John's mother died in 1394 when he was but five years old, in 1399 his father Henry of Bolingbroke, a grandson of Edward III, usurped the throne of his cousin Richard II and was crowned Henry IV. The ...

The eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, daughter of Henry IV of France, the future Charles II was born on 29th May 1630, at St. James Palace, London, the second child of ...

It has been said that Edward II was the great Edward I's only failure. It is true to say that never was there a son less like his father. A thoroughly flawed jewel in England's crown, he failed to ...

When Britain's last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne died in 1714, the crown of England passed by the 1701 Act of Settlement to the Stuart dynasty's German Protestant cousins, the House of Hanover, or ...

Richard Woodville, first of the Woodville family to step out onto the pages of history, was born in 1405 at Maidstone in Kent, the son of Richard Wydeville, a soldier and politician and Joan ...

The legendary Hereward the Wake, the guerrilla leader who headed Anglo- Saxon resistance to William the Conqueror for five years has been called one of history's "greatest Englishmen". The earliest ...

Canute or Cnut the Great was born circa 985- 995, the son of King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, the identity of his mother is uncertain, although it is likely that she was a Slavic princess, daughter of ...

Debate remains as to where Rollo or Rolf, the first Viking ruler of Normandy, was born. He is first referred to in historical sources as a leader of the Vikings who besieged Paris in 885-6 during the ...

Arguably one of the most effective Kings ever to wear the English crown and the first of the great Plantagenet dynasty, the future Henry II was born at Le Mans, Anjou on 5th March, 1133. He was the ...

The Picts were descendants of the Iron Age people of northern Scotland, believed to have originated in Iberia as hunter-gatherers, they moved through lower Britain and entered Scotland around 7000BC.

Cinaeth, known to history as Kenneth MacAlpin or Kenneth the Hardy, was born around 810 on the Island of Iona. He was the son of the Scots chieftain Alpin, who had led his countrymen in the struggle ...

King Duncan I, of Scotland or Donnchad mac Crinain was born on 5th August 1001, the son of Bethoc, the daughter of Malcolm II MacAlpin and Crinan, hereditary lay Abbot of Dunkeld. He is reported to ...