History of England
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England is the largest of the 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 united since the 10th century. This article concerns that territory.
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[edit] England before the English
- Main articles: Prehistoric Britain and Roman Britain
Archaeology shows that humans came to southern England long before the rest of the British Isles because of the friendly climate between and during the various ice ages of the distant past.
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 had much in common with the other barbarian tribes on the continent. Coins and the work of later Roman historians have given us the names of some of the rulers of the many tribes and their activities.
But few historical sources describe Roman England. For example, we have only one sentence about the reasons for the construction of Hadrian's Wall.
[edit] History
When the Romans left the south of the island by about 410 England was settled by wave after wave of Germanic peoples (Anglo-Saxons).
Jutes together with large numbers of Frisians, Saxons from northern Germany and Angles from southern Denmark - commonly known as Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the mid 5th century and again around the middle of the 6th century. They came under military leaders and settled at first on the eastern shores.
Analysis of human bodies unearthed at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England, shows that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side-by-side. The Romano-British population (the Britons) was assimilated. The settlement (or invasion) of England is known as the Saxon Conquest or the Anglo-Saxon (sometimes "English") Conquest.
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 western 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.
After a time of 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.
[edit] England during the Middle Ages
- Main article: Britain in the Middle Ages
The defeat of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 against William II of Normandy, later called William I of England and the following Norman takeover of Saxon England led to a important change in the history of the small 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 duchy 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 long lasting 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. An English textile industry developed in the fifteenth century, providing the basis for rapid English capital accumulation.
The reign of Henry II represents a reversion in power back from the barony and the Church to the king.
Henry's successor, Richard I "the Lion Heart", was took part in the Third Crusade and defended 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 many other French territories. In 1215 the barons led an armed rebellion and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which meant legal limits on the King's personal powers.
The reign of Edward I (1272–1307) was rather successful. Edward strengthened the powers of his Government, called the first English Parliament. He conquered Wales. His son, Edward II, suffered a massive defeat at Bannockburn against Scotland.
The Black Death, an epidemic that spread over the whole of Europe and parts of Asia, arrived in England in 1349 and killed perhaps up to a third of the population.
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.
[edit] Tudor England
- Main article: Early Modern Britain
The Wars of the Roses ended with the victory of the relatively unknown Henry Tudor, Henry VII, at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where the Yorkist Richard III was killed.
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, this led to England distancing itself from Rome.
There followed a period of great religious and political unrest, which led to the English Reformation.
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.
When Edward VI died of tuberculosis in 1553 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 get back to Catholicism. This led to 274 burnings of Protestants, which are recorded in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. She was highly unpopular among her people then. Mary lost Calais, the last English possession on the Continent, and became increasingly more unpopular (except among Catholics) athe end of her reign.
The reign of Elizabeth restored a sort of order to England in 1558. The religious issue which had divided the country since Henry VIII was to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which created the Church of England in much the same form we see it today.
The slave trade that made Britain a major economic power began with Elizabeth, who gave John Hawkins the permission to commence trading in 1562.
The government of Elizabeth was very stable apart from the revolt of the northern earls in 1569, and she was able to reduce the power of the old nobility and expanded the power of her government. One of the most famous events in English martial history occurred in 1588 when the Spanish Armada lost against the English navy commanded by Sir Francis Drake. Elizabeth's government did much to make her government stronger and to make common law and administration effective 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.
[edit] 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.
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. 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.
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. After the 1707 Act, the histories of Great Britain and England overlap heavily.
[edit] External links
- 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.
- Timeline of England.
- Medieval England
[edit] Further reading
- A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World, 3500 BC – 1603 AD by Simon Schama, BBC/Miramax, 2000 ISBN 0-7868-6675-6
- A History of Britain, Volume 2: The Wars of the British 1603–1776 by Simon Schama, BBC/Miramax, 2001 ISBN 0-7868-6675-6
- A History of Britain - The Complete Collection on DVD by Simon Schama, BBC 2002 ASIN B00006RCKI
- The Isles, A History by Norman Davies, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-513442-7
- The History of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of William and Mary in 1688, 1819 by Father John Lingard (Roman Catholic perspective)
- Shortened History of England by G. M. Trevelyan Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-023323-7
- A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Churchill Cassell reference, ISBN 0-304-36389-8 — the writing of which helped bring Churchill to public attention in the 1930s, and which forms the basis of many later reference works
- Letters of the Kings of England, now first collected from the originals in royal archives, and from other authentic sources, private as well as public by J O Halliwell-Phillipps, London, H. Colburn, 1846. vol. 1 — Google Books
