Hear it pronouncedEngland
England (pronounced /ˈɪŋglənd/) (Old English: Englaland, Middle English: Engelond) is the largest and most populous country[1][2][3] of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total population of the United Kingdom,[4] while the mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel.
England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.[5]
England has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world.[6] It is the place of origin of the English language and the Church of England, and English law forms the basis of the legal systems of many countries; in addition, London was the centre of the British Empire, and the country was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.[7] England was the first country in the world to become industrialised.[8] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science. England was the world's first modern parliamentary democracy[9] and consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
The Kingdom of England (including the Principality of Wales) continued as a separate state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union, putting into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union, resulted in political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain.[10]
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Etymology and usage
- See also: British Isles (terminology)
England is named after the Angles, the largest of the Germanic tribes who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in what is now Denmark and northern Germany.[11] (The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.[12]
The Angles' name has had various spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania,[13] written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean".
The early 8th-century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or Angli (in Latin).[14]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.[15]
The word "England" is often used colloquially – and incorrectly – to refer to Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole.[16] There are many instances of this usage in history, where references to England are actually intended to include Scotland and Wales as well.[17] The term is used throughout the world and even by English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of Britain.
England is officially defined as "subject to any alteration of boundaries under Part IV of the Local Government Act 1972, the area consisting of the counties established by section 1 of that Act, Greater London and the Isles of Scilly."[18]
History
- Further information: History of Anglo-Saxon 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.[19] 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,[20] 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 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.[21] 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[citation needed] 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.
Kingdom of England
Originally, England (or "Englaland"[citation needed]) 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 one 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, through conquest, Wales (the remaining Romano-Celts) was brought under the control of English monarchs. This was formalised in the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, by which Wales became part of 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.[23]
Reformation
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.[24]
The English Reformation paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism in the church and other institutions.
Civil War
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 Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and 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 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 the consent of Parliament, although this would not be cemented until the Glorious Revolution later in the century.
The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an independent nation-state until the Acts of Union in 1707.
Great Britain and the United Kingdom
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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[25] and after 1603, when the two countries became linked by a personal union, being ruled by the same Stuart dynasty.[25][26] Following a number of attempts to unite the Kingdoms, a Treaty of Union was agreed on 22 July 1706,[27]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.[25] The Kingdom of Ireland later joined this union to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland changed its name to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1927 to reflect its reduced territory following the secession of southern Ireland as the Irish Free State in 1922.
Throughout these changes, England (including Wales) retained a separate legal identity from its partners, with a separate legal system (English law) from those in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland law) and Scotland (Scots law). (See subdivisions of the United Kingdom)
Wales had already been made part of the Kingdom of England by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, and it was legally incorporated into England by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746, making laws passed in England automatically applicable to Wales. The Welsh Language Act 1967 gave status to the Welsh Language in all aspects of Government but the legal systems remain the same. Legal and political terminology refers to "England and Wales". The county of Monmouthshire has long been an ambiguous area, its legal identity passing between England and Wales at various periods. In the Local Government Act 1972 it was made part of 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 that Berwick should be invited to 'return to the fold'.[28]
The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are Crown dependencies and are not part of England or of the United Kingdom.
Government and politics
There has not been a Government of England since 1707, when the Kingdom of England merged with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, although both kingdoms have been ruled by a single monarch since 1603. Before the Acts of Union of 1707, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England.
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.[29]
Since Westminster is the UK parliament but also legislates on matters that affect England alone, devolution of national matters to parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has refocused attention on the anomaly called the West Lothian question. The "question" is that Scottish and Welsh MPs continue to be able to vote on legislation relating only to England in the post-devolution era while English MPs have no equivalent right to legislate on devolved matters.[30] This "question" is exacerbated by the large number of Scottish MPs in the government, a group sometimes disparagingly called the Scottish mafia; as of September 2006, seven of the twenty-three Cabinet members represent Scottish constituencies, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Defence Secretary. In addition, Scotland traditionally benefited from moderate malapportionment in its favour, increasing its representation to a degree disproportionate to its population. In 2004, the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 was passed which rectified this to a degree, reducing the number of MPs representing Scottish constituencies from 72 to 59 and brought the number of voters per constituency closer to that in England. This change was implemented in the 2005 General Election.
There are calls for a devolved English parliament and some minor English parties further call for the dissolution of the Union.[31][32] However, the approach favoured by the current Labour government was (on the basis that England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state entity) to propose the devolution of power to the Regions of England. Lord Falconer claimed a devolved English parliament would dwarf the rest of thee United Kingdom.[33]
In terms of national administration, therefore, England's
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