounds at about half the country's available capital.
• The Union of 1707 included a payment called the Equivalent of 398,085 pounds and ten shillings, which compensated Darien investors and was meant to support Scottish industries.

Sources: Extract from the Act for a Company Trading to Africa and the Indies, 26 June 1695, with transcript (Scottish Archives for Schools, National Records of Scotland); The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (NatWest Group Heritage Hub); The Darien Scheme (National Museums Scotland); Wikipedia: Darien scheme

Queen Anne (1702 to 1714)

Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, then of Great Britain, House of Stuart

Anne was the younger daughter of James II and was born on 6 February 1665 (1664 under the old calendar). Her reign included the War of the Spanish Succession and the victories of the Duke of Marlborough. She supported the Acts of Union, and on 1 May 1707 she became the first sovereign of Great Britain. She favoured the Tories and dismissed many Whigs in 1710. In 1708 she vetoed a bill, reportedly the last British sovereign to do so.

How they came to power: She became queen on 8 March 1702, when William III died, and was crowned on 23 April 1702.

How it ended: She died at Kensington Palace on 1 August 1714, and the Hanoverian George I succeeded her. She had at least 17 pregnancies (some sources count 18), but no child survived her. Her only son to live past infancy, the Duke of Gloucester, died in 1700 aged 11.

• She vetoed the Scottish Militia Bill in 1708, reportedly the last time a British sovereign refused assent to a bill.
• The Statute of Anne, which took effect in April 1710, is often described as the world's first major copyright law, because it vested copyright primarily in authors rather than printers.
• In her closing speech of 24 April 1707 she asked members to tell their constituents about the benefits the Union would bring.

Sources: The first Parliament of Queen Anne: Third session, the Queen's speech of 24 April 1707 (British History Online); The last of England's Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne (englishmonarchs.co.uk); Queen Anne (Undiscovered Scotland); Wikipedia: Anne, Queen of Great Britain

The Battle of Blenheim (13 August 1704)

The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy led the Grand Alliance against a Franco-Bavarian army near Blindheim in Bavaria. The Allies had about 52,000 men and 66 guns, and their opponents about 56,000 men and 90 guns. Marlborough had covered about 250 miles (400 km) in five weeks to reach the Danube. The French marshal Tallard was captured, and the victory kept Vienna safe.

• The Allies lost 4,542 killed and 7,942 wounded. The Franco-Bavarian side lost about 6,000 killed or drowned, 7,000 wounded and 14,190 captured.
• Right after the battle Marlborough scribbled a note to his wife Sarah, on the back of a tavern bill by most accounts, asking her to tell the Queen that her army had had a glorious victory.
• In February 1705 Queen Anne granted Marlborough the Park of Woodstock and promised 240,000 pounds towards a house, which became Blenheim Palace.

Sources: Marlborough's note to his wife Sarah at the end of the Battle of Blenheim, 13 August 1704 (Wikisource transcription, from Coxe's Memoirs of Marlborough, 1818); The Battle of Blenheim, 13 August 1704 (National Army Museum); Wikipedia: Battle of Blenheim

The Acts of Union (16 January to 1 May 1707)

The Treaty of Union was agreed by commissioners on 22 July 1706. The Scottish Parliament passed it on 16 January 1707 by 110 votes to 67, with 46 absent or abstaining. The English Act received royal assent on 6 March. The Act took effect on 1 May 1707, and Scotland received 45 MPs and 16 peers in the new Parliament. The Church of Scotland, the Court of Session and Scots law were guaranteed.

• The Scottish Parliament met for the last time on 25 March 1707, and a royal proclamation dissolved it on 28 April. The first Parliament of Great Britain met on 23 October.
• Scotland received the Equivalent of 398,085 pounds and ten shillings, most of which compensated Darien investors.
• Many Scots opposed the Union, and historians debate how much bribery influenced the vote. England's Alien Act of 1705, which threatened Scottish trade, pushed Scotland towards negotiation.

Sources: Union with Scotland Act 1706 (legislation.gov.uk); Union with England Act 1707 (legislation.gov.uk); The Union of 1707: Timeline (Scottish Archives for Schools); History of the Scottish Parliament (Scottish Parliament); Wikipedia: Acts of Union 1707

George I (1714 to 1727)

George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover, House of Hanover

George was born in Hanover in 1660 and ruled it as Elector long before he ruled Britain. He spoke German and French and little English, so he leaned on his ministers, and in later years he rarely attended cabinet meetings. His reign saw the Jacobite rising of 1715, the Septennial Act, which stretched the life of a Parliament to seven years, and the South Sea Bubble of 1720. It is also remembered for the rise of Robert Walpole.

How they came to power: Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714 with no surviving child. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701 the crown went to the Protestant line of Sophia of Hanover; Sophia died two months before Anne, so her son George inherited it. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 20 October 1714.

How it ended: George suffered a stroke on his way to Hanover on 9 June 1727 and died two days later at Osnabrück, aged 67. His son became George II.

• Some fifty Roman Catholic relatives (Wikipedia counts fifty-six) had a closer blood claim to the throne than George did; the Act of Settlement had ruled them out because of their religion.
• George had his wife, Sophia Dorothea, confined at Ahlden House after their marriage was dissolved. She was kept from her children and stayed there until she died, more than thirty years later.
• George was first buried in the chapel of the Leine Palace in Hanover. After Allied bombing destroyed the palace in the Second World War, his remains were moved to the mausoleum of King Ernest Augustus in the Berggarten, part of the Herrenhausen Gardens.

Sources: Act of Settlement (12 & 13 Will 3 c. 2, catalogued as 1700; passed in 1701 New Style) (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: George I (royal.uk); Wikipedia: George I of Great Britain

Robert Walpole (1721 to 1742)

Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, Prime Minister · Whig

Walpole was a Norfolk landowner who became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer on 3 April 1721. No law created the office of Prime Minister, but he held the king's confidence and the Commons' votes for over twenty years, which is why he is usually counted as the first. Critics mocked his hold on power as the 'Robinocracy'. He kept Britain out of European wars for most of his time in office, a policy that finally broke down.

How they rose: Walpole rose after the South Sea Bubble of 1720 ruined many investors. He had invested in the company himself, but he steered the Commons through the crisis and was credited with restoring confidence. The 1721 inquiry exposed corruption, and he shielded Stanhope and Sunderland, which earned him the nickname 'The Screen'.

How they died: His excise scheme on wine and tobacco was so unpopular that he withdrew it in 1733. After the War of Jenkins' Ear began in 1739 and the Commons turned against him, he resigned on 11 February 1742, having been made Earl of Orford on 6 February. He died in London on 18 March 1745.

• In 1732 George II offered him the house at 10 Downing Street as a personal gift. Walpole accepted it only as the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, and he moved in on 22 September 1735.
• The War of Jenkins' Ear is named for Robert Jenkins, a sea captain who said a Spanish coastguard sliced off his ear. Walpole was reluctant to fight Spain, but gave way in 1739.
• In 1779 his grandson, the 3rd Earl of Orford, sold many of the works collected at Houghton Hall to Catherine II of Russia, and the collection now lies in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Sources: House of Commons debates, 1733: the Excise Scheme opened by Walpole on 14 March (British History Online); GOV.UK: History of Sir Robert Walpole; GOV.UK: 10 Downing Street; Wikipedia: Robert Walpole

George II (1727 to 1760)

George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover, House of Hanover

George was born in Hanover in 1683 and spent many summers there. He backed Robert Walpole for most of his reign, fought at Dettingen in 1743, and saw his son the Duke of Cumberland crush the last Jacobite army at Culloden in 1746. Britain moved to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the Seven Years' War began in 1756. He feuded bitterly with his eldest son Frederick, who led parliamentary opposition to him.

How they came to power: He succeeded his father, who died on a visit to Hanover in June 1727. George was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 11 October (Old Style) 1727, and Handel wrote four new anthems for the service, including 'Zadok the Priest'.

How it ended: George died at Kensington Palace on 25 October 1760, aged 76. His valet found him on the floor of his private room, and a post-mortem pointed to a tear in the main artery of the chest. His grandson George III succeeded him, because Frederick had died in 1751.

• At Dettingen in 1743 George personally led the allied army to victory. He was the last British monarch to lead troops in battle.
• When his wife Queen Caroline urged him on her deathbed to remarry, he is recorded as answering in French that he would take mistresses instead.
• George asked that the sides of his coffin and Caroline's be removed so that their remains could mingle at Westminster Abbey. The Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750 passed in his reign made the day after 2 September 1752 the 14th, omitting eleven days.

Sources: Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: George II (royal.uk); Wikipedia: George II of Great Britain

The Jacobite Rising of 1745 and Culloden (July 1745 to April 16, 1746)

Charles Edward Stuart, the son of the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart, set out to win back the throne for his father, whom Jacobites called James III. He landed in the Hebrides on 23 July 1745 and raised his standard at Glenfinnan on 19 August. His army beat government troops at Prestonpans on 21 September, entered England and reached Derby on 4 December. A council there voted to retreat, partly because Lord Drummond reported that French ships had landed men, supplies and money at Montrose in Scotland. The retreat ended on 16 April 1746 at Culloden Moor near Inverness, where the Duke of Cumberland's army defeated the Jacobites. The fighting lasted under an hour, and it was the last pitched battle fought on British soil.

• Between 1,000 and 1,500 of the Jacobite army were killed at Culloden, against about 50 killed and 259 wounded on the government side, according to the National Army Museum.
• After the defeat Charles hid for months in the Hebrides, helped by Flora MacDonald, and a French ship took him off from Arisaig on 20 September 1746. He died in Rome in January 1788.
• The Act of Proscription of 1746 banned Highland dress unless it was worn in military service. It was repealed in 1782.

Sources: The Lyon in Mourning: Robert Forbes's collection of Jacobite eyewitness accounts, including Culloden and the Prince's escape (Project Gutenberg); National Army Museum: Battle of Culloden; Wikipedia: Jacobite rising of 1745

The Seven Years' War (May 17, 1756 to February 10, 1763)

The war began formally in May 1756 after a French invasion of Minorca, and it tied British interests in North America, India and Europe together. Britain allied with Prussia in the Convention of Westminster of January 1756. British forces won major victories, including Plassey in India on 23 June 1757. France lost its North American territories in the Treaty of Paris of 10 February 1763. The cost was a heavy national debt, and the effort to raise money from the colonies helped lead to the American Revolution.

