The kingdom of England was created by its monarchs. Successive rulers, sometimes from ambition, sometimes from fear, strengthened their armed forces, extended their boundaries, imposed law and order on their quarrelling subjects, introduced standardized coinage and administration, and encouraged one religion. There were moments when the kingdom seemed in danger of being washed away or disintegrating—in the 9th cent. when the Vikings overran most of the country, or during the great Civil War when the nation seemed about to destroy itself.
The evolution of the kingdom of England had, therefore, two aspects, its relations with other peoples—Britons, Vikings, French, Scots, Welsh, Irish—and its development as an effective political and military organism. Many of the characteristics of the English kingdom which emerged derived from the circumstances of the Anglo-Saxon settlements. The settlers came largely from Schleswig-Holstein. The fact that much of the north and west of the mainland was mountainous influenced the ultimate division between Saxon and Celt. The mountains of Wales and Scotland provided refuges: they were also less attractive to settlers and less worthwhile to conquer. The English settlers were divided into a number of kingdoms, waging constant warfare. The enmities between them invited Celtic counter-attack if it could be organized. But the Celts were also divided and, though they were able to inflict sharp defeats on the Saxons, they were not able to drive them out. While the small kingdoms of East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Mercia, Northumbria, and Wessex struggled for supremacy, a kingdom of England remained a long way off. But in the title of ‘bretwalda’—overlord of Britain—may be seen aspiration, even if the substance was shadowy and fleeting. Had Northumbria been able to consolidate its 7th-cent. superiority, a more northerly based English kingdom might have come into existence. But with the decline of Northumbria, the struggle was between Mercia and Wessex and the probability was that any English kingdom would be southern.
From the incessant warfare of the Saxon settlement emerged the kingdom of Mercia. In the later 8th cent., Offa (d. 796) overran Kent and Essex, including London, pushed back the Welsh, and confined Wessex to south of the Thames. At one stage he took the title Rex Anglorum. But Mercia's supremacy depended essentially on Offa's personal prestige and his country was in decline before the Viking raids commenced in the 9th cent. By 878, the north and midlands, including Mercia, had fallen to the Danes, and Alfred of Wessex was hanging on precariously in the Somerset marshes.
For some time it looked as if the British Isles might become part of a grand Scandinavian empire. But, in the event, the Vikings promoted the emergence of a kingdom of England. First, by destroying Northumbria and Mercia, they cleared the way for the supremacy of Wessex. Secondly, the effort required to throw back the invaders gave Wessex a new vitality. Alfred's counter-attack was so vigorous that he was able to divide the country between Wessex and the Danelaw, and his successors built upon his achievements. Edward, his son, and Æthelfleda, his daughter, began the reconquest as far as the Humber, and before his death in 924 Edward had received the submission of northern England. Edgar was said to have been rowed on the Dee at Chester in 973 by British, Welsh, and Scottish kings, though whether this was alliance or homage is not clear.
It follows therefore that when the Normans conquered in 1066 the existence of the kingdom of England was not in jeopardy. Though there was an almost total change of top personnel, there was no mass settlement and the small number of Normans was bound to be absorbed before long. But the ruthless rule of the Norman kings meant that the kingdom was less likely to disintegrate than ever. The main effects were twofold. First, Englishmen and the English language were under a cloud for several generations. Secondly, the country found itself in the wider context of western Europe, as part of an empire which included, at times, most of France.
But the kingdom soon recovered its English character. The Conqueror's youngest son, Henry I, was born in England in 1068, and spoke the language. Within three months of succeeding in 1100 he had married an English princess, the great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. The English language, which had given way in court circles and administration to Norman French or Latin, took longer to recover, partly because of the international utility of Latin. But in 1362 Parliament was opened with a speech in English and the law courts were instructed to hear cases in the English tongue.
In succeeding to the Anglo-Saxon state, the Normans succeeded to its neighbours in the British Isles. The north of England had never been fully integrated into the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. William I's answer was the fearsome harrying of the north in 1069 and 1070. Against Scotland, William achieved a temporary supremacy with a campaign in 1072 as far as the Tay. Of more lasting consequence were the Norman advances against Wales and Ireland. The foundation for the eventual conquest of Wales was laid by the creation of the marcher earldoms. In 1171 Henry II landed at Waterford, and received the submission of many of the Irish chiefs.
