History of England

England is the largest and most populous of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The division dates from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century. The territory of England has been politically united since the 10th century. This article concerns that territory. However, before the 10th century and after the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603, it becomes less convenient to distinguish Scottish and Welsh from English history since the union of these nations with England.

England before the English

: Main articles: Prehistoric Britain, Iron Age Britain and Roman Britain

Stonehenge, thought to have been erected c.2000-2500BC

Archaeological evidence indicates that what is now southern England was colonised by humans long before the rest of the British Isles due to its more hospitable climate between and during the various ice ages of the distant past. The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, although cultural and trade links with the continent had existed for millennia prior to this. Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his trading journey to the island around 325 BC. Later writers such as Pliny the Elder (quoting Timaeus) and Diodorus Siculus (probably drawing on Poseidonius) mention the tin trade from southern England but there is little further historical detail of the people who lived there. Tacitus wrote that there was no great difference in language between the people of southern England and northern Gaul and noted that the various tribes of Britons shared physical characteristics with their continental neighbours.'''Julius Caesar visited southern England in 55 and 54 BC and wrote in De Bello Gallico that the population of southern England was extremely large and shared much in common with the other barbarian tribes on the continent. Coin evidence and the work of later Roman historians have provided the names of some of the rulers of the disparate tribes and their machinations in what was to become England.

Surprisingly few historical sources describe Roman England. For example, we have only one sentence describing the reasons for the construction of Hadrian's Wall. The Claudian invasion itself is well attested and Tacitus included the uprising of Boudica, or "Boadicea", in 61 in his history. Following the end of the 1st century, however, Roman historians only mention tantalising fragments of information from the distant province. The Roman presence strengthened and weakened over the centuries, but by the 5th century Roman influence had declined to such a point that the peoples who were to become the English were emerging.

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Celtic Britain

In the wake of the Romans, who had abandoned the south of the island by 410 in order to concentrate on more pressing difficulties closer to home, what is now England was progressively settled by successive and often complementary waves of Germanic tribesmen.

The prevailing view is that waves of Germanic people, Jutes together with undoubtedly large numbers of Frisians, Saxons from northern Germany and Angles from what is now southern Denmark - commonly known as Anglo-Saxons - who had been partly displaced on mainland Europe, invaded Britain again around the middle of the 6th century. They came under military leaders and settled at first on the eastern shores. They are believed to have fought their way westward, looking for more land to cultivate, taking lowland and leaving less desirable lands in the hills to the Celtic Britons.

Professors John Davies and A.W. Wade-Evans believe that the Saxons did not sweep away the entire population of the Celtic Britons in the areas they overran, as was supposed by 19th century historians. Population estimates based on the size and density of settlements put Britain's population at about 3.5 million by the time Romans invaded in A.D. 43. Some historians now believe subsequent invaders from mainland Europe had little genetic impact on the British. The notion that large-scale migrations caused drastic change in early Britain has been widely discredited, according to the view of Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University, England. For the English, their defining period was the arrival of Germanic tribes known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons. Some researchers suggest this invasion may have consisted of as few as 10,000 to 25,000 peopleâ€"not enough to displace existing inhabitants.[1]

Analysis of human remains unearthed at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England, indicates that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side by side. David Miles, research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology is quoted as saying: "Probably what we're dealing with is a majority of British people who were dominated politically by a new elite. ... They were swamped culturally but not genetically". Simon James writes: "It is actually quite common to observe important cultural change, including adoption of wholly new identities, with little or no biological change to a population".[2]

Increasingly, the Romano-British population (the Britons) was assimilated, a process enabled by a lack of clear unity amongst the British people against a unified armed foe, and the culture pushed westwards and northwards. The settlement (or invasion) of England is known as the Saxon Conquest or the Anglo-Saxon (sometimes "English") Conquest.

In 495, at the Battle of Mount Badon (Badbury rings, Latin Mons Badonicus, Welsh Mynydd Baddon) near the Roman Porchester-Southampton-Poole road, Britons inflicted a severe defeat on an invading Anglo-Saxon army. While it was a major political and military event of the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain, there is no certainty about who commanded the opposing forces. This victory by the British army made it possible to stop the Saxon invasion and secured a long period of peace for Celtic Britain.

In the decisive Battle of Deorham, in 577, the British people of Southern Britain were separated into the West Welsh (Cornwall, Devon and western Somerset) and the Welsh by the advancing Saxons.