• The fighting in North America had started in 1754, when a colonial force under George Washington was defeated by the French in the upper Ohio valley.
• Britain captured Havana and Manila from Spain in 1762 after Spain joined France. In the peace it gave them back, and Spain handed over Florida instead.
• Article IV of the Treaty of Paris let the French inhabitants of Canada keep Catholic worship, and gave those who wished to leave eighteen months to emigrate.

Sources: Treaty of Paris, 1763 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); Office of the Historian: French and Indian War / Seven Years' War, 1754-63; Wikipedia: Seven Years' War

George III (1760 to 1820)

George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, later of the United Kingdom, House of Hanover

George was the first Hanoverian king born in Britain and the first whose first language was English. His reign covered the Seven Years' War, the loss of the American colonies, the Union with Ireland in 1801 and the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. He opposed American independence to the end, though the policies behind the war were backed by Parliament. He also collected books: about 65,000 of them were later given to the British Museum and became the core of a national library.

How they came to power: He succeeded his grandfather George II on 25 October 1760, because his father Frederick had died in 1751. He married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in September 1761, and they had fifteen children.

How it ended: He suffered serious illness in 1788 to 1789, again in 1801, and from 1810 on, and was permanently unfit to rule from 1810. His son governed as Prince Regent from 1811. George died at Windsor Castle on 29 January 1820, aged 81, having been blind in his last years. Historians still debate whether his illness was porphyria or bipolar disorder, and recent work leans towards bipolar disorder.

• In the crisis after the British surrender at Yorktown, George drafted a notice of abdication. It was never delivered.
• The Declaration of Independence lists some twenty-seven grievances, and it says 'the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations'.
• When he died he was the longest-reigning British monarch to that date, at 59 years and 96 days.

Sources: The Declaration of Independence: a transcription (National Archives, US); The Royal Family: George III (royal.uk); Wikipedia: George III

James Watt (1765 to 1819)

James Watt, instrument maker and engineer, Engineer · Industrial Revolution

Watt was born in Greenock, Scotland, in 1736, and set up an instrument-making workshop at the University of Glasgow in 1757. Early engines, such as Thomas Newcomen's of 1712, wasted most of their heat. Watt's separate condenser cut the coal needed to power them by about two thirds, which let steam drive mills and workshops far from coal mines. He then adapted the engine to turn a wheel, and in 1775 he went into partnership with Matthew Boulton in Birmingham.

How they rose: In 1763 Watt was asked to repair a university model of a Newcomen engine, which barely worked. His experiments showed that heat was wasted in reheating the cylinder each stroke. In May 1765 he saw that the steam should condense in a separate chamber, and the patent was granted on 5 January 1769.

How they died: Watt retired and worked in a garret workshop at his home, Heathfield Hall near Birmingham. He died there on 25 August 1819, aged 83.

• Boulton and Watt did not just sell engines. They charged an annual payment equal to one third of the value of the coal an engine saved compared with a Newcomen engine doing the same work.
• After Watt's death his garret workshop was locked and left largely undisturbed, with a few visitors admitted after 1848; the biographer J. P. Muirhead saw it in 1853. When the house was due for demolition in 1924, the room and its contents went to the Science Museum, which rebuilt it.
• The unit of power, the watt, is named after him. The British Association adopted it in 1889.

Sources: James Watt's patent specification No. 913 (letters patent of 5 January 1769, specification signed 25 April 1769; scan, Wikimedia Commons); Science Museum Blog: James Watt and the separate condenser; Wikipedia: James Watt; Science Museum Group Journal: Watt's workshop

James Cook's Voyages (1768 to 1779)

Captain James Cook, Royal Navy explorer, Explorer · Royal Navy

James Cook was born in 1728 in Marton, Yorkshire. His first voyage in HMS Endeavour (1768 to 1771) publicly aimed to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti, with secret orders to search for a southern continent. He charted New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, and Joseph Banks, then 25, sailed as naturalist. His second voyage (1772 to 1775) set out to find out whether the great southern continent existed. His third (1776 to 1779) searched for a North-West Passage and reached Hawaii. Cook claimed lands for Britain, and his visits had lasting effects on the peoples he met.

How they rose: Cook commanded the Endeavour on a voyage sponsored jointly by the Royal Navy and the Royal Society. He later received the Royal Society's Copley Medal for a paper on preventing scurvy.

How they died: On 14 February 1779 at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, an attempt to take the ruling chief hostage over a stolen cutter ended in a fight in which Cook was killed, along with four marines. Wikipedia gives seventeen Hawaiians killed at Kaawaloa and eight more elsewhere in the bay, and accounts of the fight differ. He was 50.

• At Botany Bay in April and May 1770, Cook's own journal records the crew catching stingrays and burying Forby Sutherland, who died on the night of 30 April and was buried on 1 May. He named the bay for the plants collected by Banks and Solander. His journal also records that local people mostly kept away and that he fired muskets at those who threw darts and a stone.
• On his second voyage the ships crossed the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773. The 1911 Britannica says Cook lost only one man out of 118 in more than 1,000 days and had conquered scurvy; Wikipedia separately records that ten men of the consort ship Adventure were killed in New Zealand in December 1773.
• The Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef on 11 June 1770. When Cook sighted Hawaii on 18 January 1778 he named the group the Sandwich Islands after the First Lord of the Admiralty.

Sources: Captain Cook's Journal During His First Voyage Round the World, 1768-71 (Project Gutenberg); 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica: Cook, James (Wikisource); Wikipedia: James Cook; Royal Museums Greenwich: The Death of Captain James Cook, 14 February 1779 (Zoffany)

The Loss of the American Colonies (April 19, 1775 to September 3, 1783)

The fighting began at Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775. The surrender of John Burgoyne's army at Saratoga in October 1777 helped convince France and Spain that an independent United States could survive, and Britain found itself fighting several powers at once. Charles Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown in 1781 led George III's ministers to seek peace. Lord North announced his resignation in the Commons on 20 March 1782. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783, Britain acknowledged thirteen states as free, sovereign and independent. According to the royal family's own history page, George III opposed independence to the end, but the policies behind the war were backed by Parliament.

• A story says that Lord North reacted to news of Yorktown with the cry 'O God! it is all over!' It comes from Nathaniel Wraxall, and the Dictionary of National Biography entry on North notes that the tale has inaccuracies.
• In the same war Britain also ceded Minorca and both Floridas to Spain, which had joined the American side.
• In December 1783 the Fox-North coalition, formed after the war by two former enemies, was dismissed after the House of Lords rejected its East India Bill.

Sources: The Definitive Treaty of Peace, Paris, 1783 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); Dictionary of National Biography: Frederick North, Lord North (Wikisource); The Royal Family: George III (royal.uk); Wikipedia: American Revolutionary War

William Pitt the Younger (1783 to 1801 and 1804 to 1806)

William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister · Whig, later called Tory

Pitt was the son of William Pitt the Elder, who had also been Prime Minister. He pursued reforms aimed at efficiency and cutting corruption, and in 1786 set up a sinking fund to pay down the national debt. He reluctantly agreed to war with France in 1793, and in 1799 he introduced Britain's first income tax to pay for it. He engineered the union with Ireland.

How they rose: He took office on 19 December 1783, aged 24, after George III's opposition helped bring down the Fox-North coalition, when the House of Lords defeated its East India bill. A general election in 1784 gave him a Commons majority.

How they died: Pitt resigned in 1801 (he announced it in February and left office on 14 March). The usual explanation is that George III refused to admit Catholics to Parliament as part of the Irish Union, though one later account argues he wanted peace with France. He returned as Prime Minister on 10 May 1804. He died at Putney on 23 January 1806, aged 46, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

• The national debt doubled to about £243 million during the American war, and fell to about £170 million by 1792.
• In 1798 he fought a duel with the Foxite MP George Tierney on Putney Heath. Neither man was hurt.
• William Wilberforce studied at Cambridge at the same time as Pitt and became his lifelong friend and political ally.

Sources: Union with Ireland Act 1800 (legislation.gov.uk); GOV.UK history blog: William Pitt the Younger; Wikipedia: William Pitt the Younger

The Union with Ireland (July 2, 1800 (assent); January 1, 1801 (in force))

After the rebellion of 1798, crushed with great bloodshed and supported by a French landing, ministers in London wanted a closer link with Ireland. The Union with Ireland Act 1800 states that the two kingdoms were to be 'united into one kingdom' from 1 January 1801 and 'represented in one and the same Parliament'. One hundred Irish MPs sat in the Commons, and in the Lords 28 Irish peers by election and four Church of Ireland bishops. The Union Flag gained the saltire of St Patrick. The first attempt failed in the Irish Commons in 1799, and sources give different tallies for that vote. In 1800 the government won the first division of the session by 158 to 115, a figure Wikipedia presents as the vote that passed the Union, while the Dictionary of National Biography says the bill itself passed the Irish Commons on 7 June 1800 by a majority of 65; the sources differ on which stage each number belongs to. Contemporary accounts say that honours, peerages and offices helped win votes. The Dublin bar and many citizens opposed it.

• Catholic emancipation was expected to follow the Union. George III objected, arguing it would break his coronation oath, and Pitt left office. Catholics did not win the right to sit in Parliament until 1829.
• The first Parliament of the United Kingdom met on 22 January 1801.
• Parts of the Acts of Union 1800 remain in force in the UK. According to Wikipedia, the Irish Act was repealed in the Republic of Ireland in 1962 and the British Act in 1983.

Sources: Union with Ireland Act 1800 (legislation.gov.uk); Dictionary of National Biography: Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (Wikisource); Wikipedia: Acts of Union 1800

Trafalgar and Nelson (October 21, 1805)

Napoleon's plan to invade Britain depended on a combined French and Spanish fleet. On 21 October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, 27 British ships of the line met 33 French and Spanish ones. Nelson attacked in two columns, cutting across the enemy line, and signalled 'England expects that every man will do his duty'. Nelson was shot from the mizzen-top of the French ship Redoutable at about 1.15 pm and died at about 4.30 pm. The battle ended the French invasion plan, though it had limited effect on the wider land war.

