The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain

****1/2
"Mr. Massie has written a magnificent, sweeping, authoritative, warm yet wry history of this flawed but never dull family. It is just a pity that there are no pictures, for on the whole the Stuarts were a handsome lot." --Allan Mallinson, WS Journal
*

The Royal Stuarts ruled for over three centuries in Scotland and for a century as the Royal Family of Britain and Ireland. They were leading actors in the foremost political dramas of British history - the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War and the Restoration. The Royal Stuarts got strong affections and fierce rivalries, leaving their mark on an extended epoch of British history, and remain a pretty controversial and divisive within the European royal families.

Drawing on the accounts of past and present historians, novels and plays, Allan Massie, the Scottish novelist who wrote about many historical characters, tells the Stewarts family's full story (name changed to Stuarts by Mary Q/Sc), from the marshes of Brittany to the court politics of Scotland and England. Allan Massie's lively family portrait of the Stuarts dynasty takes us deep into the lives of Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of the brave and competent, the lame and unwise.

To tell the story of this royal family from start to end is to pass through a broad search of British history. English readers may think first of the accession of James I, when the Stuart dynasty replaced the Tudors; but the Stuarts had been ruling Scotland since the late 14th century. They moved to England originally from Brittany. Henry I had made one of them an administrator on the Welsh Marches, where they became Scotland's main landowners, after acquiring the 'steward' hereditary office of treasury to the Scottish kings.

Few academic historians would dare to take on such a task. Allan Massie has the novelist's ability to summon up context from the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic times, and background in a concise sketch. His troubadour's gift for picking out main actions that bring a person's character to life, and the journalist's knack of abridging arguments and issues made a good read. With its zoom on personalities and stories, this book has a traditional British feel to it, enriched by Massie's tendency to cite seasoned scholars.

Quite a family, the Stuarts story commands attention in Allan Massie's compelling work, due in part to the book's sheer readability. Massie begins in the middle--with a chilling account of the bungled execution in 1685 of the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II eldest bastard children. Family histories do not easily lend themselves to deductive reasoning, yet there are some recurrent themes, which Massie touches on without overplay, though personal charm and 'the ability to keep loyalty' seem to have been Stuart identifying features.

Interesting (though somewhat dry) depiction of the Stuarts. However, an error early on makes me question the validity of the research throughout. John of Gaunt is referred to as "the fourth and youngest son" of Edward III, when it is well documented he had two (surviving past infancy) younger brothers, Edmund and Thomas. A minor thing yet telling.

The Stewart/Stuart Dynasty's origins are "lost in the mists of antiquity," to use the phrase peerage books used to use to denote a really ancient family tree. Beginning in ancient Scotland and receiving ample infusions of Anglo-Saxon, French, Scandinavian, Norman and other bloodlines along the way, the Stewarts emerged in the Middle Ages as Kings of Scots and eventually came to rule England, Wales, and Ireland (with a claim to France as well) for over a century until political change and their own fecklessness caused them to lose it all. Allan Massie's excellent family biography traces the rise and fall of a dynasty which despite its innumerable missteps still holds a strong place in the hearts of many with Scots and English blood in their veins.

Massie is primarily a novelist, and his ability to weave a fascinating plotline serves him well here. Each Stewart/Stuart monarch (they adopted the later, Frenchified spelling during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots) has his or her own chapter. The lives of the early Stewart Kings of Scots were tumultuous as they attempted to rule a country which was really more a collection of tribal homelands with loyalties to clan leaders rather than Kings. Later as Kings of England the Stuarts attempted to govern as absolute monarchs in the manner of their cousins the Kings of France, which led to one King's execution and another's overthrow. Besides political issues the Stuarts were caught up in religious turmoil caused by the Protestant Reformation. Eventually the Stuarts were reduced to living on charity from various European Kings and Popes until the last of their legitimate male line died in 1807.

This is a fine work of narrative history, written in a lively style that will appeal to the general reader without sacrificing scholarly rigor. The many tragic and/or glamourous figures of the family, including Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles I and II, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, are all depicted sympathetically but with an open eye to their many faults. By the end of the book readers understand why the Stuarts still continue to appeal to the romantic streak in us all.

I'm an American with long ancestral ties to England and Scotland (my grandmother was a Stewart herself!). The Royal Stuarts did much to help me understand the men and women whose rule (and sometimes misrule) had so much influence on British and world history.

I wanted to find a good book about the Stuarts that was not too long and and not a tedious read, and this book is just right. There's a lot of history to cover, from Scotland's Robert II through to Queen Anne and beyond, more than 300 years in a single book. It is well organised and each chapter covers the life of a single monarch. Full of drama, triumph and conflict, it is enjoyable and I learned a lot about English history and this tragic family, so much like the Tudors but so unknown. I wish there a few photos, there are none other than the cover. In a few places the author oddly talks about events that haven't yet happened in the narrative; for example the murder of Darling, Mary Queen of Scott's husband. Still, a highly recommended history.

