ENGLAND

ENGLAND. At the level of world history, England between 1485 and 1789 is most important for the developments that helped usher in aspects of the modern world. Three, in particular, are worthy of note. First, the expansion of English power was such that, by 1700, England was the world's leading maritime power and the most important colonial power in North America; by the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, England was the strongest state in the world. Second, the religious and political changes within England transformed the nature of its political culture and therefore ensured the character of the state that was to become the most important in the world, and, to a certain extent, contributed to that development. The most significant of these changes within England were the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and the overthrow of Stuart authoritarianism in the seventeenth century and its replacement by a political system in which Parliament played a leading role. Third, the period saw the development of the English language. The vocabulary expanded, English replaced Latin and Norman French as the language of the Bible and the law respectively, and, with the plays of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), it reached new cultural heights.

CHRISTIANITY AND WITCHCRAFT

It is also important to draw attention to other aspects of the period that do not so readily accord with this account of modernization. In many profound ways, both the facts and details of life and the attitudes of the period were totally different from those today. This was a realm that was shadowed by a world of spirits, good and bad, and these spirits were seen and believed to intervene frequently in the life of humans. This belief brought together both Christian notions—in particular providentialism, a conviction of God's direct intervention in the life of individuals, the intercessory role of saints, sacraments, prayer and belief, the existence of heaven, purgatory, hell, and the devil, and a related and overlapping group of ideas, beliefs, and customs—that were partially Christianized but also testified to a mental world that was not explicable in terms of Christian theology. This was a world of good and evil, knowledge and magic, of fatalism, of the occult, and of astrology and alchemy. Such beliefs were widely held.

This fearful world could be only partially countered by Christianity, but the very sense of menace and danger helps to account for the energy devoted to religious issues in the sixteenth century and the fears encouraged by changes in church belief and practice, for example, the despoliation of shrines and the ending of pilgrimages. The true path of Christian virtue and salvation was challenged not only by false prophets laying claim to the word of Jesus, but also by a malevolent world presided over by the devil. Witches were prominent among the devil's followers, and concern about witches gained a new prominence in the sixteenth century. James I (reigned 1603–1625), for whose court Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, wrote against witches and was believed to be the target of their diabolical schemes, although he later recanted his opinions and, if anything, became a force for moderation in their treatment.

Witchcraft was not swept away by the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the supposed onset of the modern age. Indeed, belief in prediction, astrology, alchemy, and the occult was especially strong in the early seventeenth century. The last recorded witch trial in England occurred in 1717, and the Witchcraft Act of 1736 banned accusations of witchcraft and sorcery.

LIVING CONDITIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation with its emphasis on a vernacular Bible ensured that good and evil became more literary and less oral and visual than hitherto, but that did not diminish the need for people to understand their world in terms of the struggle between the two. Evil, malevolence, and the inscrutable workings of the divine will seemed the only way to explain the sudden pitfalls of the human condition.

The average experience of life for the people of the period necessarily came at a younger age than for the average person today, and was shaped within a context of the ever-present threat of death, disease, injury, and pain. There was still joy and pleasure, exultation and exhilaration, but the demographics were chilling. Alongside individuals who lived to old age, there were lives quickly cut short—in the case of women, especially in childbirth. Child mortality figures continued to be high. Thirty-eight percent of the children born in Penrith in the northwest of England between 1650 and 1700 died before reaching the age of six. Defenses against disease remained flimsy, not least because of the limited nature of medical knowledge. Treatments such as blistering and mercury were often painful, dangerous, or enervating. Surgery was primitive and was performed without anesthesia. There was nothing akin to the modern expectation that there should be a medical cure for everything; people were forced to resort to quack medicines, folk remedies, and prayer. Typhus, typhoid, influenza, dysentery, chicken pox, measles, scarlet fever, and syphilis were all serious threats. Other conditions that can now be cured or held at bay were debilitating.

Living conditions contributed to the problem. Crowded housing, especially the sharing of beds, helped spread diseases, particularly respiratory infections. Most dwellings were neither warm nor dry, and sanitary practices were a problem. There were few baths, washing in clean water was limited, and louse infestation was serious. Although outer clothes were worn for long periods and were not washable, those who could afford it wore linen or cotton shifts next to their skin, and these shifts could be regularly laundered. However, most people wore the same clothes for as long as they could. Bedbugs and rats were real horrors and, by modern standards, breath and skin must have been repellent. It is difficult to recreate an impression of the smell and dirt of the period. Ventilation was limited. Humans lived close to animals and dunghills, and this damaged health. Manure stored near buildings was hazardous and could contaminate the water supply, while effluent from undrained privies and animal pens came into houses through generally porous walls. Privies with open soil pits lay directly alongside dwellings and under bedrooms.

Poor nutrition lowered resistance to disease. Fruit and vegetables were expensive and played only a minor role in the diet of the urban poor, who were also generally ill clad. The poor ate less meat. Plant stocks had not been scientifically improved to resist disease and adverse weather conditions and to increase yields.