The transformation of the small Wessex kingdom into a kingdom of Britain was built on these foundations. The conquest of Wales was completed by Edward I, and the principality was brought into the English political and administrative system in 1536 by the Act of Union. The conquest of Ireland proceeded by fits and starts, according to English preoccupations elsewhere. Henry VIII declared himself king of Ireland in 1541. Later, the Elizabethan settlements, the influx into Ulster from Scotland, and the Cromwellian land redistributions strengthened the English position.
Scotland was a different matter. There were repeated attempts by the English to unite the two countries, by diplomacy or conquest. Edward I's gains were cancelled by the disaster which overtook his son at Bannockburn in 1314. A plan to marry Edward VI to Mary, queen of Scots, came to nothing. Unification came as a consequence of Elizabeth's preference for virginity: the marriage of Henry VIII's sister Margaret in 1503 paid off 100 years later when her great-grandson, James VI, succeeded as James I of England.
A governmental union of his two kingdoms was top of the agenda for James. A combined flag was designed and the name of Great Britain put forward. To a glum Parliament, James outlined the advantages: ‘do we not yet remember that this kingdom was divided into seven little kingdoms, besides Wales … And hath not the union of Wales to England added a greater strength thereto?’ It was to no avail. ‘We should lose the ancient name of England, so famous and victorious, ’ retorted his opponents. The project foundered.
Where James's arguments failed, Cromwell's sword succeeded. After his victories over the Scots at Dunbar and the Irish at Drogheda, the Scottish and Irish parliaments were wound up. The Instrument of Government in 1653 instituted one Commonwealth Parliament, with 30 MPs each from Scotland and Ireland. The arrangement lapsed at the Restoration, for while the case for union remained strong, Charles II was unwilling to build with Cromwell's bricks.
With the great war against Louis XIV from 1688 onwards and the risk of subversion from a Jacobite Scotland, the matter became urgent. William III was still pushing it when he died. In 1702 more negotiations followed, and when they broke down, relations between the two countries reached their lowest point since the 1540s. The Union of 1707 was essentially a Whig move to secure the Hanoverian succession.Scotland obtained access to English markets, while preserving its own legal, educational, and ecclesiastical system. England gained a greater measure of military security.
The new state was to be known as Great Britain and strenuous efforts were made to persuade all subjects to abandon old animosities. For many years such appeals fell upon deaf ears. Londoners, who had jeered at the Welsh in Pepys's day, jeered at the Scots in Wilkes's. The Union is usually discussed from a Scottish point of view—‘the end of an auld song’. But many of the English looked at it sourly. They objected that Scotland was not paying its fair share and mistrusted its retention of a presbyterian form of church government.
The push towards British unification continued. The next great crisis, when the new British state faced the French Revolution, brought the Union with Ireland in 1801, and yet another change of name to the United Kingdom. Wessex, having swallowed its neighbours in England, had now swallowed its neighbours in Britain. But Ireland proved hard to digest. Whereas the unions with Wales and Scotland undoubtedly contributed to British power, that with Ireland was a dubious asset. In 1916, when Britain was in great peril, it was not possible to apply conscription to Ireland. It is a strange union which the government cannot call upon its people to defend. The breaking away of the Irish Free State suggested that the process of more than 1, 000 years was in reverse. How far it would go remains unanswered.
But even should events push the kingdom of England back whence it came, two results of Wessex's supremacy will last for some time. The great imperial expansion of the 17th and 18th cents. produced America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and spread the practice of parliamentary government throughout the world. The second was that for centuries to come the language of international diplomacy and communication will remain that of Hengist and Horsa, Ælle and Cissa
Kingdom of England
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The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state and island country to the northwest of continental Europe. At its zenith, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain (including Wales) and several smaller outlying islands—what is today the legal unit of England and Wales. England as a nation state began in the 9th or 10th century, but broadly traces its origins to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain and the Heptarchy of petty states that followed and ultimately unified. The Norman invasion of Wales from 1067-1283 (formalized with the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284) put Wales in England's control, and Wales came under English law with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. England was united with the neighbouring Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707.