• The British lost no ships. The allies lost eighteen: seventeen captured and the Achille, which blew up; the 1911 Britannica counts eighteen as 'taken'. A storm after the battle sank or drove ashore many damaged ships.
• The surgeon William Beatty, who attended Nelson, recorded that Hardy knelt and kissed Nelson's cheek, and that Nelson repeated 'Thank GOD, I have done my duty' for as long as he could speak. Beatty puts the fatal shot at about a quarter past one and Nelson's death at half past four.
• Nelson was born in 1758 and had lost most of his right arm at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797. He suffered from seasickness all his life.

Sources: William Beatty, Authentic Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson, 1807 (Wikisource); 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica: Trafalgar, Battle of (Wikisource); Wikipedia: Horatio Nelson

The Abolition of the Slave Trade and William Wilberforce (March 25, 1807)

William Wilberforce, MP for Hull from 1780, was persuaded in 1787 to lead the parliamentary campaign, working with Thomas Clarkson and others. His first bill in 1791 was defeated 163 to 88. In 1807 the Commons gave the bill a second reading on 23 February by 283 votes to 16, and it received royal assent on 25 March, taking effect on 1 May. Lord Grenville led the bill in the Lords, and Charles James Fox had died in September 1806. Captains could be fined up to £100 for each enslaved person found on their ship. The Act ended the trade, not slavery itself.

• British ships carried about 400,000 Africans in 1791 to 1800 and 266,000 more in 1801 to 1807. Britain carried about a third of the roughly 3.5 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic.
• The Royal Navy set up the West Africa Squadron in 1808. Between 1808 and 1860 it seized about 1,600 slave ships and freed about 150,000 Africans.
• In the Commons debate of 23 February 1807, Lord Howick called the trade 'unjust and impolitic', while General Gascoyne warned that conspiracies and insurrections would follow in the islands.

Sources: Slave Trade Abolition Bill, House of Commons debate, 23 February 1807 (Historic Hansard); The National Archives: Slavery and the British transatlantic slave trade; Wikipedia: Slave Trade Act 1807

Waterloo and Wellington (June 18, 1815)

Napoleon escaped exile on Elba and returned to power in March 1815, hoping to beat his enemies one at a time. On 16 June he defeated the Prussians at Ligny while Wellington held off a French attack at Quatre Bras. On 18 June near Waterloo, in what is now Belgium, Wellington's Anglo-allied army held a ridge. The outposts of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte anchored the line, and Hougoumont held all day. Prussian troops under Blücher arrived in the afternoon. The Imperial Guard was repulsed at about seven in the evening. Napoleon abdicated four days later and was exiled to St Helena, where he died on 5 May 1821. Arthur Wellesley was born in 1769 and later became Prime Minister (1828 to 1830), when he oversaw the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829. He died at Walmer Castle on 14 September 1852.

• By one count, Wellington's army was about 74,000 men and only 27,985 (38 per cent) were British; the rest were allied troops. The National Army Museum gives the Anglo-Allied army as 68,000, so totals differ by source.
• Wellington called Waterloo 'the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life'.
• Wellington is reported to have called his victory at Assaye in India in 1803 'the finest thing he ever did in the way of fighting', above Waterloo.

Sources: Duke of Wellington's Dispatch to Earl Bathurst on Waterloo, printed in the London Gazette, 22 June 1815 (Wikisource); National Army Museum: Battle of Waterloo; GOV.UK: History of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington; Wikipedia: Battle of Waterloo

Peterloo (August 16, 1819)

On Monday 16 August 1819 a crowd estimated at tens of thousands (about 60,000 in the People's History Museum's estimate) gathered at St Peter's Field in Manchester to hear the radical speaker Henry Hunt call for parliamentary reform. The magistrates, led by William Hulton, called in the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry and the 15th Hussars, who charged the crowd; Hunt was arrested. Most counts give at least eighteen dead, though a 2007 plaque gives fifteen and the 1819 Manchester petition spoke of eight. Injured counts run from about 400 to 700. Hunt was later convicted at York and imprisoned in Ilchester gaol; Wikipedia gives a sentence of 30 months, the Dictionary of National Biography two years. A petition presented in the Commons on 29 November claimed the meeting was peaceful and that no proper Riot Act proclamation was made, while other MPs disputed these claims. The government of Lord Liverpool passed the Six Acts, which restricted public meetings, drilling, seditious writing, and newspapers.

• The name 'Peterloo' was a mocking echo of Waterloo, fought four years earlier. Wikipedia credits the Manchester Observer, edited by James Wroe, with the label.
• At least 168 of the recorded casualties were women, according to Wikipedia, and the People's History Museum gives the same number among almost 700 injured. Many women had attended dressed in white.
• The Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821 by a group of Manchester businessmen led by John Edward Taylor, who had witnessed the events.

Sources: Manchester Meeting: petition from Manchester respecting the conduct of the magistrates, House of Commons, 29 November 1819 (Historic Hansard); Dictionary of National Biography: Henry Hunt (Wikisource); Wikipedia: Peterloo Massacre; People's History Museum: Protest and Peterloo, the story of 16 August 1819

George IV (1820 to 1830)

George IV, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, House of Hanover

George was Regent from 1811, when his father was unfit to rule, and king from 1820. He built and collected on a grand scale: the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and the remodelling of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. His secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert in 1785 was legally void, as he had not sought the king's consent. His official marriage to Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 failed. In 1829 his ministers pressed him to sign the Roman Catholic Relief Act, which he did reluctantly on 13 April 1829.

How they came to power: He became Prince Regent on 5 February 1811 and king on 29 January 1820, when George III died.

How it ended: His only child, Princess Charlotte, had died in 1817, so the throne passed to his brother William. George died at Windsor Castle on 26 June 1830 and was buried in St George's Chapel on 15 July. Debts and his marriage troubles had kept his popularity low.

• His coronation on 19 July 1821 cost about £243,000, and his wife Caroline was excluded from the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. She died on 7 August 1821.
• Walter Scott organised George's 1822 visit to Scotland, and a portrait by David Wilkie shows the king in Highland dress.
• He weighed about 17 stone 7 pounds in 1797, and about 20 stone by 1830.

Sources: Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: George IV (royal.uk); Wikipedia: George IV

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (September 15, 1830)

Parliament authorised the line in 1826 after an earlier bill failed. It ran 31 miles between Liverpool and Manchester, crossing the bog of Chat Moss, and cut the journey to about two hours. George Stephenson was appointed principal engineer in 1824, was replaced for the 1826 bill and later returned to the work, and the locomotive contract went to Robert Stephenson and Company after the Rocket was the only entrant to finish the Rainhill Trials in October 1829. It was the first railway to rely only on steam locomotives, and the first to be fully timetabled and to carry mail. The opening on 15 September 1830 was attended by the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister.

• William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool, was hit by the Rocket during the opening and his leg was shattered. He died at Eccles.
• Fanny Kemble, an actress, rode beside George Stephenson on a trial trip in August 1830. She wrote that the train reached 35 miles an hour, and that when she closed her eyes 'this sensation of flying' was 'quite delightful'. She called the little engines 'curious little fire-horses'.
• In her letter Kemble recalled Stephenson telling her that he would 'make my road float upon Chatmoss'. She wrote that the road did float, laid on a foundation of basket-work and moss. The Rocket crossed Chat Moss on 28 December 1829 in 17 minutes.

Sources: Fanny Kemble, Records of a Girlhood: letter from Liverpool describing a trip with George Stephenson, August 1830 (Project Gutenberg); Wikipedia: Liverpool and Manchester Railway; Science Museum Group: Rocket locomotive (Rainhill Trials, 1829; Huskisson at the 1830 opening); Science Museum Group: Huskisson Memorial (death of William Huskisson at Parkside, 15 September 1830)

William IV (1830 to 1837)

William IV, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, House of Hanover

William was the third son of George III and joined the Royal Navy at 13, serving under Nelson in the West Indies. His reign was dominated by parliamentary reform. The 1830 election weakened Wellington's Tories, he was defeated in the Commons in November 1830, and Earl Grey's Whigs took office and pushed for reform. William used the threat of creating 50 or more peers to overcome Lords' opposition. The Reform Act, the Factory Act and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 all fall in his reign.

How they came to power: He became heir presumptive in January 1827, aged 61, when his brother Frederick, Duke of York, died. He became king on 26 June 1830, at 64 the oldest person to accede to the British throne up to that point.

How it ended: William died at Windsor Castle on 20 June 1837, aged 71, a month after his niece Victoria came of age. Salic law barred Victoria from ruling Hanover, which went to his brother Ernest Augustus.

• In 1834 he dismissed Lord Melbourne's ministry and appointed Robert Peel. He was the last British monarch to appoint a prime minister against Parliament's will.
• His 1831 coronation was deliberately scaled down: its budget was under £30,000, compared with £240,000 for his brother's.
• He had ten illegitimate children with the actress Dorothea Jordan, all called FitzClarence. After the Houses of Parliament burned in 1834 he offered Buckingham Palace to Parliament.

Sources: The Representation of the People Act 1832 (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: William IV (royal.uk); Wikipedia: William IV

The Great Reform Act (June 7, 1832)

Lord John Russell introduced the Reform Bill in the Commons on 1 March 1831 for Earl Grey's Whig government. Opening the debate, he argued that no man of common sense would say that the House then represented the people. His first plan would have removed both members from 60 small boroughs and one from 47 others. The second reading passed on 22 March by only one vote. The Lords rejected a later version, and rioters controlled Bristol for three days. In April 1832 the Lords passed the second reading by nine votes, then carried Lyndhurst's motion to delay the disfranchising clauses by 35 votes, and Grey's ministry resigned on 9 May. Wellington failed to form a government, the king gave written authority on 17 May to create enough Whig peers, enough opponents then stayed away, and the Act received royal assent on 7 June 1832.

• Gatton had seven voters and Dunwich 32. The 56 smallest boroughs lost both MPs and the next 30 lost one.
• The electorate rose from about 400,000 to 650,000. The Act defined a voter as a 'male person' and set a £10 householder qualification in boroughs.
• Separate reform acts were passed for Scotland and Ireland. The high property qualifications fed the growth of Chartism.

Sources: Ministerial Plan of Parliamentary Reform, Lord John Russell, House of Commons, 1 March 1831 (Historic Hansard); The Representation of the People Act 1832 (legislation.gov.uk); Dictionary of National Biography: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (Wikisource); Wikipedia: Reform Act 1832

The Slavery Abolition Act (August 28, 1833 (assent); August 1, 1834 (in force))

The Act received royal assent on 28 August 1833 and took effect on 1 August 1834. Section 12 states that all slaves in the British colonies were emancipated from that date. Children under six were freed at once. Non-praedial workers, including house servants, had to serve a four-year apprenticeship, and praedial workers six, though several colonies ended it early, and Jamaica legislated in June 1838 to end it early. The Act did not at first cover territories of the East India Company, Ceylon and St Helena. About 800,000 people were freed.