Agricultural labor was arduous, generally daylight to dusk in winter, and 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer. Industrial employment was also hard—up to sixteen hours daily in the Yorkshire alum houses—and often dangerous. Each occupation had its own hazards. Millers worked in dusty and noisy circumstances, frequently suffered from lice, and often developed asthma, hernias, and chronic back problems. Disorders could result from the strain of unusual physical demands or postures, such as those required of tailors and weavers. Many places of work were damp, badly ventilated, and poorly lit. Work frequently involved exposure to dangerous substances such as arsenic, lead, and mercury or was dangerous in itself, particularly construction, fishing, and mining. Many industrial processes were dangerous to others besides the workers: dressing and tanning leather polluted water supplies.

At a more mundane level, uncertainty was a matter not only of demographics but also an aspect of the contemporary world of space, not least of transport. This uncertainty, in comparison with modern life, was captured most vividly by the abrupt shift from light to darkness. The modern world can overcome the latter with electric lighting and, as far as travel and distance are concerned, navigation systems, but, in the early modern world, the dark was a world of uncertainty, danger, and menace. This was especially true for the traveler literally unable to see his routes.

TRANSPORTATION

In addition to the problems presented by the darkness, road surfaces were unreliable. They were greatly affected by rain, especially on clay soils. Travel through the heavily forested Weald in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, in the southeast, posed particular problems, but heavy clays, for example in south Essex and the Vale of Berkeley (Gloucestershire), also created difficulties. Furthermore, standards of road maintenance were low. Upkeep was largely the responsibility of the local parish, and the resources for a speedy and effective response to deficiencies were lacking.

The situation did not improve greatly through the early modern period. Travel was not much easier in 1700 than it had been in 1500. Horses were the same, ships were still wooden and wind-powered, most roads were still dirt tracks, and the impact of the weather had not changed. The slowness of land travel, the difficulty of moving bulk goods on land, other than by river, and Britain's island character ensured that trade and travel by sea were more important than they are today. On land, a network of regular and reliable long-distance wagon services did not develop until the seventeenth century. The situation was worse at sea. Shipwreck and the problems of storm-tossed or, in contrast, becalmed journeys engaged the imagination of the age, as can be seen from the role of storms and shipwrecks in such Shakespeare plays as The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Pericles, A Winter's Tale, and The Comedy of Errors.

PLAGUE, POPULATION, AND URBAN EXPANSION

There were still virulent outbreaks of the plague, as in 1499–1500, 1518, 1538, 1563, and 1665, the last the Great Plague in which between seventy and one hundred thousand people died. Nevertheless, there was also a major rise in population. Prior to the first national census in 1801, all figures are approximate, but the population of England and Wales seems to have increased from under 2.5 million in 1500 to over 4 million by 1603 and about 5 million by 1651. The impact of this change was accentuated because it followed a period of stagnation after the Black Death (1348–1350) and preceded another that lasted until the 1740s. The increase in population was due largely to a fall in mortality, but a rise in fertility stemming from a small decrease in the average age of women at marriage was probably also important.

The rise in population affected the structure of society by leading to overpopulation as far as the distribution of resources was concerned, certainly in comparison with the fifteenth century. This encouraged a persistent rise in prices in the sixteenth century. The demand for food caused the rents of agricultural land to rise proportionately more rapidly than wages. This hit both tenants and those with little or no land. In the volatile and tense situation, agrarian capitalism became more intense. Landlords tried to increase the yield of their customary estates and to destroy the system of customary tenure. Much of the peasantry lost status and became little different from poorly paid wage laborers. The growing number of paupers and vagrants greatly concerned successive governments, although more for reasons of law and order than because of concern about the poor.

Urban expansion was a product of the role of towns as centers of manufacturing, trade, government, and leisure. Yet all four were also pursued in the countryside, just as there was much market gardening within town walls, as well as orchards and pastures, the latter particularly for milk, which could not be refrigerated, treated, or preserved. With the exception of London, cities were small and the countryside was always nearby. In 1523, Worcester ranked sixteenth among England's towns by population, which was only about 4,000, and only about 6,000 in 1646. Evesham, the next biggest town in Worcestershire, had only about 1,400 people—the size of a modern village—in the mid-sixteenth century.

Rural fairs remained important to trade, their episodic character a reminder of the rhythm of seasonal activity that framed life. Much industry was also located in the countryside, in part because of the importance of waterpower provided by fast-flowing rivers and tapped by the water wheels in mills.

ECONOMIC CHANGES

Alongside any emphasis on elements of continuity, it is necessary to draw attention to signs of economic change. This was both quantitative (increased production) and qualitative (new methods and routes). Both were important. A more integrated economy reflected the demands of a growing population and urban markets and the absence of internal tariffs. Trade increasingly linked distant areas. Northeastern coal was shipped from Newcastle to London. As national markets developed, the importance of transport links and capital availability increased. The processing of rural products—grain, meat, wool, wood, hides, hops—was central to industry throughout Britain. The cost and difficulty of transport encouraged the production of goods near the markets for which they were destined. Thus, rural Britain was dotted with breweries and mills.

