Treaty of Union took effect on 1 May 1707. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, died without issue on 24 March 1603, and the throne fell at once (and uncontroversially) to her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, a member of House of Stuart and the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots. By the Union of the Crowns in 1603 he assumed the throne of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland as King James I. This personal union lessened the constant English fears of Scottish cooperation with France in a
Robert St Lawrence, 3rd Baron Howth a second and politically significant marriage to Joan Beaufort, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset and Eleanor Beauchamp. Somerset's seemingly remote claim to the English Crown as the legal heir of John of Gaunt was vindicated by his cousin Margaret Beaufort's son Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch. The St. Lawrence family, unlike most of the Anglo-Irish nobility, were reliable supporters of the Tudor dynasty: no doubt the family connection was valuable to them. He had six children: Some sources state that his second marriage was childless, however his eldest son Nicholas, who was born about 1460, must