Holidays in England + History of England

Bones and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that Homo erectus lived in what is now England about 700,000 years ago. At this time, England was joined to mainland Europe by a large land bridge. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and the Seine. This area was greatly depopulated during the period of the last major ice age, as were other regions of the British Isles. In the subsequent recolonisation, after the thawing of the ice, genetic research shows that present-day England was the last area of the British Isles to be repopulated, about 13,000 years ago. The migrants arriving during this period contrast with the other of the inhabitants of the British Isles, coming across lands from the south east of Europe, whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a coastal route from Iberia. These migrants would later adopt the Celtic culture that came to dominate much of western Europe. By AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion, Britain had already been the target of frequent invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. It was first invaded by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 55 BC, but it was conquered more fully by the Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. Like other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans, and their economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south. With the fall of the Roman Empire 400 years later, the Romans left the Province of Brittania, much of which later came to be known as England.

Mediaeval England

The History of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early mediæval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066. Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the 5th and 6th centuries comes from the British writer Gildas (6th century) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the 9th century), saints' lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name studies. The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have come from three directions—from Rome to the south, and Scotland and Ireland to the north and west. From about 500 AD, it is believed England was divided into seven petty kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as Bretwalda ("Lord of Britain"). Generally speaking, the title fell in the 7th century to the kings of Northumbria; in the 8th, to those of Mercia; and in the 9th, to Egbert of Wessex, who, in 825, defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Ellendun. In the next century, his family came to rule all England.

Originally, England (or "Englaland" ) was a geographical term to describe the part of Britain occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation-state. It became politically united through the expansion of the kingdom of Wessex, whose king Athelstan brought the whole of England under one ruler for the first time in 927, although unification did not become permanent until 954, when Edred defeated Eric Bloodaxe and became King of England.

In 1016, England was conquered by the Danish king Canute the Great and became the centre of government for his short-lived empire. With the accession of Edward the Confessor, heir of the native English dynasty, in 1042, England once again became a separate kingdom. Its ties and nature, however, were forever changed following the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The next few hundred years saw England as a major part of expanding and dwindling empires based in France, with the "Kings of England" using England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for many years (Hundred Years' War) ; in fact the English crown did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was lost, in 1558, during the reign of Mary Tudor (the Channel Islands are still crown dependencies, though not part of the UK).

In the 13th century Wales (the remaining Romano-Celts) was brought under the control of English monarchs through conquest. This was formalised in the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 and Wales was legally annexed to the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called England and later England and Wales.

An epidemic of catastrophic proportions, the Black Death first reached England in the summer of 1348. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population. England alone lost as much as 70% of its population, which passed from seven million to two million in 1400. The plague repeatedly returned to haunt England throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[22] The Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 was the last plague outbreak.

Early Modern period During the English Reformation in the 16th century, the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with Acts of Royal Supremacy and the establishment of the Church of England ("Anglican Church") under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. This occurred during the reign of Henry VIII. The English Reformation differed from its European counterparts in that its roots were more political than theological.

The English Reformation paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism in the church and other institutions.

The period known as the English Civil War (1642-1651) saw political machinations and armed conflicts between supporters of the Long Parliament (Roundheads) and of King Charles I (Royalists) in 1642 to 1645 and 1648 to 1649, followed by conflict between supporters of the Rump Parliament and of King Charles II in 1649 to 1651. The War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. It had led to the trial and execution of the war mad Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then a personal rule by Oliver Cromwell during The Protectorate (1653–1659).

After Cromwell's death in 1659, a brief return to Commonwealth rule was attempted before Parliament with right wing members of the army invited Charles II to return to England in 1660 and restore the monarchy. During the interregnum, the Church of England's monopoly on Christian worship in England came to an end and the Protestant Ascendancy consolidated in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without parliamentary consent, although this would not be cemented until the Glorious Revolution later in the century. In 1660-1688 oppression of religous dissidents by the king and a few rebellions helped make 1688 be a reaction towards less monarchy again.

Although embattled for centuries, the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland had been drawing increasingly together since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and in 1603, with the Scottish king James VI accession to the English crown, the two countries became linked by a personal union, being ruled by the same Stuart dynasty. Following a number of attempts to unite the Kingdoms, a Treaty of Union was agreed on 22 July 1706 by representatives of the English and Scottish parliaments, and put into effect by the Acts of Union which resulted in political union between the states with the creation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 May 1707. (Ireland joining in 1801 with all of Ireland except Northern Ireland leaving in 1922 has resulted in the current name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

Within the Union

England United Kingdom

After the Union, England (including Wales) retained its separate legal identity since the continuance of the separate Scottish legal system was enshrined in the Articles of the Treaty of Union. Wales was already part of the Kingdom of England but the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 made explicit that laws passed for England were automatically applicable to Wales. The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 also referred to the formerly Scottish burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The border town changed hands several times and was last conquered by England in 1482, but was not officially incorporated into England. Contention about whether Berwick was in England or Scotland was ended by the union of the two in 1707. Berwick remains within the English legal system and so is regarded today as part of England (though there has been some suggestion in Scotland, and some polls in Berwick in 2008 supported this, that Berwick should be invited to 'return to the fold'). The county of Monmouthshire has long been an ambiguous area with its legal identity passing between England and Wales at various periods. It though is really part of Wales, if you look at the vidence. In the Local Government Act 1972 it was made part of Wales. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are Crown dependencies and are not part of England.

Government and politics

Government of England and Politics of England

There has not been a Government of England since 1707, when the Acts of Union 1707, putting into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed the previous year, joined the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the united Kingdom of Great Britain. Prior to this, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England. However, following the establishment of devolved government for Scotland and Wales in 1999, England was left as the only country within the United Kingdom still governed in all matters by the UK government and the UK parliament in London.

Since 1707 London was the crentre of a great Empire, Britain and grew to have the largest population of any city, the 18th Cetnruy saw the industrial revoklution and many great inventions in England, but some bad effects on the people. democracy came in the 19th Century, with the Chartists, and poverty started falling massively, and so to did the bad aspects of the Industrial Revoltion, with Life expectancy rising, The 20th Century saw WW1 and WW2, and Labour and the Tories. Top PMs include Harold Wilson, Attlee, Churchill, and such. Ken Livingstone was the popular left wing mayor of London, who improved the city greatly.