Building reflected affluence and expenditure, as with the insertion of chimney stacks in many houses. The world of "things" increased over the early modern period. More artifacts survive from the sixteenth century than from the fifteenth, and other evidence, such as probate inventories, legal records, and literary references, also suggest a marked trend toward possessing more. Increasing material consumption also invited denunciation by moralists and was seen as the cause of what was regarded as a major rise in crime. The world of things had important cultural consequence. Craftsmanship flourished in the manufacture of many goods. The increase in the number of musical instruments, such as lutes, probably ensured that instrumental music came to play a prominent role, especially in genteel society. Songs were set to music, which it must be assumed people could readily play.

Books were an important part of this new world. Early beginnings in printing were less important than sustained growth in the production and consumption of books and other printed material in the sixteenth and later centuries. The availability of books helped to encourage literacy. It was important for its collective functions, especially the use of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer in church and the energizing of cultural production. But it also offered the possibility of a more private and individual culture than that provided by the conspicuous consumption and display of public ceremonial.

The publication of the vernacular Bible helped to validate both books and the use of English rather than Latin. Printing made writing more available in a standard form, creating a shared and repeatable culture that manuscripts could not generate. Print thus lent itself to the demands of a state that from the 1530s was legislating actively in lay and ecclesiastical matters.

As yet, however, the impact of popular literacy and the print revolution upon oral culture was limited. Most people could neither read nor afford books. Furthermore, most people lacked formal education. Thus, printing exacerbated social divisions and gave an extra dimension to the flow of orders, ideas, and models down the social hierarchy. The inability of the poor to express themselves was accentuated. Conversely, education, the world of print, the impact of government, and the role of London all encouraged the gentry increasingly to view politics and society in national terms.

The poverty of the majority was counterpointed by the growing comfort that characterized the wealthy. This contrast was also seen in political and religious change, with the bulk of the population neither consulted nor considered other than as objects of control. The absence of consultation was more disruptive than it had been ever since the Norman Conquest of 1066 because change was not simply a matter of monarchs and aristocratic factions competing for the spoils of power and privilege, but, with the Reformation, also a deep-seated and divisive change in the nation's ideology and culture. The extent of this has been largely overlooked because, from the reign of Elizabeth (1558–1603), the Reformation was seen as the national destiny and central to national identity. English became the language of God's work and the monarch was now head of the church. The assertion by the English Church that purgatory did not exist and the consequent abolition of prayers for the dead destroyed links between the communities of the living and the dead. The loss of the monasteries in the 1530s brought much disruption, including, in many localities, the breakdown of poor and medical relief. Although in the short term monastic charity was ended, before long Protestant-influenced patterns of charitable giving developed. Instead of bequests going to masses for the dead and to chantry priests, they were now more frequently left for parish charities, educational provision, and almshouses.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Henry VIII's use of Parliament in the 1530s and 1540s to legitimate his objectives increased its frequency and role. Nevertheless, the idea that there was a revolution in government in the 1530s is questionable: Henry's preference for direct control remained the dominant theme throughout his reign. He kept his grip on the domestic situation, helped by his clear right to the throne, his unwillingness to turn obviously to either religious option, and the selective use of terror. Henry retained control of the government, as well as of the aristocracy through their attendance at court, through the travels of the court itself, through shared participation in military activities and the hunt, and through patronage.

Under Edward VI (ruled 1547–1553), politics at the center and control of the localities were greatly complicated by religious disputes. They made it harder to ensure cooperation and consensus. During his reign, Edward was opened to the influence of Protestantism from the Continent, and there was a surge of state-supported and purposeful Protestant activity. Hostility to religious change played a major role in the widespread uprisings in the southwest in 1549, although the rising in Norfolk that year focused on opposition to landlords, especially the enclosure of common lands and their high rents, and to oppressive local governments. Although crushed, the risings in 1549 indicated the extent to which developments in the 1530s through the 1560s encouraged a degree of hostile popular response that menaced the political system and thus required the development of a new language and practice of apparent consultation within the political nation.