The chief royal residence was originally located at Winchester, in Hampshire, but Westminster and Gloucester were accorded almost equal status—especially Westminster. The City of Westminster in London had become the de facto capital by the beginning of the 12th century. London has thus served as the capital of the Kingdom of England, then the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1801) followed by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922), and subsequently - and to this day - as the capital of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the "United Kingdom").
The present monarch, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, is the successor to the Kings and Queens of England. The title of Queen (or King) of England has been legally incorrect since 1707, although it is colloquially still in common use. Queen Elizabeth II can trace her descent from the Kings of Wessex of the 1st millennium. Despite a political union with Scotland, modern England endures as one of the countries of the United Kingdom.
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History[1]
The Kingdom of England has no specific founding date. The Kingdom originated in the kingdoms of the ancestral English, the Anglo-Saxons, which were carved out of the former Roman province of Britannia. The minor kingdoms in time coalesced into the seven famous kingdoms known as the Heptarchy; East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex. The Viking invasions shattered the pattern of the English kingdoms. The English lands were finally unified in the tenth century in a reconquest completed by King Athelstan in 927 AD.
The Anglo-Saxons knew themselves as the Angelcynn or Engle. They called their lands Engla land, meaing "Land of the Angles" (and when unified also Engla rice; "the Kingdom of the English"). In time Englaland became England.
During the Heptarchy, the most powerful King among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might become acknowledged as Bretwalda, a high king over the other kings. The decline of Mercia allowed Wessex to become more powerful. It absorbed the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex in 825 AD. The Kings of Wessex became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during the 9th century.
However, the conquest of southern Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia by the Danes left Alfred the Great, king of Wessex from 871–899 AD, as the only remaining English king. He successfully resisted a series of Danish invasions of Wessex, defeated the Danes in battle and divided the land with them, annexing half of Mercia to Wessex. His son Edward the Elder (who reigned 899–924 AD) completed the absorption of English Mercia, and re-conquered the rest of Mercia and East Anglia from their Danish occupiers, thereby uniting England south of the Humber.
In 927 AD, Northumbria - whose Danish kings had recently been displaced by Norwegians - fell to Athelstan, King of Wessex, a son of Edward the Elder. Athelstan thereby became the first king to reign over a united England. During the following years Northumbria repeatedly changed hands between the English kings and the Norwegian invaders, but was definitively brought under English control by King Edred in 954 AD, completing the unification of England. At about this time, Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria, was ceded to the Kingdom of Scotland.
England has remained in political unity ever since. During the reign of Ethelred II (who reigned 978–1016) – known to posterity as Ethelred the Unready – a new wave of Danish invasions was orchestrated by Sweyn I of Denmark, culminating after a quarter of a century of warfare in the Danish conquest of England in 1013 AD. But Sweyn died on 2 February 1014 and Ethelred was restored to the throne. In 1015, Sweyn's son King Canute launched a new invasion. The ensuing war ended with an agreement in 1016 between Canute and Ethelred's successor, Edmund Ironside, to divide England between them, but Edmund's death on 30 November of that year left England united under Danish rule. This continued for 26 years until the death of Harthacanute in June 1042. He was the son of Canute and Emma of Normandy (the widow of Ethelred the Unready), and had no heirs of his own; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Ethelred's son, Edward the Confessor. The Kingdom of England was once again independent.
Norman conquest
The peace lasted only until the death of the childless Edward in January 1066. King Edward's brother-in-law was crowned King Harold; but Edward's cousin William the Bastard, later William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, immediately claimed the throne for himself. William launched an invasion of England and landed in Sussex on 28 September 1066. Harold and his army were in York following their victory against the Norwegians at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066) when the news reached him. His army had to cross the entire length of England to reach their new opponent, but he marched south at once, despite the army not being properly rested following the battle with the Norwegians. The armies of Harold and William faced each other at the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066), in which Harold fell and William emerged as victor. William was then able to conquer England with little further opposition. He was not, however, planning to absorb the Kingdom into the Duchy of Normandy. As a mere Duke, William owed allegiance to Philip I of France, whereas in the independent Kingdom of England he could rule without interference. He was crowned King of England on 25 December 1066.
The Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy remained in personal union until 1204. King John, a fourth-generation descendant of William, lost the continental possessions of the Duchy to Philip II of France during that year. A few remnants of Normandy, including the Channel Islands, remained in the possession of King John, together with most of the Duchy of Aquitaine.
Norman conquest of Wales
Up to the time of the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon England, Wales had remained for the most part independent of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, although some Welsh kings did sometimes acknowledge the Bretwalda, for example.
However, soon after the Norman conquest of England, some of the Norman lords began to attack Wales. They conquered parts of it, which they ruled, acknowledging the overlordship of the Norman kings of England, but with considerable local independence. Over many years these "Marcher Lords" conquered more and more of Wales, against considerable resistance led by various Welsh princes, who also often acknowledged the overlordship of the Norman kings of England.
King John's grandson Edward I of England defeated Llywelyn the Last, and so effectively conquered Wales, in 1282. He created the title Prince of Wales for his eldest son Edward II in 1301. Edward's conquest was brutal and the subsequent repression considerable, as the magnificent Welsh castles such as Conwy, Harlech and Caernarfon attest; but this event re-united under a single ruler the lands of Roman Britain for the first time since the establishment of the kingdom of the Jutes in Kent in the 5th century AD, some 700 years before.
Accordingly, this was a highly significant moment in the history of medieval England, as it re-established links with the pre-Saxon past. These links were exploited for political purposes to unite the peoples of the kingdom, including the Anglo-Normans, by popularising Welsh legends.
However, the Welsh language - derived from the British language of the Celts, though with significant Latin influences - continued to be spoken by the majority of the population of Wales for at least another 500 years.
Loss of the Angevin Empire and the Wars of the Roses
Edward II was father to Edward III of England, whose claim to the throne of France resulted in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), the end of which left England defeated, retaining only a single town in France, Calais.
During the Hundred Years War an English identity began to develop in place of the previous division between the Norman Lords and their Anglo-Saxon subjects, in consequence of sustained hostility to the increasingly nationalist French, whose kings and other leaders (notably the charismatic Joan of Arc) used a developing sense of French identity to help draw people to their cause. The Anglo-Normans became separate from their cousins, who held lands mainly in France, who mocked the former for their archaic and bastardised spoken French. English also became the language of the law courts during this period.
The Kingdom had little time to recover before entering the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), a series of civil wars over possession of the throne between the House of Lancaster (whose heraldic symbol was the red rose) and the House of York (whose symbol was the white rose), each led by different branches of the descendants of Edward III. The end of these wars found the throne held by a male descendant of the female line of the House of Lancaster, married to the eldest daughter of the House of York: Henry VII of England and his Queen consort, Elizabeth of York. They were the founders of the Tudor dynasty, which ruled the Kingdom from 1485 to 1603.
Tudors and Stuarts[2]
Wales had retained a separate legal and administrative system, which had been established by Edward I in the late 13th century. Under the Tudor monarchy, which was of Welsh origin, Henry VIII of England - a son of Henry VII - replaced the laws of Wales with those of England (under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542). Wales now ceased to be a personal fiefdom divided between the Prince of Wales and Earl of March, and was instead annexed to the Kingdom of England, and henceforth was represented in the Parliament of England.
During the 1530s, Henry VIII overthrew the power of the Roman Catholic Church within the kingdom, replacing the Pope as head of the English church, and seizing the church's lands, thereby beginning the creation of a new Protestant religion. This had the effect of aligning England with Scotland, which also gradually adopted a Protestant religion, whereas the most important continental powers, France and Spain, remained Roman Catholic.
In 1541, during Henry VIII's reign, the Parliament of Ireland proclaimed him King of Ireland, thereby bringing the Kingdom of Ireland into personal union with the Kingdom of England.
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During the reign of Mary I of England, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, Calais - the last remaining continental possession of the kingdom - was lost: captured by the French, under Francis, Duke of Guise, on 7 January 1558.