• The £20 million in compensation went to slave owners and was about 40 per cent of the Treasury's annual income at the time.
• A £15 million loan to fund the payment was finalised in 1835 with Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. The debt was fully cleared in 2015, when the government redeemed its remaining undated gilts. Wikipedia notes that this claim rests partly on a technicality.
• William Wilberforce died on 29 July 1833. He had heard on 26 July that the Act's passage was assured.

Sources: Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (legislation.gov.uk); The National Archives: Slavery and the British transatlantic slave trade; Royal Museums Greenwich: printed bill, William IV chapter 73, 'An Act for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Colonies', 28 August 1833; Wikipedia: Slavery Abolition Act 1833

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1833 to 1859)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer, Engineer · Bristol and London

Brunel became engineer of the Great Western Railway in 1833 and built it with a broad gauge of 7 ft and a quarter inch, including the Box Tunnel. His SS Great Western left Bristol on 8 April 1838 (a fire had delayed an earlier departure) and reached New York on 23 April. The SS Great Britain, launched in 1843, was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic, in 1845. He also designed the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash and the prefabricated Renkioi hospital for the Crimean War, designed in 1855 with 1,000 beds. His last great ship, the Great Eastern, became a cable-laying ship in 1865 and helped lay the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable.

How they rose: He was born at Portsea on 9 April 1806, the son of engineer Marc Brunel. On 6 January 1828 the Thames Tunnel flooded and Brunel was seriously injured. He entered the Clifton Suspension Bridge competition in 1829 and became the GWR's engineer in March 1833.

How they died: On 5 September 1859 he inspected the Great Eastern and was struck down two hours later. He died on 15 September at his home in Westminster, aged 53. The Clifton Bridge was finished after his death, in 1864.

• On 3 April 1843 a coin lodged in his windpipe during a trick he was performing for his children.
• The SS Great Britain was launched in Bristol on 19 July 1843 by Prince Albert.
• In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons he came second.

Sources: The Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer, by Isambard Brunel (his son), 1870 (Project Gutenberg); Science Museum Group: Isambard Kingdom Brunel 1806-1859; World History Encyclopedia: Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Wikipedia: Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Charles Dickens (1836 to 1870)

Charles Dickens, novelist, Novelist · London

Dickens wrote 15 novels and 5 novellas, most first published in serial instalments. The Pickwick Papers (1836) made him famous. Oliver Twist was serialised from 1837 and published as a book in 1838, A Christmas Carol was written in 1843, and Great Expectations is among his best-known later novels. He edited the magazines Household Words and All the Year Round, and he gave public reading tours.

How they rose: Born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, he left school at about 12 to work in a boot-blacking warehouse while his father was in the Marshalsea debtors' prison. The serial Pickwick Papers began publication in 1836.

How they died: He died on 9 June 1870, aged 58. He was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

• He founded and ran Urania Cottage, a home for women leaving prostitution.
• He separated from his wife Catherine in 1858. From 1857 his partner until his death was the actress Ellen Ternan.
• Most of his novels were first published in serial format, with illustrators often drawing at short notice.

Sources: Dickens: Oliver Twist (Project Gutenberg); V&A: Charles Dickens; Wikipedia: Charles Dickens

Queen Victoria (1837 to 1901)

Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and (from 1877) Empress of India, House of Hanover

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and gave her name to an age of railways, factories, empire and reform. Her reign ran for 63 years and 216 days, longer than any predecessor's. She married her cousin Prince Albert in 1840 and they had nine children, whose marriages into other royal houses earned her the nickname 'grandmother of Europe'. Parliament made her Empress of India, a title proclaimed at Delhi on 1 January 1877. She marked her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

How they came to power: Her father, the Duke of Kent, died in 1820 when she was under a year old, and her three uncles ahead of her in line died without surviving legitimate children. William IV died on 20 June 1837, a few weeks after her 18th birthday, so no regency was needed.

How it ended: She died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight on 22 January 1901, aged 81, and was buried on 4 February at the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore, Windsor.

• On the morning of 20 June 1837 her mother woke her at six. In her journal she wrote that she went into her sitting-room in her dressing-gown, alone, to be told by the Lord Chamberlain that she was Queen.
• Hanover had shared a monarch with Britain since 1714, but Hanoverian law excluded women from the succession. On her accession the crowns split, and her uncle Ernest Augustus became King of Hanover.
• The royal website counts seven assassination attempts on her between 1840 and 1882. Edward Oxford's pistol attack in 1840 was the first.

Sources: Queen Victoria's journal and letters (royal.uk: Historic Royal Speeches and Writings, PDF); The Royal Family: Victoria (r. 1837-1901); Wikipedia: Queen Victoria

The Chartists and the People's Charter (1838 to 1848)

Chartism was Britain's first mass working-class political movement. Its programme, the People's Charter of 1838, had six points: the vote for men over 21, a secret ballot, no property qualification for MPs, payment of MPs, equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. The Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men's Association, founded in 1836, whose secretary was William Lovett. The movement spread through mass meetings, a national convention and the newspaper the Northern Star, and it split over whether to use peaceful or forceful means.

• Parliament rejected the first petition in July 1839 by 235 votes to 46, and the second in 1842 by 287 to 49.
• Feargus O'Connor was the only Chartist ever elected an MP, winning Nottingham in 1847. For the 1848 rally the authorities swore in special constables; sources give between about 100,000 and 150,000.
• In 1839 the Chartist paper the Northern Star was the best-selling provincial newspaper in Britain, with a circulation of about 50,000.

Sources: Chartism: The People's Petition, 1838 (Fordham Internet History Sourcebooks); The Peel Web: Chartism events, 1836 to 1848; The Victorian Web: Chartism in 1848; Wikipedia: Chartism

Prince Albert (1840 to 1861)

Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Consort, Prince Consort · Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Albert was born in 1819 in Saxe-Coburg and was Victoria's first cousin. He had no formal political power and once described himself as 'the husband, not the master in the house'. In practice he became her trusted adviser. He promoted education, science and industry, and he was the driving force behind the Great Exhibition of 1851. Victoria gave him the title Prince Consort in 1857.

How they rose: Their engagement was announced in November 1839, and they married on 10 February 1840 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace.

How they died: He died at Windsor Castle on 14 December 1861, aged 42, of what was diagnosed as typhoid fever. Some modern writers suggest a chronic illness such as Crohn's disease or cancer. Victoria wore black for the rest of her life.

• Although ill in his last weeks, he softened the wording of Britain's demands in the Trent affair with the United States in 1861, which helped avoid a crisis.
• He did not introduce the Christmas tree to Britain. The royal website notes that Queen Charlotte had brought one in during the 18th century, though Albert helped make it popular.
• The Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial were built in his honour. A surplus of about 180,000 pounds from the 1851 Exhibition he championed was used to buy land in South Kensington, where the museums later stood.

Sources: Queen Victoria's journal and letters (royal.uk: Historic Royal Speeches and Writings, PDF); The Principal Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, 1862 (Project Gutenberg); The Royal Family: Prince Albert; Wikipedia: Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Sir Robert Peel (1841 to 1846)

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, Prime Minister, Prime Minister · Conservative

Peel was Home Secretary when he founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829; its officers were nicknamed 'bobbies' and 'peelers' after him. He was Prime Minister briefly in 1834 to 1835 and again from 1841 to 1846. His government reintroduced income tax in 1842 at just under 3 per cent to make up for cuts in tariffs, and passed the Factory Act of 1844. He is remembered above all for repealing the Corn Laws in 1846.

How they rose: Born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1788, he issued the Tamworth Manifesto in 1834, a statement of principles later seen as the root of modern Conservatism. After the 1841 election he returned as Prime Minister.

How they died: The Lords passed the repeal on 25 June 1846. On the same night the Commons defeated his Irish Coercion Bill 292 to 219, and he resigned on 29 June. On 29 June 1850 he fell from his horse on Constitution Hill, London, and died on 2 July.

• In 1839 he declined to form a government after Queen Victoria refused to replace Whig-linked ladies of her household, an episode known as the Bedchamber Crisis.
• In late 1845 he secretly arranged the purchase of about 100,000 pounds' worth of maize from America to ease the Irish famine.
• As Home Secretary he reformed the penal code and reduced the number of crimes punishable by death.

Sources: Hansard: Corn Importation Bill, third night of debate, 15 May 1846; GOV.UK Past Prime Ministers: Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet; Wikipedia: Robert Peel

The Great Famine in Ireland (1845 to 1852)

Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and millions depended on the potato. Blight reached Ireland in late 1845 and the 1846 harvest lost about three-quarters of its potatoes. Roughly a million people died, mostly of disease and starvation, and over a million emigrated. Government relief was limited and shifted over time. In January 1847 the government abandoned its policy of non-interference and turned to workhouse relief and soup kitchens. Historians still argue over how far policy, landlords, trade and the blight each shaped the toll, and the end date is given as 1851 or 1852 in different accounts.

• On 15 December 1846 magistrate Nicholas Cummins visited Skibbereen, County Cork. He described to the Duke of Wellington what he found, and the letter was printed in The Times on 24 December.
• The Choctaw Nation collected about 170 dollars for Irish relief in 1847 (some accounts give a higher figure), and Queen Victoria gave 2,000 pounds from her own funds and issued letters appealing for donations.
• The Gregory clause of the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1847 barred anyone holding a quarter acre or more of land from relief, which pushed many families to give up their holdings.

Sources: The Peel Web: The famine in Skibbereen (Cummins letter, 1846; parliamentary papers, 1847); PBS Masterpiece: The Irish Famine; Wikipedia: Great Famine (Ireland)

The repeal of the Corn Laws (15 May to 26 June 1846)

The Corn Laws taxed imported grain. The Anti-Corn Law League, led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, campaigned for repeal for years. Peel, who had long opposed repeal, backed it during the Irish famine. The Commons passed the bill on 15 May 1846 by 327 votes to 229. The Lords passed it on 25 June after the Duke of Wellington persuaded peers to accept it, and it received royal assent on 26 June.