Similarly, under Mary (ruled 1553–1558), the failure of Wyatt's rising indicated the precarious nature of the regime, but also the problems affecting rebellions. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragón, was a devout Catholic who was determined to return England to the Catholic fold. A parliamentary statute declared her power identical to that of a male ruler. She persuaded Parliament to repeal Edward's religious legislation and her father's Act of Supremacy. She restored papal authority and Catholic practice, although a papal dispensation from Julius III allowed the retention of the former church lands by those who now held them. The reign of the sickly Mary was brief, and her chance of success in re-Catholicizing England and Wales was further victim of her failure to produce an heir, in spite of two phantom pregnancies. Mary is chiefly remembered as a persecutor ("Bloody Mary"). Nearly three hundred Protestants were burned at the stake, including many leaders. Her reign was also important because in 1558 the French retook Calais, the last English possession in mainland France: only the Channel Islands were left.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Parliamentary management became more important during the long reign of Elizabeth (ruled 1558–1603). This was an aspect of a shift in the politics of the country away from a focus on relations between crown and aristocracy and, instead, toward relations between crown and gentry. At the center, although the royal court remained the major focus of politics, this led to a greater role for Parliament and a stress on ideas of representation, and in the localities to the growing importance of the gentry as justices of the peace. The rise of a numerous and independent gentry with a sense and obligation of public duty was linked to the failure of the peerage to be the prime beneficiary of the sociopolitical changes of the period. The creation of stronger links between crown and gentry was fundamental to the achievement of the Elizabethan period. Elizabeth was the most experienced politician in her kingdom, anxious to preserve the royal prerogative, but knowing when to yield without appearing weak. She had favorites but did not give them power, and she never married. Claiming that she was an exceptional woman because she was chosen by God as his instrument, Elizabeth was pragmatic and generally more successful in coping with, indeed exploiting, divisions among her advisers than Mary had been. She presented herself as "mere English."

Elizabeth's lengthy reign permitted the consolidation of a relatively conservative Protestant church settlement, and also contrasted both with the chaos of the preceding two reigns and with the disturbed situation in contemporary France, where the lengthy civil Wars of Religion (1552–1598) were soon to begin. Like her grandfather, Henry VII (ruled 1485–1509), Elizabeth was a skillful manipulator, not a zealot. In religion, she sought to avoid extremes and would have preferred a settlement closer to that of her father, Henry VIII: Catholicism without pope or monks. She was, nevertheless, a Protestant in the last analysis. Mary's ministers and favorites were mostly dismissed, and the domestic political situation led Elizabeth in a more Protestant direction, but the Protestant settlement she introduced was more conservative than that of the last years of Edward VI. Elizabeth also sought to prevent further change, and this led to disputes with the more radical Protestants, the Puritans.

Elizabeth's Protestant settlement aroused Catholic concern, and the situation became volatile in 1568 when her cousin, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), fled to England, where she was next in line in the succession. Mary's presence acted as a focus for conspiracy, helping trigger the unsuccessful Northern Rising of 1569. Its failure was one of the major stages in the political unification of England, for it marked the end of any viable prospect of regional autonomy centered on a different political and/or religious agenda. This was important because the north was more religiously conservative than the south. Even in 1569, the rebellion had been intended to ensure a change in the policy of the central government. Thereafter, politics centered far more on nationwide attempts to influence the center, rather than local efforts to defy it.

The Northern Rising was followed by an escalation in tension between Elizabeth's government and Catholic Europe. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated and deposed Elizabeth. This eased the path for a number of unsuccessful conspiracies designed to replace Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots, which led in turn to the execution of the latter in 1587.

Two years earlier, English military support for Dutch Protestant rebels against Philip II of Spain, and English raids on Spanish trade and colonies, especially those by Francis Drake (c. 1540–1596), had led to war between the two powers. This conflict was most famous for the Armada of 1588, a Spanish attempt to send a major fleet up the English Channel in order to cover an invasion of England from the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) by the effective Spanish army of Flanders under the duke of Parma. This was thwarted by a combination of poor planning, a skillful English naval response, and the weather. The latter fueled the development of belief in a providential sanction for English Protestantism. To contemporaries, the unassailable nature of divine approval was clear.

Despite the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth I's reign did not end on a triumphant note. Inflation and a lack of crown revenue created a difficult situation. Elizabeth preferred to cut public expenditure rather than reform the revenue system. Demands for additional taxation and attempts to raise funds by unpopular expedients—especially forced loans, ship money, and the sale of monopolies to manufacture or sell certain goods—led to bitter criticism in the Parliaments of 1597 and 1601. Tax demands were especially unwelcome because of harvest failures and related social tensions. There were problems—political, social, and economic—aplenty, the government had a stopgap feel to it, and Elizabeth was less adept and tolerant in her last years than she had been earlier in the reign.

THE STUART SUCCESSION AND CIVIL WAR

Yet there was no civil war comparable to that in France, and the Stuart succession was inaugurated in 1603 without such a war. The increasing widespread politicization that was a feature of sixteenth-century England did not present insuperable problems. Instead, it contributed to a stronger national consciousness.

Thus, Parliament was a national body, whereas the nearest equivalent in France, the Estates-General, had less impact (and was not summoned between 1614 and 1789) than the regional Estates. As a unitary state, England could not be divided to suit the views of a ruler.