From the 4th century AD, many Britons had migrated across the English Channel from Wales, Cornwall and southern Britain, with their chiefs, soldiers, families, monks and priests, and started to settle and colonize the west part (Armorica) of Gaul (France) where they founded a new nation: Brittany. The immigrant Britons gave their new country its current name and contributed to the Breton language, Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish. The name Brittany (from "Little Britain") arose at this time to distinguish the new Britain from "Great Britain". Brezhoneg (the British language) is still spoken in Brittany in 2006.

Beginning with the raid in 793 on the monastery at Lindisfarne, Vikings made many raids on England.

At Dore (now a suburb of the City of Sheffield) Egbert of Wessex received the submission of Eanred of Northumbria in 829 and so became the first Saxon overlord of all England.

England in 878

After a time of plunder and raids, the Vikings began to settle in England and trade, eventually ruling the Danelaw from the late 9th century. One Viking settlement was in York, called Jorvik by the Vikings. Viking rule left significant traces in the English language; the similarity of Old English and Old Norse led to much borrowing.

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived from the Britons' names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Several place-name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, coomb for a small deep valley.

Until recently it has been believed that those areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or the Britons had fled before them. However, genetic studies show that the British were not pushed out to the Celtic fringes â€" many tribes remained in what was to become England (see C. Capelli et al. 'A Y chromosome census of the British Isles'. Current Biology 13, 979â€"984, (2003)). Capelli's findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of Birmingham University; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only very lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

England during the Middle Ages

Main article: Britain in the Middle Ages

Depiction of the Battle of Hastings (1066) on the Bayeux Tapestry

The defeat of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 at the hands of William of Normandy, later styled William I of England and the subsequent Norman takeover of Saxon England led to a sea-change in the history of the small, isolated, island state. William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, a survey of the entire population and their lands and property for tax purposes.

William ruled over Normandy, then a powerful kingdom in France. William and his nobles spoke and conducted court in Anglo-Norman, in Normandy as well as in England. The use of the Anglo-Norman language by the aristocracy endured for centuries and left an indelible mark in the development of modern English.

The English Middle Ages were to be characterised by civil war, international war, occasional insurrection, and widespread political intrigue amongst the aristocratic and monarchic elite. England was more than self-sufficient in cereals, dairy products, beef and mutton. The nation's international economy was based on the wool trade, in which the produce of the sheepwalks of northern England was exported to the textile cities of Flanders, where it was worked into cloth. Medieval foreign policy was as much shaped by relations with Flemish textile industry as it was by dynastic adventures in western France. An English textile industry was established in the fifteenth century, providing the basis for rapid English capital accumulation.

Henry I, also known as "Henry Beauclerc" (so named because of his education—as his older brother William was the heir apparent and thus given the practical training to be king, Henry received the alternate, formal education), worked hard to reform and stabilise the country and smooth the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman societies. The loss of his son, William, in the wreck of the White Ship in November 1120, was to undermine his reforms. This problem regarding succession was to cast a long shadow over English history.

During the disastrous and incompetent reign of Stephen (1135 - 1154), there was a major swing in the balance of power towards the feudal barons, as civil war and lawlessness broke out. In trying to appease Scottish and Welsh raiders, he handed over large tracts of land. His conflicts with his cousin The Empress Matilda (also known as Empress Maud), whom he had earlier promised recognition as heir, were his undoing: she bided her time in France and, in the autumn of 1139, invaded (with her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou and her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester).

Stephen was captured and his government fell. Matilda was proclaimed queen but was soon at odds with her subjects and was expelled from London. The period of insurrection and civil war that followed continued until 1148, when Matilda returned to France. Stephen effectively reigned unopposed until his death in 1154, although his hold on the throne was still uneasy. When Stephen's son and heir apparent Eustace died in 1153 Stephen reached an accommodation with Matilda which allowed her son, Henry of Anjou, (who became Henry II) to succeed Stephen and in which peace between them was guaranteed.

The reign of Henry II represents a reversion in power back from the barony to the monarchical state; it was also to see a similar redistribution of legislative power from the Church, again to the monarchical state. This period also presaged a properly constituted legislation and a radical shift away from feudalism.