Henry VIII's younger daughter, Elizabeth I of England, consolidated the new Protestant Church of England. She also began to build up the kingdom's naval strength, on the foundations her father had laid down. In 1588 her new navy was strong enough to defeat the Spanish Armada, which had sought to invade England in order to put a Catholic monarch on the throne in her place.
The House of Tudor ended with the death of Elizabeth I on 24 March 1603, for she died childless. Without a direct heir to her throne, James VI, King of Scots (a descendant of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister), from Scotland's Stuart dynasty, ascended the throne of England, becoming King James I of England. He was a Protestant. Despite the Union of the Crowns, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland remained separate and independent states under this personal union: a state of affairs which lasted for more than a century.
The Stuart kings, however, over-estimated the power of the English monarchy, and were cast down by Parliament in 1645 and 1688. In the first instance, Charles I's introduction of new forms of taxation, in defiance of Parliament, led to the English Civil War (1641-45), in which the king was defeated, and to the consequent abolition of the monarchy under Oliver Cromwell, during the interregnum of 1649-1660. Henceforth, the monarch could reign only at the will of Parliament.
Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, an attempt by James II (a son of Charles I) to reintroduce Roman Catholicism - a century after its suppression by the Tudors - led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which he was deposed by Parliament, which offered the Crown to a Dutch Protestant prince, William of Orange.
In 1707 the Acts of Union, ratified by both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England, created the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1801). Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuart, became the first monarch of the new kingdom. The English and Scottish Parliaments were merged into the Parliament of Great Britain, located in Westminster, London. At this point England ceased to exist as a separate political entity, and since then has had no national government. The laws of England were unaffected, with the legal jurisdiction continuing to be that of England and Wales, while Scotland continued to have its own laws and law courts. This continued after the Act of Union of 1800 between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (which would later become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
Commonwealth and Protectorate
England was a monarchy for the entirety of its political existence, from its creation around 927 AD up until the 1707 Acts of Union, except for the eleven years of the English Interregnum (1649 to 1660) which followed the English Civil War.
The rule of the executed King Charles I was replaced by that of a republic known as the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653). The most prominent General of the republic's New Model Army, Oliver Cromwell, managed to extend its rule to Ireland and Scotland.
The victorious Cromwell eventually turned against the republic, and established a new form of government known as The Protectorate, with himself as Lord Protector until his death on 3 September 1658. He was succeeded by his son Richard Cromwell. However, anarchy eventually developed, as Richard proved unable to maintain his rule. He resigned his title and retired into obscurity.
The Commonwealth was then re-established, but proved to be unstable, so the exiled claimant, Charles II, was recalled to the throne by Parliament in 1660 in the English Restoration.
References
- ^ Wood, Michael (1981). In Search of the Dark Ages. BBC Books: London.
- ^ Elton, G R (1955). England under the Tudors. Methuen: London.
- The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII, Elton G R, Cambridge University Press, 1953.
- The Reformation, Elton G R, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
- The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, Elton G R, Cambridge University Press, 1960.
- England, 1200-1640 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969.
- Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews, 1945-1972, 4 volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974-1992.
See also
- List of monarchs of England
- Royal Navy
- Crown Jewels of England
- England and Wales
- Kingdom of Cornwall (Kernow)
- Anglo-Norman language
| Preceded by The Heptarchy c.500 – c.927 |
Kingdom of England c.927 – 1649 |
Succeeded by English Interregnum 1649 – 1660 |
| Preceded by English Interregnum 1649 – 1660 |
Kingdom of England 1660 – 1707 |
Succeeded by Kingdom of Great Britain 1707 – 1800 |
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Mentioned in
- Sussex (Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southern England)
- Cumbria (ancient Celtic kingdom of northwest England)
- Kent (region and former kingdom of southeast England)
- Wessex (region and ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom)
- United Kingdom
- Edred (English king)
- Dombec (legal term)
- Ranulf Glanvill
- East Anglia (region and Anglo-Saxon kingdom of eastern England)
- Essex (historical region and Anglo-Saxon kingdom)
- Mercia (Anglo-Saxon kingdom of central England)
- Northumbria (Anglo-Saxon kingdom of northern England)
- United Kingdom
- Sir John Fortescue
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