However, in the civil war that began in 1642, the country did split. The Royalists and the Parliamentarians had backing in every region and social group. Parliamentary support was strongest in the most economically advanced regions—in the south, the east, and the large towns—but in each of these regions there were also many Royalists, and the relationship between socioeconomic groups and religious and political beliefs were complex. The latter were important. Charles I (ruled 1625–1649) received much support as the focus for strong feelings of honor, loyalty, and duty. There was also widespread disquiet about possible changes to church government. In contrast, Puritans were his firm opponents. As a consequence, much rivalry was within, rather than between, social and economic groups. The English Civil War was a terrible crisis. Britons fought against and killed other Britons as never before. More than half the total number of battles ever fought on English soil involving more than 5,000 men were fought between 1642 and 1651. Out of an English male population of about 1.5 million, over 80,000 died in combat and another 100,000 of other causes arising from the war, principally disease.

Charles's defeat and his execution led eventually to a republic in 1649, and, in 1653–1658, to a military regime under Oliver Cromwell that suppressed domestic opposition and projected its power abroad with considerable success. However, the Puritan cultural revolution failed. There was widespread anxiety about the overthrow of order in politics, religion, society, and the household. This anxiety was the background to the restoration, in 1660, of the Stuart monarchy in the person of Charles II (ruled 1660–1685). Despite uncertainty and opposition, Charles's reign was more stable than the previous quarter-century. This was important not only for recovery from the mid-century conflicts, but also for economic growth and development. Foreign trade rose during Charles's reign. Economic growth was modest, and the stagnant population was a damper on demand, but there was development in both agricultural and industrial production.

Monarchy, Parliament, the Church of England, and the position of the social elite were all seen as mutually reinforcing, but the Catholicism of Charles's brother and heir, James II (ruled 1685–1688), made this an elusive harmony. James inherited his father's worst characteristics—inflexibility and dogmatism—and pressed forward unpopular authoritarian changes designed to further his goals of greater royal authority and paving the way for re-Catholicization. The political culture of the age assumed deference in return for good kingship, expectations of political behavior that involved a measure of contractualism. James spurned these boundaries.

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

James's base of support was narrow, and it collapsed in 1688 as a result of challenge from without by his nephew William III (ruled 1689–1702), stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and the husband of James's daughter Mary (ruled 1689–1694). William's invasion of England was quickly successful, in large part because he ably exploited James's failure of nerve. James was encouraged to flee and Parliament declared that James had abdicated, rather than adopting the more radical notion that he had been deposed. Parliament debarred Catholics from the succession and placed restrictions on royal power. The financial settlement left William with an ordinary revenue that was too small for his peacetime needs, obliging him to turn to Parliament for support. A standing army was prohibited unless permitted by Parliament. In other words, Parliament was by this time stronger than the monarchy.

As with the Tudor triumph in 1485, England had been successfully invaded. But in 1688 the political situation was very different for a number of reasons, not least the validating role of Parliament, and the need to ensure that Scotland and Ireland were brought in line. Nevertheless, there was also a fundamental continuity. Political issues were settled by conflict. Furthermore, the dynastic position was crucial: political legitimacy could not be divorced from the sovereign and the succession. Both these factors ensure that the elements of modernity suggested by the constitutional products of the 1688 invasion have to be qualified by reminders of more traditional features of the political structure.

What was to be termed by its supporters the Glorious Revolution was to play a central role in the Whiggish, heroic, self-congratulatory account of English development. It was clearly important in the growth of an effective parliamentary monarchy in which the constitutional role of Parliament served as the anchor of cooperation between the crown and the sociopolitical elite. Yet a less benign account is also possible, and not only from the perspective of the exiled James and his Jacobite supporters. The instability of the ministries of the period 1689–1721 suggests that the political environment necessary for an effective parliamentary monarchy had in some ways been hindered by the events of 1688–1689. A parliamentary monarchy could not simply be legislated into existence. It required the development of conventions and patterns of political behavior that would permit a constructive resolution of contrary opinions. This took time and was not helped by the burdens of the lengthy and difficult wars with France—from 1689 to 1697 and 1702 to 1713—that followed the Glorious Revolution. William's seizure of power did not assist this process of resolution for other reasons: alongside praise for him as a Protestant and a providential blessing, there was criticism of him as a usurper. This criticism was marginalized because the circumstances of William's reign permitted him a political and polemical victory over his opponents. As a result, the Protestant and Whiggish vision associated with the victors eventually came to seem natural to the English. However, a tenuous link can be drawn between the willingness to conceive of new political structures and governmental arrangements—seen, for example, with the parliamentary Union of England and Scotland in 1707 and the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694—and the increased interest in taking an active role in first understanding the world and then seeking to profit from this understanding, which flowered with the scientific revolution.