The signing of the Magna Carta (1215)

Henry's successor, Richard I "the Lion Heart", was preoccupied with foreign wars, taking part in the Third Crusade and defending his French territories against Philip II of France. His younger brother John, who succeeded him, was not so fortunate; he suffered the loss of Normandy and numerous other French territories. He also managed to antagonise the feudal nobility and leading Church figures to the extent that in 1215, they led an armed rebellion and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which imposed legal limits on the King's personal powers.

John's son, Henry III, was only 9 years old when he became King. His reign was punctuated by numerous rebellions and civil wars, often provoked by incompetence and mismanagement in Government, and Henry's perceived over-reliance on French courtiers (thus restricting the influence of the English nobility). One of these rebellions, led (curiously enough) by a disaffected courtier, Simon de Montfort, was notable for its assembly of one of the earliest precursors to Parliament.

The reign of Edward I (1272-1307) was rather more successful. Edward enacted numerous laws strengthening the powers of his Government, and summoned the first officially sanctioned Parliaments of England (such as his Model Parliament). He conquered Wales, and attempted to use a succession dispute to gain control of Scotland, though this developed into a costly and drawn-out military campaign. His son, Edward II, suffered a massive defeat at Bannockburn; but the campaign continued until the early years of Edward III, and was only finally abandoned after the conclusion of the Treaty of Northampton in 1328.

The Black Death, an epidemic of bubonic plague that spread over the whole of Europe, arrived in England in 1349 and killed perhaps up to a third of the population. International excursions were invariably against domestic neighbours: the Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and the Hundred Years' War against the French and their Scottish allies. Notable English victories in the Hundred Years' War included CrÃ©cy and Agincourt. In addition to this, the final defeat of the uprising led by the Welsh prince, Owain GlyndÅµr, in 1412 by Prince Henry (later to become Henry V) represents the last major armed attempt by the Welsh to throw off English rule.

Edward III gave land to powerful noble families, including many people with Royal blood in their veins. Because land was equivalent to power in these days, this meant that these powerful men could now try to make good their claim to the Crown. The autocratic and arrogant methods of Richard II only served to alienate the nobility more, and his forceful dispossession in 1399 by Henry IV sowed the seeds for what was to come. In the reign of Henry VI, which began in 1422, things came to a head because of his personal weaknesses and mental instability. Unable to control the feuding nobles, he allowed outright civil war to break out. The conflicts are known as the Wars of the Roses and although the fighting was very sporadic and small, there was a general breakdown in the authority and power of the Crown. Edward IV went a little way to restoring this power but the spadework was generally done by Henry VII.

Tudor England

Main article: Early Modern Britain

The Wars of the Roses culminated in the eventual victory of the relatively unknown Henry Tudor, Henry VII, at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where the Yorkist Richard III was slain, and the succession of the Lancastrian House was ultimately assured. Whilst in retrospect it is easy for us to date the end of the Wars of the Roses to the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry VII could afford no such complacency. Before the end of his reign, two pretenders would try to wrest the throne from him, aided by remnants of the Yorkist faction at home and abroad. The first, Lambert Simnel, was defeated at the Battle of Stoke (the last time an English King fought someone claiming the Crown) and the second, Perkin Warbeck, was hanged in 1499 after plaguing the King for a decade.

In 1497, Michael An Gof led Cornish rebels in a march on London. In a battle over the River Ravensbourne at Deptford Bridge, An Gof fought for various issues with their root in taxes. On June 17, 1497 they were defeated, and Henry VII had showed he could display military prowess when he needed to. But, like Charles I in the future, here was a King with no wish to go "on his travels" again. The rest of his reign was relatively peaceful, despite a slight worry over the succession when his wife Elizabeth of York died in 1503.

King Henry VIII

King Henry VIII split with the Roman Catholic Church over a question of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Though his religious position was not at all Protestant, the resultant schism ultimately led to England distancing itself almost entirely from Rome. A notable casualty of the schism was Henry's chancellor, Sir Thomas More. There followed a period of great religious and political upheaval, which led to the English Reformation, the royal expropriation of the monasteries and much of the wealth of the church. The Dissolution of the Monasteries had the effect of giving many of the lower classes (the gentry) a vested interest in the Reformation continuing, for to halt it would be to revive Monasticism and restore lands which were gifted to them during the Dissolution.

