When Henry VIII died in 1547 he left three highly intelligent children to succeed him in turn - Edward, Mary and Elizabeth - to be followed, if their lines failed, by the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor, one of whom was the ill-fated nine-days queen, Lady Jane Grey. Edward was nine years old, Mary thirty-one, Elizabeth thirteen and Jane ten. Edward, Elizabeth and Jane were staunch Protestants, Mary a devout Catholic; each had a very different mother and they had grown up in vastly different circumstances. CHILDREN OF ENGLAND begins at the point where Alison Weir's previous bestseller THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII came to an end, and covers the period until Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558. Her interest is not in constitutional history but in the characters and relationships of Henry's four heirs. Making use of a huge variety of contemporary sources, she brings to vivid life one of the most extraordinary periods of English history, when each of Henry's heirs was potentially the tool of powerful political or religious figures, and when the realm was seething with intrigue and turbulent change.