See also Agriculture ; Anne (England) ; Armada, Spanish ; Bible: Translations and Editions ; Capitalism ; Charles I (England) ; Charles II (England) ; Church of England ; Communication and Transportation ; Cromwell, Oliver ; Drama: English ; Edward VI (England) ; Elizabeth I (England) ; Enclosure ; English Civil War and Interregnum ; English Literature and Language ; Feudalism ; George II (Great Britain) ; George III (Great Britain) ; Glorious Revolution ; Hanoverian Dynasty (Great Britain) ; Henry VIII (England) ; Jacobitism ; James I and VI (England and Scotland) ; James II (England) ; Laborers ; Mary I (England) ; Printing and Publishing ; Puritanism ; Stuart Dynasty (England and Scotland) ; Tudor Dynasty (England) ; William and Mary ; Witchcraft .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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——. A New History of England. Stroud, U.K., 2000.

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Jeremy Black

England. ‘Accursed be the day … when invaders first touched our shores. They came to a nation famous for its love of learning, its piety, its heroism [and] … doomed Ireland to seven hundred centuries of oppression’. As this quotation from one of Daniel O'Connell's speeches (1827) suggests, the relationship between ‘England’ and ‘Ireland’ is perceived by many as fraught with mutual suspicion and hostility. The preamble to the constitution of Ireland (1937) speaks of ‘the people of Eire, engaged in a heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our nation’. Notes for Teachers, an official publication used up to the 1960s, referred to ‘a race that has survived a millennium of grievous struggle and persecution’. The victors of the nationalist revolution of 1916–22, once in power, began to write their own history of the Irish nation. Like similar nationalist interpretations, however, it is open to the criticism that it fails to do justice to the complexities of Irish history and of Anglo‐Irish relations.

Until the mid‐12th century Ireland's links were more with Scotland and Wales than with England, though there was a short‐lived Viking kingdom of Dublin and York. It was not until well after 1066 that Ireland underwent its own Norman conquest (see anglo‐norman invasion), an episode which led to a centuries‐long involvement with the English monarchy. Henceforth England's relationship with Ireland was an uneasy mix of colony and feudal lordship. Professor Rees Davies has shown how the rhetoric of lordship implied patriarchy and mutual obligation, in contrast with a ‘two nation’ rhetoric of colonialism, which implied the dominance of one nation over the other. English colonialism reached its highest point in the early 14th century. By 1366, however, it was on the defensive, as the Statute of Kilkenny implied in its attempt to outlaw the spread of Irish practices among the English colonists (see gaelicization; gaelic revival). By the later 14th and 15th centuries feudal lordship had become the norm. Such Irish lords as Felim O'Toole and Teig O'Carroll looked to the English crown as their feudal lord for protection against their oppressive neighbours. Until 1541, when the Tudors established themselves as kings of Ireland, the lordship of Ireland was a mosaic of competing feudal lineages and groupings in which short‐term survival counted for more than dreams of national independence.

The 16th century brought revolutionary changes, partly the consequence of Elizabethan sea power. With the backing of the ‘Creoles’ of the Dublin Pale (to use a parallel from Benedict Anderson's analysis of the Latin American republics), Henry VIII was proclaimed king of Ireland. An Irish‐style ‘Tudor revolution in government’ began which led to the renewal of colonial government. Slowly but inexorably the English common law was introduced throughout Ireland, together with a centralized royal administration in which the county and the sheriff replaced the ‘country’ and the clan chief. Irish customary law (brehon law) lost ground. In themselves these changes would have been revolutionary enough. They were accompanied, however, by radical religious change and in due course by a new wave of colonization. The ‘Old English’ colonists, still Catholic, had hoped to benefit from administrative and legal revolution. Their hopes were dashed by the success of the Protestant Reformation in England and by the impact of the papal bull Regnans in excelsis (1570) which, by deposing Elizabeth, placed Old English loyalists in an impossible quandary. Ireland became caught up in the struggle of Reformation and Counter‐Reformation, a conflict which lasted until the battle of the Boyne (1690) and beyond. Reformation was accompanied by the arrival of new English colonists, first in the Munster planatation, next, after the defeat of O'Neill and O'Donnell, in the Ulster plantation, and finally even in Leinster, as part of the Cromwellian land settlement. (Scottish colonists also played a key role in the ‘informal’ plantation of Antrim and Down.)

The new colonists of the 16th and 17th centuries legitimized their presence by a racialist mentalité. Such figures as Edmund Spenser, colonial administrator as well as poet, and Sir John Davies, attorney‐general of Ireland, had no doubt about the superiority of English civilization. Such views were strengthened by the widespread belief, especially among puritans, that England was an ‘elect nation’. But New English colonialism did not go unchallenged. The Catholic Old English lawyer Patrick Darcy developed an ideology in which he appealed to Magna Carta and the concept of Ireland as an equal though separate kingdom under the British crown. In the 1640s Catholic insurgents, rising against what they saw as a parliament‐based puritan despotism, set up the Confederation of Kilkenny (see confederate catholics), which accepted the English monarch as head of state, provided due safeguards could be arrived at for the Catholic elite. Owen Roe O'Neill, leader of the Gaelic Irish cause in Ulster, also supported this policy. The puritan revolution of the 1650s, however, led to the overthrow of the Catholic Old English, and the Restoration of 1660 did little to restore their economic and political power. It was this group which supported James II in his ill‐fated attempt to recover his kingdom. ‘1689’ was in many ways the Irish equivalent of the Jacobite rising in Scotland in 1715.