Henry VIII had three children, all of whom would wear the Crown. The first to reign was Edward VI of England. Although he showed piety and intelligence, he was only a boy of ten when he took the throne in 1547. His uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset tampered with Henry VIII's will and obtained letters patent giving him much of the power of a monarch in March of that year. He took the title of Protector. Whilst some see him as a high-minded idealist, his stay in power culminated in a crisis in 1549 when many counties of the realm were up in protest. Kett's Rebellion in Kent and the Prayer Book Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall simultaneously created a crisis during a time when invasion from Scotland and France were feared. Somerset, disliked by the Regency Council for his autocratic methods, was removed from power by John Dudley, who is known as Lord President Northumberland. Northumberland proceeded to adopt the power for himself, but his methods were more conciliatory and the Council accepted him.

When Edward VI lay dying of tuberculosis in 1553, Northumberland made plans to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne and marry her to his son, so that he could remain the power behind the throne. His putsch failed and Mary I took the throne amidst popular demonstration in her favour in London, which contemporaries described as the largest show of affection for a Tudor monarch. Mary, a devout Catholic who had been influenced greatly by the Catholic King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, tried to reimpose Catholicism on the realm. This led to 274 burnings of Protestants, which are recorded especially in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. She was highly unpopular among her people, and the Spanish party of her husband, Philip II caused much resentment around Court. Mary lost Calais, the last English possession on the Continent, and became increasingly more unpopular (except among Catholics) as her reign wore on. She successfully repelled a rebellion by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

The reign of Elizabeth restored a sort of order to the realm following the turbulence of the reigns of Edward and Mary when she came to the throne following the death of the latter in 1558. The religious issue which had divided the country since Henry VIII was in a way put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which created the Church of England in much the same form we see it today. Much of Elizabeth's success was in balancing the interests of the Puritans (radical Protestants) and "die-hard" Catholics. She managed to offend neither to a large extent, although she clamped down on Catholics towards the end of her reign as war with Catholic Spain loomed.

The slave trade that established Britain as a major economic power can be attributed to Elizabeth, who granted John Hawkins the permission to commence trading in 1562. The number of Africans transported to England was so great due to the slave trade that by 1596 Elizabeth complained that "several blackamoores have lately been brought into this realm of which kind of people there are already too much here". She tried unsuccessfully to expel them via a Proclamation in 1601.

Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth maintained relative government stability apart from the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569, she was effective in reducing the power of the old nobility and expanding the power of her government. One of the most famous events in English martial history occurred in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was repelled by the English navy commanded by Sir Francis Drake, but the war that followed was very costly for England and only ended after Elizabeth's death. Elizabeth's government did much to consolidate the work begun under Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII, that is, expanding the role of the government and in effecting common law and administration throughout England.

In all, the Tudor period is seen as a decisive one which set up many important questions which would have to be answered in the next century and during the English Civil War. These were questions of the relative power of the monarch and Parliament and to what extent one should control the other. Some historians think that Thomas Cromwell affected a "Tudor Revolution" in government and it is certain that Parliament became a lot more important during his chancellorship. Other historians say the "Tudor Revolution" really extended to the end of Elizabeth's reign when the work was all consolidated. Although the Privy Council, which was the mainstay of Tudor government, declined after the death of Elizabeth, whilst she was alive it was very effective.

The Stuarts and the Civil War

Elizabeth died without leaving any direct heirs. Her closest male Protestant relative was the king of Scotland, James VI, of the house of Stuart, so he became James I of England, the first king of the entire island of Great Britain, though he ruled England and Scotland separately. A number of assassination attempts were made on James, notably the Main Plot and Bye Plots of 1603, and most famously, on November 5, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot, by a group of Catholic conspirators, led by Guy Fawkes, which was stoked up and served as further fuel for antipathy in England to the Catholic faith.

Maps of territory held by Royalists (red) and Parliamentarians (green) during the English Civil War (1642 â€" 1645).

The English Civil War broke out in 1642, largely as a result of an ongoing series of conflicts between James' son, Charles I, and Parliament. The defeat of the Royalist army by the New Model Army of Parliament at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 effectively destroyed the King's forces. Charles surrendered to the Scottish army at Newark. He was eventually handed over to the English Parliament in early 1647. He escaped and the Second English Civil War began, although it was to be only a short conflict, with Parliament quickly securing the country. The capture and subsequent trial of Charles led to his beheading in January 1649 at Whitehall Gate in London. A republic was declared and Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector in 1653. After he died, his son Richard Cromwell succeeded him in the office, but soon abdicated. The monarchy was restored in 1660, after England entered a period of anarchy, with King Charles II returning to London.

King Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649

In 1665, London was swept by a visitation of the plague, and then, in 1666, the capital was swept by the Great Fire, which raged for 5 days, destroying approximately 15,000 buildings.

In 1689, the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, replaced the Catholic King James II in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. However, in Scotland and Ireland, Catholics loyal to James II were not so content, and a series of bloody uprisings resulted. These Jacobite rebellions continued until the mid-18th century, until Charles Edward Stuart was defeated at Culloden in 1746.

The First Act of Union saw Scotland united with England and Wales (Wales had already been legally incorporated into England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 by Henry VIII). This was no process of harmonisation, for Scotland had effectively capitulated to English economic pressure after the failure of the DariÃ©n scheme. This process was lubricated in the Scottish parliament by the political manoeuverings of John Campbell, the 2nd Duke of Argyll and James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry. (NB: After the 1707 Act, the histories of Great Britain and England overlap heavily. Since England was the dominant hegemony, it is assumed for the purposes of this article that the two are largely coterminous.)

Colonial England

In 1607 England built an establishment in Virginia (Jamestown). This was the beginning of English colonization. Many English settled then in North America for religious or economic reasons. The English merchants holding plantations in the warm southern parts of America then resorted rather quickly to the slavery of Native Americans and imported Africans in order to cultivate their plantations and sell raw material (particularly cotton and tobacco) in Europe. The English merchants involved in colonization accrued fortunes equal to those of great aristocratic landowners in England, and their money which fueled the rise of the middle class permanently altered the balance of political power.

The Industrial Revolution

Main article: Economic history of Britain

The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw considerable social upheaval as a largely agrarian society was transformed by technological advances and increasing mechanisation, which was the Industrial Revolution. Much of the agricultural workforce was uprooted from the countryside and moved into large urban centres of production, as the steam-based production factories could undercut the traditional cottage industries, due to economies of scale and the increased output per worker made possible by the new technologies. The consequent overcrowding into areas with little supporting infrastructure saw dramatic increases in the rise of infant mortality (to the extent that many Sunday schools for pre working age children (5 or 6) had funeral clubs to pay for each others funeral arrangements), crime, and social deprivation.

The transition to industrialisation was not wholly seamless for workers, many of whom saw their livelihoods threatened by the process. Of these, some frequently sabotaged or attempted to sabotage factories. These saboteurs were known as "Luddites". This view of the Luddite history should also be set against alternative views, such as that of E. P. Thompson.

Recent history

Main article: History of the United Kingdom

The Act of Union of 1800 formally assimilated Ireland within the British political process, and created a new state "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" with effect from 1 January 1801, uniting England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

Since then England has not existed as an independent political entity, but as a country it has remained highly dominant in the United Kingdom. The majority of the political and economic leadership the UK is English. London has remained the economic and centre of Britain and one of the world's great cities.

During the early 19th century, the working classes began to find a voice. Concentrations of industry led to the formation of guilds and unions, which, although at first suppressed, eventually became powerful enough to resist.

Chartism is thought to have originated from the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, which gave the vote to the majority of the (male) middle classes, but not to the 'working class'. Many people made speeches on the 'betrayal' of the working class and the 'sacrificing' of their 'interests' by the 'misconduct' of the government. In 1838, six members of Parliament and six workingmen formed a committee, which then published the People's Charter.

London during The Blitz in World War II

The revolutions which spread like wildfire throughout mainland Europe during the 1840s did not occur in England and Queen Victoria's reign was largely one of consensus, despite huge disparities in living standards between the few rich and the multitudinous poor.

The Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 established the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) as a separate nation, leaving Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom; its official name became "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

England bore the full brunt of German bombing during World War II, many of its cities were badly damaged and huge amounts of infrastructure destroyed. England rapidly recovered after the war, and while internationally the relative wealth and power of Britain have faded, England still remains paramount in the British Isles. 1999 saw the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. There is no English equivalent. In part this is a reflection of the hold England has on the British government.

External links

*http://www.historyofengland.net/
* Full text of The History of England From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John (1066-1216) from Project Gutenberg
* New and Improved Timeline of England coming soon from BBC
* http://www.britannia.com/history/time1.html Timeline of England
* Medieval England

History of England: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents

History of England

England before the English

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Celtic Britain

See also

England during the Middle Ages

See also

Tudor England

See also

The Stuarts and the Civil War

Colonial England

The Industrial Revolution

Recent history

See also

External links

Further reading