• Historians disagree about the League's part. One account says it played a minor role in passing the legislation, though Peel credited Cobden with the success of the measure.
• Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck led the attack on Peel. Disraeli argued that repeal would hand power from landowners to commercial interests.
• The measure's formal name is the Importation Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. 22). The GOV.UK history page says Peel resigned in June 1846 after defeat on another bill.

Sources: Hansard: Corn Importation Bill, third night of debate, 15 May 1846; GOV.UK Past Prime Ministers: Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet; Wikipedia: Repeal of the Corn Laws

The Great Exhibition (1 May to 15 October 1851)

Held in Hyde Park from 1 May to 15 October 1851, the Great Exhibition showed machinery, manufactures and art from Britain, its colonies and dozens of other states. It was housed in the Crystal Palace, a cast-iron and glass hall designed by Joseph Paxton, about 563 metres long. Prince Albert and Henry Cole were among its main organisers. About 14,000 exhibitors showed more than 100,000 objects, and about 6 million visits were made.

• Queen Victoria called opening day 'one of the greatest and most glorious days of our lives' in her journal, and recorded the sun shining on the Palace.
• Full-grown trees were enclosed inside the hall.
• Public flush toilets made their debut: about 827,000 visitors paid a penny each to use George Jennings's conveniences. The Koh-i-Noor diamond was also on show.

Sources: Queen Victoria's journal and letters (royal.uk: Historic Royal Speeches and Writings, PDF); Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851 (Internet Archive); World History Encyclopedia: Great Exhibition; Wikipedia: Great Exhibition

The Crimean War (1853 to 1856)

Russia fought the Ottoman Empire, Britain, France and Sardinia. A dispute over Russia's claim to protect Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands lit the fuse. Allied armies landed in the Crimea in September 1854 to take the naval base at Sevastopol. They won at the Alma and defeated the Russians at Inkerman. The siege of Sevastopol lasted about eleven months and ended with the fall of the city in September 1855. On 25 October 1854 at Balaklava the Light Brigade made its charge: about 260 of its 673 men were killed or wounded after an order was misread.

• In nearly every set of figures, more men died of disease than in action. The medical failures led to demands for professional nursing and army medical reform.
• Roger Fenton's photograph 'Valley of the Shadow of Death' is one of the best-known images of a war that was among the first widely recorded in photographs and press reports.
• Tennyson's poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' appeared in 1854, and its refrain 'Rode the six hundred' fixed the image in the public mind.

Sources: Tennyson: The Charge of the Light Brigade (Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto); National Army Museum: Battle of Balaclava; Wikipedia: Crimean War

Florence Nightingale (1854 to 1910)

Florence Nightingale, nurse and statistician, Nursing reformer · Crimean War

Nightingale was appointed Superintendent of the Female Nurses in the Hospitals in the East. She reached the Scutari barracks hospital in early November 1854. Her team improved sanitation, set up kitchens and laundry, and wrote letters home for soldiers. Back in England she campaigned for cleaner hospitals, published Notes on Nursing in 1859, and opened the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas' Hospital in 1860.

How they rose: She was born in Florence on 12 May 1820. Newspaper reports from the Crimea, especially those of W. H. Russell of The Times, drew attention to poor care and shortages, and she answered the government's appeal for nurses.

How they died: She died in London on 13 August 1910, aged 90. In 1907 she had become the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.

• Scutari's hospital death rate reached 42 per cent by February 1855. She first blamed poor nutrition, not sanitation, and it fell only after a sanitary commission repaired the sewers and ventilation.
• In January 1856 Queen Victoria sent her a brooch inscribed 'Blessed are the Merciful', with a letter praising services 'fully equal to those of my dear and brave soldiers'.
• The 'lamp' image came from a Times report of her night rounds, and Longfellow's 1857 poem 'Santa Filomena' made it famous. She was later the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society.

Sources: Florence Nightingale: Notes on Nursing, 1859 (Project Gutenberg); Queen Victoria's journal and letters (royal.uk: Historic Royal Speeches and Writings, PDF); National Army Museum: Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp; Florence Nightingale Museum: The Crimean War; Wikipedia: Florence Nightingale

Lord Palmerston (1855 to 1858 and 1859 to 1865)

Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister, Prime Minister · Whig and Liberal

Palmerston sat in government for 46 years and was popular for an assertive foreign policy. As Foreign Secretary (1830 to 1834, 1835 to 1841 and 1846 to 1851) he led the Foreign Office through the First Opium War and, in 1850, authorised coercion of Greece over the claims of David Pacifico, a Gibraltar-born British subject. As Prime Minister he led the country through the Indian Rebellion, and helped get Parliament to approve the Divorce Court in 1857.

How they rose: A Tory MP from 1807, he sat in the Commons because his Irish peerage did not give him a seat in the Lords. He became Prime Minister in February 1855 after Aberdeen's coalition fell during the Crimean War.

How they died: He died at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, on 18 October 1865, two days short of his 81st birthday, still Prime Minister. He remains the most recent PM to die in office.

• In the Don Pacifico debate the Lords censured his policy by 37 votes on 17 June 1850. The Commons then backed him 310 to 264 after a speech of about five hours that included the phrase 'Civis Romanus sum'.
• In April 1850 he told the Commons that reprisals against Greek ships were aimed at the Greek government, not the Greek people.
• In February 1858 his government introduced a bill to move the East India Company's powers to the Crown. He resigned before it passed, and Lord Derby's ministry carried the Government of India Act in August 1858.

Sources: Hansard: Supply, Reprisals, Greece, 8 April 1850; GOV.UK Past Prime Ministers: Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston; Wikipedia: Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

The Indian Rebellion and the British Raj (10 May 1857 to 1 November 1858)

The revolt began on 10 May 1857 at Meerut, where sepoys freed 85 jailed comrades. Rebels reached Delhi and made the aged Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar their nominal leader. Fighting spread to Cawnpore, Lucknow and Jhansi. Causes included resentment of Company rule, annexations, pay and promotion in the Bengal Army, and a rumour that Enfield rifle cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat. Historians weigh these causes differently. The rising was not universal: the Madras and Bombay armies were relatively unaffected, and Sikh, Punjabi Muslim and Gurkha units backed the British.

• Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1 November 1858 promised that no subject would be favoured or harassed for religion, and that Indians could enter government service if qualified. Its amnesty excluded those convicted of directly taking part in murdering British subjects.
• The event has several names. British sources long called it the Mutiny. Others call it the Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857 or the First War of Independence.
• Estimates of deaths are rough: about 6,000 British, and probably about 800,000 Indians once the famines and epidemics that followed are counted. Wikipedia calls this a rough estimate based on uncertain demographic data.

Sources: Queen's Proclamation of 1858, in Kaye and Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny (ibiblio); National Army Museum: Why did the Indian Rebellion happen?; National Army Museum: Decisive events of the Indian Rebellion; Wikipedia: Indian Rebellion of 1857

Darwin's On the Origin of Species (24 November 1859)

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published by John Murray on 24 November 1859. It argued that populations change over generations through natural selection, with Lamarckian mechanisms given a minor role. The book has a single illustration, a tree diagram of branching descent. Darwin dated his work on the theory from 1837.

• Murray's plan assumed 1,250 copies, and the booksellers took the whole edition, according to the Darwin Correspondence Project.
• The word 'evolution' does not appear in the first edition. It first appears in the sixth. Every edition ends with the word 'evolved'.
• The popular claim that Darwin sat on his theory for twenty years is contested. Historian John van Wyhe argues the idea of a long, fearful delay dates only from the 1940s.

Sources: Darwin: On the Origin of Species (Project Gutenberg); Darwin Correspondence Project: Origin; Wikipedia: On the Origin of Species

The Second Reform Act (1866 to 15 August 1867)

The Reform Act 1867 enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales. It roughly doubled the number of voters, from about one million out of about seven million adult men in England and Wales. A few boroughs were disenfranchised and some seats redistributed. Separate Acts followed in 1868 for Scotland and Ireland. The Act received royal assent on 15 August 1867.

• Gladstone attacked the bill, but changes in the Commons pushed it further than many MPs had wanted.
• An amendment moved by the Liberal Grosvenor Hodgkinson ended 'compounding', where landlords paid rates for tenants, so that many male tenants could qualify to vote directly. EBSCO says it added nearly as many urban voters again as the original bill.
• 'Fancy franchises' for graduates, professionals and savers were meant as a counterweight to a mass electorate.

Sources: Hansard: Parliamentary Reform, Representation of the People Bill, Third Reading, 15 July 1867; EBSCO Research Starters: Reform Act of 1867; Wikipedia: Reform Act 1867

Benjamin Disraeli (1868 and 1874 to 1880)

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Prime Minister, Prime Minister · Conservative

Disraeli wrote novels, beginning with Vivian Grey in 1826, alongside his political career. He entered the Commons in 1837, was Chancellor of the Exchequer three times, and as Conservative leader passed the Reform Act 1867. He was Prime Minister briefly in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. His government arranged the purchase of a major interest in the Suez Canal Company and secured favourable terms at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876.

How they rose: He was born in Bloomsbury, London, in 1804 to a Jewish family. His father left Judaism and Benjamin was baptised into the Church of England in 1817. His novel Sybil, or The Two Nations pictured a country divided into rich and poor.

How they died: The Conservatives lost the 1880 election to Gladstone. Disraeli died on 19 April 1881, after publishing his last completed novel, Endymion.

• He opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and attacked Peel in the Commons.
• His government passed the Royal Titles Act, under which Victoria became Empress of India in 1877.
• He is the only British Prime Minister born Jewish.

Sources: Disraeli: Sybil, or The Two Nations (Project Gutenberg); Hansard: Parliamentary Reform, Disraeli opens the debate, 11 February 1867; GOV.UK Past Prime Ministers: Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield; The Royal Family: Victoria (r. 1837-1901); Wikipedia: Benjamin Disraeli

William Ewart Gladstone (1868 to 1874, 1880 to 1885, 1886, 1892 to 1894)

William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister, Prime Minister · Liberal

Gladstone served four non-consecutive terms as Prime Minister, the most of any British prime minister. His first ministry (1868 to 1874) disestablished the Church of Ireland and introduced secret voting. His Midlothian campaign of 1879 to 1880 is seen as an early modern political campaign. His second ministry passed the Third Reform Act of 1884. He proposed Home Rule for Ireland in 1886, a bill the Commons defeated, splitting the Liberal Party. A second bill passed the Commons in 1893 and was defeated by the Lords.