In Ireland, as in Scotland, the hope of the return of the Stuarts persisted well into the 18th century (see jacobitism). The Catholic episcopate in particular was closely linked with the Stuart monarchy. So also were the Irish brigades which fought in British uniform (‘England's cruel red’) for the French crown throughout the mid‐18th century. Such loyalty for the Stuarts indicates that support for ‘the rightful independence of our nation’ could coexist with acceptance of a three‐kingdom framework. To the ‘wild geese’, a republican separatist future for Ireland would have been inconceivable.

A further twist was given to the complexity of Anglo‐Irish relations by the rise of Creole‐style nationalism among the Protestant ‘New English’ colonists. Modern assessments of early 18th‐century patriotism increasingly stress hesitations and hedged bets. Irish Protestants were initially more inclined to appeal to their inherited rights as Englishmen than to Irish history and precedent, and many saw a legislative union on Anglo‐Scottish lines as an alternative means of securing proper representation. By the second half of the century, however, Protestant patriotism had become firmly committed to the defence of a specific conception of the Irish constitution, and had even begun to develop a cultural dimension. The American Revolution provided the opportunity for the achievement of legislative independence in the ‘constitution of 1782’, which came to symbolize a widened autonomy if not independence. The Protestant ‘Creoles’ had decided that they were now a kingdom not a colony.

‘Grattan's parliament’, however, proved to be a temporary arrangement, unable to survive the challenge of those for whom America and France provided examples of successful republican government. The ideas of Tom Paine, the East Anglian‐born radical, were popularized by the United Irishmen. Hitherto there had been no republican tradition in Irish history. Traditional Irish ideology was based upon the monarchy of Tara (see high kingship). The ‘wild geese’ had fought to defend the absolutist monarchies of France and Spain. Instead the idea of an Irish republic now propagated by Protestant and Catholic middle‐class radicals had its roots in the English puritan revolution of the 1640s, a paradox indeed.

The insurrection of 1798, ‘the Year of the French’, ended in defeat for Irish republicanism. Victory went to the forces of the crown. But the colonists themselves suffered defeat when in 1800 the Act of Union was forced through ‘Grattan's parliament’ by William Pitt in the teeth of Orange opposition. Once again the relationship between England and Ireland shifted. Ireland was now fully represented in the Westminster parliament. A United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland had been brought into existence.

In constitutional theory, the Union was an alliance of equal partners. In practice it left in place a colonial‐style situation in Ireland, whereby a landlord class looked to the Union as the basis of its political and economic ascendancy. An Anglicized Catholic middle class found itself excluded from power at both national and local levels, a situation which was alleviated only in part by the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829). Government policy during the years of the Great Famine of 1845–9 added to the grievances of Catholic Ireland. In retrospect Ireland seems to have been treated more as a colony than as a constituent part of the United Kingdom. (Today the term ‘Holocaust’ is being used to refer to the Great Famine. This may be unfair. ‘Criminal irresponsibility’ of the kind often said to have been displayed by some British generals at the Somme may be nearer the truth.)

Throughout the period of the Union, two models of the relationship between England and Ireland persisted. The first of these was that of the unionists, who looked upon their political power as an expression of religious, cultural, and in some cases racial, superiority. As the term ‘Celt’ came into prominence from mid‐century onwards the Irish Celts were seen as a childlike, unpractical race, which would benefit from being ruled by the hard‐headed Anglo‐Saxons. Such views became part of a wider imperial ideology, adopted by Disraeli and the Conservative Party. A more sinister version of this racialist ideology, resting upon fear of Fenian terrorism, looked upon the Irish as malevolent subhumans. The second model of Anglo‐Irish relations looked to a return to the ‘constitution of 1782’. It was this which lay behind O'Connell's repeal programme, the ideas of Thomas Davis and Young Ireland, and the home rule policies of Isaac Butt and Charles Stuart Parnell. It was also implied in the vision of a ‘dual monarchy’ espoused by Arthur Griffith and the first Sinn Féin. When Gladstone came to consider home rule as a possibility for Ireland, it was ‘1782’ which he had in mind. However, from the unionist point of view, ‘home rule’ meant ‘Rome rule’ since any future Irish parliament, unlike the wholly Protestant ‘Grattan's parliament’, would have a built‐in Catholic majority.

The conflict between these views, dual monarchy and colonialism, was still unresolved in 1914, despite the passing of the Home Rule Act. The constitutional position of Ulster remained uncertain. With the rising of 1916, however, the future once more changed shape. Colonial‐style retribution led to the creation of a new generation of martyrs. The result was to discredit home rule and to arouse a surge of sympathy for the republicans. With the rise of a new Sinn Féin and the Anglo‐Irish War, the cause of separatism became further entrenched. Although the Anglo‐Irish treaty of 1921 stipulated that leaders of the Irish Free State should take an oath of allegiance to the crown, the relationship between England and the Irish Free State was now one of constitutional equals. de Valera's constitution of 1937 reduced the link between ‘Eire’ and the British Commonwealth to the minimal gesture of external association. In 1949 the Republic of Ireland was formally declared.