The history of the Stuarts was a lot more involved than I ever imagined. I wouldn't have minded at all if the author had gone into a little more detail and given us more to read on each monarch. And of course reading about the tragedy of Queen Mary, as other authors have pointed out, she had a lot to do with her own fate, especially from the day she married Darnley. And the portraits--I wish there were more portraits inside. The ones on the cover--the notes to tell you who they were are printed so small and so jumbled together, you really don't know who you're looking at, other than Mary. But it was a good synopsis of the kings of Scotland overall.

Despite being a rabid reader of British history, I’ve never had an intense interest in the Stuart clan despite realizing that the reigns of several of their monarchs were among the most eventful and significant of all the kings and queens. But I decided to give this book a shot, perhaps because I subliminally recalled reading other works by Allan Massie.

And, sure enough, no sooner than I had turned a few pages, I knew I had been in this wonderful author’s presence at least once before by way of his 2007 work, “The Thistle and the Rose, Six Centuries of Love and Hate Between the Scots and the English.” His style is subtle, but unmistakable: the brilliantly succinct description of events, the recurring, but ever-appropriate, infusions of humor, the always evident, but never condescending, mastery of his subject.

The book is essentially a series of mini-biographies of the Stuart principals, and I know of no historian more up to the task. Massie’s concise word pictures are the equivalent of the painted miniatures that were the digital photographs of the day. As for the Stuarts themselves, they could serve as a continually catastrophic cautionary tale for nascent autocrats of what not to do when. They acted when they should have hesitated, declared when they should have remained mute, decreed when they should have desisted, and generally squandered their power and prestige.

So now I know a good deal more about the Stuarts and much better appreciate their benighted roles in British history. As for reading Massie, I think I’ll just round up a couple more of his books and see what else I’ve been missing. In his acknowledgment, the author praises another chronicler of the Stuarts by observing that he showed “that history could be agreeably written with a light hand.” When he conjured that phrase, Massie must have been looking in a mirror.

The book contains a two-page list of illustrations, but there are none! Nor does the index show page numbers for any. Have I received a flawed copy, or is this a publisher's mistake that applies to all copies?

In seventeen chapters, the author recounts the story of the Stewart line of Scottish/English monarchs. Starting from the earliest times in Scotland on to James VI and I who was the first to simultaneously rule England (as James I) and Scotland (as James VI) and finally ending with James VIII and III who never ruled at all, the author does an excellent job of relating the lives and times of the Royal Stewarts. The first chapter is a quick overview of early Stewart history in Scotland. Then, each subsequent chapter concentrates on a single ruler - from Robert II to James VIII and III.

Throughout the book, the author has touched upon the most salient facts related to each monarch's reign. These include much on religious issues, political matters and strategies, wars, revolutions, etc. The author also addresses the various qualities and shortcomings of each of the monarchs.

I found the book to be fast-paced, lively, accessible and often gripping. An interesting item that I was not aware of is who changed the spelling from Stewart to Stuart and why. One point that threw me off a bit was the fact that the author often uses more than one name for the same individual, i.e., their actual name and their title (e.g., James Graham, Earl of Montrose would be referred to as James Graham and Montrose, interchangeably). Several people were referred to in this way throughout the book; this made keeping track of who's who rather awkward for me.

Complete with details of wars, assassinations, executions, exiles, revolutions, political shenanigans, religious turmoil, etc., this book should appeal to most history enthusiasts.

For those following the current debate in the UK Parliament about the wisdom and form of a prospective referendum on the question of Scotland's full or partial disunion, you will find Massie's book an essential review of this enduring subject over the centuries. Throughout most of those centuries the question of Scotland and England, and even Ireland, unity or independence was dominated by the Stewart/Stuart family and its historic legacies. I urge you to read Massie's book to appreciate the time worn depth of that question when you peruse the next article on the prospective referendum in The Economist. Massie has presented an interesting, well organized, and digestible history of the Stuarts that is both easy and fun to read. Each chapter addresses a particular Stuart generation and time period that allows the reader to gain new insight about a family that dominated Scottish and English history to a phenomenal and often tragic degree. As a regular reader of history I can admit to finding the role of the various Stuarts somewhat murky and too often obscured by events told from the perspective of the Tudors. Massie offers a clear viewpoint of the events and individuals told with a proper focus on the Stuarts. He details their dominant role in the history of conflict and union that still ignites Parliamentary debates about the nature of Scotland's national identity. The book offers a biographical synopsis for each successive generation of Stuarts. Their strengths, endurance, loyalties, foibles, marriages, failings and tragedies are told by Massie in way that absorbs the reader and preserves a clear continuity of events and the Stuart family's motivations throughout the generations and the centuries. Massie has written a must read for any history buff that enjoys a book that can effortlessly fill a weekend of reading with fascinating events that remain relevant today.

This book, though interesting, was not academic. It reads more like a series of National Geographic articles than a history book. However, that's because it was written by a journalist and not a historian and it shows. History is concerned with dates and some of the chapters in this book might mention a year just three or four times in an entire chapter. That made it difficult to follow at times. It remains a good introduction to the subject although one could probably find a comparable book with much more information than the author included in this one.