How they rose: Born in Liverpool on 29 December 1809, he entered the Commons for Newark as a Conservative and later led the Liberal Party. The Victorian Web lists Peel as his mentor.

How they died: He resigned as Prime Minister in March 1894. He died at Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, on 19 May 1898, aged 88, of cancer. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

• Both Home Rule bills failed: the Commons rejected the 1886 bill, and the Lords vetoed the 1893 bill.
• The Victorian Web lists his work with 'fallen women' among the subjects of his life, and a rivalry with Disraeli.
• Public anger at General Gordon's death at Khartoum in January 1885 weakened his second ministry, which ended in June 1885.

Sources: Hansard: Government of Ireland Bill, Gladstone's speech, motion for leave (first night), 8 April 1886; GOV.UK Past Prime Ministers: William Ewart Gladstone; The Victorian Web: William Ewart Gladstone; Wikipedia: William Ewart Gladstone

The Elementary Education Act 1870 (1870 (with follow-up Acts in 1880 and 1891))

Introduced by W. E. Forster, the Act set up school boards where local schools fell short of need. Church and other voluntary schools carried on, with boards filling the gaps. Section 14, the Cowper-Temple clause, required non-denominational religious teaching in board schools, and parents could withdraw children from it. Section 74 let boards pass by-laws requiring attendance. Some recent commentators argue the Act's importance has been overstated.

• The Act brought neither free nor compulsory education at first. Section 25 let boards pay fees for poor children, a clause that drew fierce criticism.
• By 1902 there were about 5,700 board schools with 2.6 million pupils and about 14,000 voluntary schools with 3 million.
• Scotland had its own Act in 1872, which required attendance from the start for children aged 5 to 13.

Sources: Hansard: Elementary Education Bill, leave and first reading, 17 February 1870; The Victorian Web: William Edward Forster (sculpture page); Wikipedia: Elementary Education Act 1870

The Second Boer War (11 October 1899 to 31 May 1902)

The conflict between Britain and the Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, grew from gold on the Witwatersrand and the rights of British incomers (Uitlanders). Boer forces invaded the Cape and Natal in October 1899 and besieged Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. The siege of Mafeking lasted 217 days. Britain suffered defeats in December 1899, known as Black Week, then under Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener relieved the sieges and annexed the Orange Free State in May 1900 and the South African Republic in September 1900.

• More than 100,000 Boer civilians were held in camps. About 26,000 to 28,000, mostly women and children, died, and thousands of Black Africans died in separate camps (estimates run from about 14,000 to 20,000).
• About 22,000 British and imperial troops died, and about two-thirds of the deaths were from disease.
• Sixty Boer delegates debated the peace terms and 54 voted in favour, 6 against. Britain's 1900 'khaki election' was called while the war seemed nearly won.

Sources: Peace of Vereeniging, 31 May 1902 (Wikisource); National Army Museum: Boer War; Wikipedia: Second Boer War

Edward VII (1901 to 1910)

Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Edward VII came to the throne at 59 after a long wait as Prince of Wales. He was known in the family as Bertie and was related to nearly every other European monarch, which earned him the nickname 'Uncle of Europe'. His 1903 visit to France helped create the atmosphere for the 1904 Entente Cordiale, which ended centuries of Anglo-French rivalry. He also involved himself in discussions about army reform after the Boer War. His reign ended with a constitutional crisis: the Conservative-majority Lords had refused to pass the Liberal government's 1909 budget.

How they came to power: He became king on 22 January 1901, when his mother Queen Victoria died. His coronation was set for 26 June 1902 but postponed two days before when he needed an emergency operation for appendicitis; he was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902.

How it ended: He died at Buckingham Palace on 6 May 1910, aged 68, with the budget crisis unresolved. The Parliament Act 1911 later ended the Lords' veto over money bills and limited their power over other public bills to delay. His body lay in state at Westminster Hall; estimates of the crowd that filed past range from about 250,000 (royal.uk) to over 400,000 (Wikipedia).

• He ordered the clocks at Sandringham to run half an hour fast so there was more daylight for shooting. 'Sandringham time' lasted until 1936.
• His horse Persimmon won both the Derby and the St Leger in 1896, and another of his horses, Ambush II, won the Grand National in 1900.
• In April 1900, while travelling through Belgium as Prince of Wales, he was shot at by a 15-year-old, Jean-Baptiste Sipido. A Belgian court acquitted the boy because he was under age. The King's dog Caesar later walked behind his coffin in the procession to Westminster Hall in May 1910.

Sources: Declaration between the UK and France respecting Egypt and Morocco (the Entente Cordiale), 8 April 1904 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); Parliament Act 1911, as enacted (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: Edward VII (r.1901-1910); Wikipedia: Edward VII

Votes for women: the suffragettes and the Acts of 1918 and 1928 (1903 to 1928)

The Women's Social and Political Union was founded in 1903 and run by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. It was known for parades and publicity and later turned to militant tactics. Other groups campaigned by peaceful means. The vote came in two steps: the Representation of the People Act 1918, and the Equal Franchise Act of 1928. Historians debate whether militancy helped or hurt the cause.

• The 1918 Act gave the vote to women over 30 who were householders, wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of 5 pounds, or university graduates. About 8.4 million women gained the vote, and the first election they could vote in was held on 14 December 1918.
• The 1928 Act gave the vote to all women aged 21 on the same terms as men. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 to 1928) died on 14 June 1928, a few weeks before the Act became law in July 1928.
• Women had sometimes voted before. A poll book of 1843 records 30 women voting, and in 1867 Lilly Maxwell voted in a by-election; the Court of Common Pleas later ruled her vote illegal.

Sources: Representation of the People Act 1918 (legislation.gov.uk); Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 (legislation.gov.uk); The National Archives: Emmeline Pankhurst (story with transcripts of original records); Wikipedia: Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

George V (1910 to 1936)

George V, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, House of Windsor (from 1917)

George V reigned through the First World War, the Irish partition, the first Labour government and the Depression. On 17 July 1917 he proclaimed that the royal house would be called Windsor, in place of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, amid anti-German feeling. He appointed Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, in 1924. The Statute of Westminster 1931 recognised the Dominions as independent states within the Commonwealth. In 1932 he began the Christmas radio broadcast.

How they came to power: He became king on 6 May 1910, on the death of his father Edward VII, and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911. The Parliament Act 1911 settled the crisis over the Lords' power early in his reign.

How it ended: He died at Sandringham on 20 January 1936, aged 70. A diary by his physician Lord Dawson of Penn, made public in 1986, says Dawson hastened the King's death with injections of morphine and cocaine.

• At the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911 he was presented as Emperor of India. He was the only Emperor of India to attend his own Durbar.
• On a visit to Japan in 1881 he had a local artist tattoo a blue and red dragon on his arm.
• The story that his last words were 'Bugger Bognor' is a later myth. The town did gain the suffix 'Regis' after he recovered there.

Sources: Parliament Act 1911, as enacted (legislation.gov.uk); Statute of Westminster 1931 (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: George V (r.1910-1936); Wikipedia: George V

The Easter Rising (24 to 29 April 1916)

On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, with about 200 women of Cumann na mBan, took the General Post Office and other Dublin buildings. Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the GPO. British forces, over 16,000 troops by the end of the week, put the rising down in six days. About 485 people died, just over half of them civilians; sources differ on the exact breakdown by group.

• The 'Castle Document', which warned of British plans to arrest Irish leaders, was a forgery by the rebels' Military Council, meant to win over moderates.
• The Proclamation opens 'Irishmen and Irishwomen' and promises 'equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens'. Seven men signed it.
• The National Archives lists 171 people tried by courts martial in its records and notes about 80 commutations of death sentences. Sixteen leaders were executed. In the 1918 general election Sinn Fein won 73 of 105 Irish seats.

Sources: Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 1916 (Wikisource transcription); The National Archives (UK): Ireland's Easter Rising 1916 (research guide); National Army Museum: Easter Rising; Wikipedia: Easter Rising

The Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November 1916)

A joint British and French offensive on the Western Front, launched on 1 July 1916 along the river Somme. It was planned partly to relieve the French at Verdun. A bombardment of about a week with some 1.5 million shells did not destroy the German defences, and the wire was left uncut in many places. Most of the British infantry were volunteers of the 'New Armies'. Haig halted the offensive on 18 November with the Allies about six to seven miles forward and no breakthrough.

• Tanks were used for the first time at Flers-Courcelette on 15 September 1916. They advanced about 1.5 miles without a breakthrough.
• The National Army Museum says up to 30 per cent of the British shells failed to explode. One German officer called the battle 'the muddy grave of the German Field Army'.
• The Thiepval Memorial names more than 72,000 British and South African dead of the Somme battles with no known grave, most from 1916. Losses are put at about 420,000 for the British Empire and about 200,000 for France; German estimates vary widely, from roughly 240,000 to over 450,000.

Sources: Sir Douglas Haig's Somme despatch, 23 December 1916 (London Gazette supplement, 29 December 1916); National Army Museum: Battle of the Somme; History.com: Battle of the Somme; Wikipedia: Battle of the Somme

David Lloyd George (1916 to 1922)

David Lloyd George, Prime Minister 1916 to 1922, Prime Minister · Liberal

Lloyd George was raised with Welsh as his first language. As Chancellor he proposed the 1909 People's Budget, and the Lords' rejection of it led to the Parliament Act 1911. In 1915 he became Minister of Munitions and expanded shell production. As Prime Minister he set up a small war cabinet, signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. His government's Education Act 1918 raised the school leaving age to 14.

How they rose: In December 1916 he replaced H. H. Asquith as Prime Minister, heading a coalition.

How they died: Conservatives voted to leave the coalition at the Carlton Club in October 1922 and he resigned. He was raised to the peerage as Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor around the start of 1945 but died on 26 March 1945, aged 82, at Llanystumdwy, before taking his seat in the Lords.

• He was an MP for 55 years, from 1890 to 1945.
• During the Boer War, which he opposed, he had to be smuggled out of a hostile meeting in Birmingham disguised as a policeman.
• He acted as legal adviser to Theodor Herzl during talks on the Uganda Scheme, and in 1940 he refused to join Churchill's War Cabinet.

Sources: Anglo-Irish Treaty, 6 December 1921, with signatories (CAIN, Ulster University); Parliament Act 1911, as enacted (legislation.gov.uk); GOV.UK: History of David Lloyd George; Wikipedia: David Lloyd George

The Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State (6 December 1921 to 6 December 1922)

The Articles of Agreement, signed in London on 6 December 1921, ended the Irish War of Independence. Article 1 gave Ireland the same status as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as 'the Irish Free State'. Under Article 12 Northern Ireland could opt out within a month, and its parliament did. Members of the new parliament had to swear an oath to the Constitution and fidelity to the King. The Free State came into existence on 6 December 1922.

• Both Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were among the British signatories. Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins signed for the Irish side.
• The Dail approved the treaty by 64 votes to 57 on 7 January 1922. Michael Collins defended it as giving Ireland not full freedom but the freedom to achieve it.
• The split led to the Irish Civil War of 1922 to 1923, won by the pro-treaty side.

Sources: Anglo-Irish Treaty, 6 December 1921 (CAIN, Ulster University); RTE Century Ireland: The Treaty Debates Explained, December 1921 to January 1922; Wikipedia: Anglo-Irish Treaty

The General Strike (night of 3 May to 12 May 1926)

Mine owners wanted wage cuts and longer hours, and the Samuel Commission of March 1926 recommended a 13.5 per cent cut. More than a million miners were locked out, and the TUC called a strike at one minute to midnight on 3 May, concentrated on transport, printing, docks and steel. The government had stockpiled coal and organised volunteers. The TUC ended the strike on 12 May; the miners stayed out until November. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 later restricted sympathy strikes.

• Churchill edited the government's newspaper, the British Gazette. It claimed 200 London buses were running on 6 May; only 86 were, according to Julian Symons's history of the strike.
• On 10 May striking miners at Cramlington, Northumberland, derailed a train that turned out to be the Flying Scotsman, which was moving slowly. Accounts differ on whether anyone was hurt.
• A football match between police and strikers at Plymouth is reported to have ended 2-0 to the strikers.

Sources: The National Archives: The General Strike (Cabinet minutes, British Worker and other documents); British Library: The General Strike at 100, spreading the news in May 1926; Wikipedia: 1926 United Kingdom general strike

Edward VIII (20 January to 11 December 1936)

Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, House of Windsor

Edward VIII became king in January 1936. He had met the American Wallis Simpson in 1930 (royal.uk), and she was married at the time. The government and the Dominions' leaders would not accept her as queen, and he chose to abdicate. His reign lasted 325 or 326 days depending on the count, one of the shortest in British history. He was created Duke of Windsor in 1937 and married Wallis Simpson in France in June 1937.

How they came to power: He succeeded on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V.

How it ended: He signed the Instrument of Abdication on 10 December 1936, with his three brothers as witnesses, and it took effect the next day through His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act. He died in Paris on 28 May 1972, aged 77.

• He is described as the first monarch of the British Empire to fly in an aircraft, flying from Sandringham to London for his Accession Council.
• He insisted on facing left on coins, as his father had, reportedly to show the parting in his hair.
• He was Governor of the Bahamas from July 1940 to March 1945.

Sources: Message from His Majesty, House of Lords, 10 December 1936 (Historic Hansard); His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: Edward VIII (Jan-Dec 1936); History.com: Edward VIII abdicates; Wikipedia: Edward VIII

George VI (1936 to 1952)

George VI, King of the United Kingdom, House of Windsor

Albert, known as Bertie, was fourth in line to the throne at birth. He had a stammer and from the mid-1920s worked with the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. As king he stayed mostly at Buckingham Palace during the war; the palace was bombed nine times. He worked closely with Churchill and created the George Cross and George Medal in 1940. Ten days after D-Day he visited his troops in Normandy.

How they came to power: He became king in December 1936, after his elder brother Edward VIII abdicated.

How it ended: He died in his sleep at Sandringham on 6 February 1952, aged 56, months after an operation in September 1951 to remove his left lung.

• On 13 September 1940 two German bombs exploded in a Buckingham Palace courtyard while the King and Queen were there. The Queen said she was glad, because it let them look the East End in the face.
• In 1942 he awarded the George Cross to the whole island of Malta for resisting an enemy siege.
• His closing speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley was an ordeal for him and his listeners, and it led him to seek Logue's help.

Sources: His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, with the Instrument of Abdication (legislation.gov.uk); The Royal Family: George VI (r.1936-1952); Wikipedia: George VI

Winston Churchill (1940 to 1945)

Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister 1940 to 1945 and 1951 to 1955, Prime Minister · Conservative

Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in 1874. He became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940 and told the Commons three days later that he had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat'. On 4 June he reported on Dunkirk, saying that 'wars are not won by evacuations', and listing the places where Britain would fight on. His government lasted until the war in Europe ended. He served a second term from 1951 to 1955.

How they rose: He succeeded Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940 at the head of an all-party coalition.

How they died: The Conservatives lost the July 1945 general election to Labour and he left office on 26 July 1945. He died on 24 January 1965, aged 90, and was given a state funeral.

• On 4 June 1940 he told the Commons that over 335,000 French and British men had been carried off by the Navy with nearly 1,000 ships.
• He escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria in 1899, hiding on freight trains and in a mine on the way to Portuguese East Africa.
• He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 and wrote only one novel, Savrola.

Sources: His Majesty's Government, House of Commons, 13 May 1940 (Historic Hansard); War Situation, House of Commons, 4 June 1940 (Historic Hansard); GOV.UK: History of Sir Winston Churchill; Wikipedia: Winston Churchill

The Battle of Britain (10 July to 31 October 1940)

British sources date the battle from 10 July to 31 October 1940. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding led RAF Fighter Command and argued that radar and fast fighters could counter bombers. The Chain Home radar stations could spot aircraft up to about 200 miles away but faced out to sea, so once raiders crossed the coast the Observer Corps tracked them. Commonly cited losses are 1,744 British aircraft destroyed against 1,977 German and Italian. On 20 August Churchill told the Commons that never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

• The battle took its name from Churchill's speech of 18 June 1940, about three weeks before its generally accepted start.
• Chain Home's aerials did not rotate: a broad beam 'floodlit' a large area at once. Radar also meant aircrew did not need constant patrols, so tired pilots could rest.
• The Boulton Paul Defiant had no forward-firing guns and was withdrawn from daylight service by the end of August after heavy losses.

Sources: War Situation, House of Commons, 20 August 1940, column 1167: 'Never in the field of human conflict...' (Historic Hansard); RAF Museum: RADAR, the Battle Winner? (History of the Battle of Britain); Wikipedia: Battle of Britain

Clement Attlee (1945 to 1951)

Clement Attlee, Prime Minister 1945 to 1951, Prime Minister · Labour

Attlee was educated at Haileybury and University College, Oxford, and was MP for Limehouse from 1922 to 1950. His government nationalised coal, electricity, railways and long-distance haulage. It created the National Health Service in 1948 and oversaw Indian independence in 1947. In 1949 he promoted NATO.

How they rose: Labour won 393 seats in July 1945 with about 48 per cent of the vote against the Conservatives' 36.2 per cent, giving it a Commons majority of 146. He became Prime Minister on 26 July 1945.

How they died: Labour lost office in the 1951 election and he left on 26 October 1951. He died in London on 8 October 1967, aged 84.

• A company of the British Battalion of the International Brigades in Spain was named the 'Major Attlee Company' in his honour.
• He was the penultimate man evacuated from Suvla Bay at Gallipoli.
• In 1939 he sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children to leave Germany.

Sources: National Health Service Act 1946 (legislation.gov.uk); Indian Independence Act 1947 (legislation.gov.uk); GOV.UK: Clement Attlee; Wikipedia: Clement Attlee

Indian independence and partition (14 to 15 August 1947)

The Indian Independence Act 1947 set up two new dominions. Britain had planned to hand over power no later than June 1948, but Viceroy Louis Mountbatten advanced the date, leaving under six months to agree a plan. Punjab and Bengal were divided on the basis of district majorities. India and Pakistan became legally independent at midnight on 14 to 15 August 1947. Estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to 2 million and remain disputed.

• Estimates of the number displaced range from about 10 million (National Army Museum) to over 15 million (The National Archives), and 12 to 20 million on Wikipedia.
• Jinnah opposed splitting Punjab and Bengal and wanted both provinces to join Pakistan whole.
• Gandhi stayed in Bengal to work with refugees rather than going to the independence celebrations in New Delhi.

Sources: Indian Independence Act 1947 (legislation.gov.uk); National Army Museum: Independence and Partition, 1947; The National Archives: Partition of British India (teaching resource with scans of original records); Wikipedia: Partition of India

The National Health Service begins (5 July 1948)

The Beveridge Report of 1942 called for comprehensive health and rehabilitation services, and the 1944 White Paper by Henry Willink proposed paying for it from general taxation. The National Health Service Act 1946 passed under the Attlee government, and Health Minister Aneurin Bevan launched the service on 5 July 1948 at Park Hospital, near Manchester. Bevan's three principles were universal service, free care, and care based on need rather than ability to pay.

• Park Hospital, on Moorside Road, opened in 1929 and closed in 1988.
• A Liverpool physician, Dr Benjamin Moore, is one of the first people to have used the phrase 'National Health Service', and founded a related association in 1912.
• A.J. Cronin's 1937 novel The Citadel, which criticised the state of healthcare, helped inspire the reform. Spending was soon higher than expected, which led to discussion of prescription charges.

Sources: National Health Service Act 1946 (legislation.gov.uk); The National Archives: Park Hospital, Manchester, where Bevan launched the NHS on 5 July 1948; Historic UK: The Birth of the NHS

Elizabeth II (1952 to 2022)

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, House of Windsor

Elizabeth was crowned on 2 June 1953. In 1945 she trained as a driver and mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On her 21st birthday in 1947, speaking from Cape Town, she pledged that her 'whole life whether it be long or short' would be devoted to service. Her reign lasted 70 years and 214 days, and she was advised by more than 170 prime ministers across her realms.

How they came to power: She was at Sagana Lodge in Kenya on 6 February 1952 when her father George VI died, and she became Queen.

How it ended: She died at Balmoral Castle on 8 September 2022, aged 96.

• The 'II' in her title offended some Scots, because she was the first Elizabeth to rule in Scotland.
• In 1957 she became the first monarch of Canada to open a session of its parliament.
• In 1972 she toured Yugoslavia, the first British monarch to visit a communist country.

Sources: Princess Elizabeth's 21st Birthday Speech, Cape Town, 21 April 1947 (Wikisource); The London Gazette, Supplement 63812: Accession Proclamation of Charles III, recording the death of Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 at Balmoral Castle; The Royal Family: Queen Elizabeth II's Accession and Coronation; History.com: Queen Elizabeth II, UK's longest-serving monarch, dies at 96; Wikipedia: Elizabeth II

The Suez Crisis (26 July to 7 November 1956)

On 26 July 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. In a secret agreement at Sevres, France, on 22 to 24 October, Britain, France and Israel agreed to take back the canal and overthrow Nasser. Israel invaded Egypt on 29 October. On 31 October Prime Minister Anthony Eden told the Commons that the Anglo-French action was 'the only action which we could clearly see would be effective in holding the belligerents apart'. Pressure from the US, the Soviet Union and the UN led to withdrawal, and the National Army Museum says the crisis did lasting damage to Britain's global standing.

• Nasser used the name of the canal's builder, Ferdinand de Lesseps, as the code word for his forces to seize the company's offices.
• The UN set up an emergency force to police the Egypt-Israel border. Canada's Lester Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy during the crisis.
• Britain had bought Egypt's shares in the canal company in 1875, for 4 million pounds, giving it a 44 per cent stake.

Sources: Middle East (Situation), House of Commons, 31 October 1956 (Historic Hansard); National Army Museum: Suez Crisis; Wikipedia: Suez Crisis

The Troubles (late 1960s to 1998)

The Troubles grew out of a civil rights campaign in the 1960s against discrimination in jobs and housing, and for 'one man, one vote'. Dates for the start vary; the army deployed in August 1969. More than 3,500 people died, 52 per cent of them civilians. On 30 January 1972 ('Bloody Sunday') soldiers shot dead 13 civilians in Derry and wounded 14, and one of the wounded later died. The Saville Inquiry concluded in 2010 that the first shot near the march was probably fired by the British Army and that none of the casualties was posing a threat; Prime Minister David Cameron told the Commons the killings were 'unjustified and unjustifiable'. Direct rule from Westminster began on 30 March 1972, with William Whitelaw the first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

• On 21 July 1972, 'Bloody Friday', the IRA exploded 22 bombs in Belfast in about 75 minutes, killing 9 people and injuring about 130.
• Republican paramilitaries were responsible for about 60 per cent of the deaths, loyalist paramilitaries about 30 per cent and the security forces about 10 per cent.
• The word 'troubles' appears in 17th-century Acts of the English, Scottish and Irish parliaments to describe the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Sources: Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972, as enacted (legislation.gov.uk); Prime Minister's statement to the House of Commons on the Saville Report, 15 June 2010 (CAIN, Ulster University); CAIN, Ulster University: A Chronology of the Conflict, 1972; Wikipedia: The Troubles

Margaret Thatcher (1979 to 1990)

Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister 1979 to 1990, Prime Minister · Conservative

Born in Grantham in 1925, Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford and later became a barrister. She was elected MP for Finchley in 1959 and Conservative leader in 1975. Her government privatised state-owned industries and reduced trade union power. In 1982 Britain fought the Falklands War, in 1984 she survived the Brighton hotel bombing, and the miners' strike of 1984 to 1985 ended with the miners returning to work without a settlement. The Community Charge ('poll tax'), introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990, drew widespread opposition.

How they rose: The Conservatives won the 1979 election and she became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979, the first woman to hold the office. She won landslides in 1983 and 1987.

How they died: In November 1990 Geoffrey Howe resigned over her stance on Europe and Michael Heseltine challenged her for the leadership. She did not contest a second ballot and John Major succeeded her on 28 November 1990. On 22 November she defended the government in a no-confidence debate in the Commons. She died on 8 April 2013, aged 87, after a stroke.

• In 1948 ICI turned down her job application, assessing her as 'headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated'.
• As Education Secretary she ended free milk for schoolchildren aged 7 to 11, which earned her the nickname 'Milk Snatcher'.
• In 1950, at 24, she was the youngest Conservative candidate in the country. A Soviet journalist later gave her the nickname 'Iron Lady'.

Sources: Confidence in Her Majesty's Government, House of Commons, 22 November 1990 (Historic Hansard); GOV.UK: History of Baroness Thatcher; Wikipedia: Margaret Thatcher

The Falklands War (2 April to 14 June 1982)

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982 and South Georgia the next day. The Commons met on Saturday 3 April, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said the islands 'remain British territory' and that the government's aim was to see them freed from occupation and returned to British administration. A task force sailed on 5 April. After 74 days of fighting, Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley on 14 June.

• HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile on 4 May and sank on 10 May while under tow; she was the first Royal Navy ship sunk in action since the Second World War.
• On 2 May the British submarine Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano. 323 people died.
• The Vulcan 'Black Buck' raids flew a round trip of about 8,000 nautical miles from Ascension Island with repeated air refuelling. Of the 21 bombs dropped on the Stanley runway in the first raid, only one hit it.

Sources: Falkland Islands, House of Commons, 3 April 1982 (Historic Hansard); RAF Museum: British Military Aviation in 1982; History.com: Argentina invades the Falklands; Wikipedia: Falklands War

Devolution for Scotland and Wales (September 1997 to 1999)

On 11 September 1997 Scottish voters backed a Parliament by 74.29 per cent, and its tax-varying powers by 63.48 per cent, on a turnout of about 60 per cent. A week later, on 18 September, Welsh voters backed an Assembly by 559,419 votes to 552,698, a margin of 6,721, on a turnout of 50.22 per cent. The Scotland Act 1998 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 followed, and both bodies were established in 1999.

• Voters in Scotland were asked two questions on one ballot: whether there should be a Scottish Parliament, and whether it should have tax-varying powers.
• The Welsh result hung on Carmarthenshire, which voted Yes with 65.5 per cent. Monmouthshire was the strongest No area, at 67.9 per cent.
• The 1979 Welsh devolution referendum was defeated by almost 4 to 1. The first Assembly election was held on 6 May 1999.

Sources: Scotland Act 1998 (legislation.gov.uk); Government of Wales Act 1998 (legislation.gov.uk); Scottish Parliament: The path to devolution; Senedd Wales: Twenty quotes to mark twenty years since Wales said yes; Wikipedia: 1997 Welsh devolution referendum

Tony Blair (1997 to 2007)

Tony Blair, Prime Minister 1997 to 2007, Prime Minister · Labour

Born in Edinburgh in 1953, Blair read law at Oxford and was elected MP for Sedgefield in 1983. He became Labour leader in July 1994 after John Smith's sudden death and rebranded the party 'New Labour'. His governments helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, created devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales, and introduced a National Minimum Wage. Britain joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq; the 2016 Chilcot Inquiry report assessed the decision critically, and Blair did not apologise for backing the invasion.

How they rose: Labour won the general election of 1997 by a majority of 179 seats and he took office on 2 May 1997, aged 43, the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812.

How they died: He won again in 2001 (by 167 seats) and in 2005 (by 66). He announced in May 2007 that he would step down, and resigned as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007, handing over to Gordon Brown.

• As a student at Oxford he played in a rock band called Ugly Rumours.
• He was the first Prime Minister born after the Second World War.
• According to Wikipedia, he chose not to issue a resignation honours list, the first modern Prime Minister to do so.

Sources: The Belfast Agreement, 10 April 1998: full text (CAIN, Ulster University); Scotland Act 1998 (legislation.gov.uk); GOV.UK: History of Tony Blair; Wikipedia: Tony Blair

The Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement (10 April 1998 (in force 2 December 1999))

Signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998 after talks chaired by the US senator George Mitchell. It created a Northern Ireland Assembly and a power-sharing Executive, a North/South Ministerial Council, and provided for an accelerated early-release scheme for qualifying paramilitary prisoners. The Republic's constitution was amended to drop its territorial claim to Northern Ireland. Referendums on 22 May 1998 approved it: 71.1 per cent Yes in Northern Ireland (turnout 81.1 per cent) and 94.4 per cent in the Republic (turnout about 56 per cent). Direct rule ended and power was devolved on 2 December 1999.

• Estimates suggest almost all Catholic voters backed it, compared with about 57 per cent of Protestants. The DUP was the only major Northern Ireland party to oppose it.
• A total of 428 paramilitary prisoners had been released by 28 July 2000.
• The Assembly has been suspended several times since it was set up.

Sources: The Belfast Agreement (GOV.UK policy paper, Cm. 3883); ARK: The 1998 Referendums (Northern Ireland Life and Times); CAIN, Ulster University: Chronology of Key Events of the Irish Peace Process, 1998-1999; Wikipedia: Good Friday Agreement

The Brexit referendum (23 June 2016)

The European Union Referendum Act 2015 provided for a referendum. Voters were asked: 'Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?' Leave won 17,410,742 votes (51.89 per cent) and Remain 16,141,241 (48.11 per cent), from 33,577,342 votes cast and 46,500,001 registered voters. Most areas of England and Wales voted Leave; Scotland, Northern Ireland, Greater London and Gibraltar voted Remain. David Cameron announced he would resign and did so in July 2016; Theresa May succeeded him. The UK gave formal notice of withdrawal in March 2017 and left in January 2020.

• Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory, took part in the vote as well as the UK.
• The Electoral Commission reported 25,359 rejected ballot papers.
• Apart from the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, it was the highest turnout at a UK-wide poll since the 1992 general election.

Sources: European Union Referendum Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk); Electoral Commission: Report on the 23 June 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union; Wikipedia: 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

Charles III (2022 to today)

Charles III, King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, House of Windsor

Born at Buckingham Palace on 14 November 1948, Charles was Prince of Wales before his accession. He was educated at Gordonstoun and studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1970. He also spent a term at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, studying Welsh history and language. He founded the Prince's Trust in 1976. He was crowned with Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey on 6 May 2023.

How they came to power: He became King on 8 September 2022 on the death of his mother Elizabeth II, and was proclaimed by the Accession Council on 10 September.

How it ended: He reigns as King.

• At 73 he was the oldest person to become monarch, passing William IV, who was 64 in 1830.
• He reportedly described Gordonstoun as 'Colditz in kilts'.
• He was invested as Prince of Wales in 1969, after spending a term at Aberystwyth learning Welsh.

Sources: The London Gazette, Supplement 63812: Accession Proclamation, Privy Council Office, 10 September 2022; The Royal Family: The King; The Royal Family: The Coronation; Wikipedia: Charles III