De Valera referred to ‘Éire’ as the national territory, by which he meant the island of Ireland. In fact however Ireland was formally partitioned in 1920 into a 26‐county unit (‘the Irish Free State’) and a six‐county unit (‘Northern Ireland’). Long‐standing cultural differences between ‘north’ and ‘south’ were now crystallized by a political divide. The division was accentuated by the Free State's neutrality during the Second World War, by a drift towards republicanism, and by the strength of the Catholic church. In the north evangelical Protestantism was dominant, together with a strident unionism which emphasized its loyalty to the crown. Whether this solution was forced upon ‘Ireland’ by ‘England’ or vice versa remains a matter for historical debate.

Partition in 1920 seemed an acceptable solution to the Irish problem. In fact, however, it was a difficulty deferred, and, during the radical decade of the 1960s, England and Ireland once more found themselves at loggerheads over the status of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Familiar patterns reappeared: separatism in the shape of the provisional IRA, constitutional home rule‐style politics under the auspices of John Hume and the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), and an uncompromising unionism which looked back to the Boyne and the Orangeism of the 1790s. The problems of Ulster proved to be no easier to solve in the 1980s than they were in the 1880s for Gladstone and Parnell.

The impossibility of reducing the Anglo‐Irish relationship to a single formula is further illustrated in the complex history of Irish settlement in England. At one end of the spectrum may be placed the figure of Brendan Bracken (1901–58), born in Co. Tipperary, the son of a founder member of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association), who, despite his ‘Fenian’ family background, became a confidant of Churchill and member of his war cabinet. At the other stands the lonely figure of the IRA sleeper Ed O'Brien, who in 1996 blew himself up while carrying a bomb on a London bus. The flow and direction of Irish immigration also provides sharp contrasts. After 1945 for example it moved away from Liverpool, now a depressed area, to London and Birmingham where jobs were more plentiful. A greater middle‐class element was also detectable in this post‐war immigration, compared to earlier movements.

The ‘English‐Irishry’, like Anglo‐Jewry, faced the challenges of assimilation. For many, a religious affiliation became the criterion of Irish ethnic identity, reinforced by attendance at a Catholic school or by living in Irish‐dominated ‘neighbourhoods’ such as were to be found in Kilburn. But Catholicism as such was not a secure mark of Irish identity, and for second and third generations schools and churches became avenues of assimilation into a broader English Catholic identity in which Thomas More loomed larger than Thomas Moore. Those who reacted against what they saw as Anglocentric assimilation were likely to express themselves in ‘Irish Studies’ programmes provided by some universities or in supporting Ireland in sporting events such as the World Cup. The sports scene is complicated, however, by the fact that all, or almost all, members of Ireland's national football team are regular members of English teams, and that two at least in the 1994 World Cup were recognizably of mixed race. As England becomes multicultural and multiracial, the Anglo‐Irish relationship will become even more complex. Clearly an assimilative process is at work, not least in the legal, civil service, medical, and academic professions. This is not to say however that ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland have not cast a shadow over the life of the Irish community in England.

Over the past 800 years the relationship between Ireland and England has fluctuated. At the beginning of the 21st century a pattern has emerged in which England and the Republic of Ireland are partners within the European Union. Culturally the two countries remain close. Irish novels, plays, and poetry find a ready audience in England, though the Irish ethnic minority has been slow to make its presence felt in the face of a prevailing anti‐Irish sentiment, derived partly from long‐standing ‘racial’ prejudice, and partly from understandable resentment against IRA terrorism. The Irish Republic is an independent nation. In contrast Northern Ireland has until recently been governed as a crown colony.

The need to secure a solution to the problem of Northern Ireland ensures that the future of the two countries will clearly remain closely linked. The 21st century may hold as many surprises as the 20th. For parallels we may well look to Scandinavia and the relationship between Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, or to Spain, where relations between Castile and Catalonia have been as ‘fraught’ as those between England and Ireland.

Bibliography

Curtis, L. P. , Anglo‐Saxons and Celts (1968)
Davies, R. R. , ‘Lordship or Colony?’, in J. F. Lydon (ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland (1984)
Grant, A., and and Stringer, K. , Uniting the Kingdom? The Enigma of British History (1995)
Kearney, H. F. , The British Isles: A History of Four Nations (1989)
McDonagh, Oliver , States of Mind (1992)

Hugh Kearney

England the largest and most populous portion of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1991 pop. 46,382,050), 50,334 sq mi (130,365 sq km). It is bounded by Wales and the Irish Sea on the west and Scotland on the north. The English Channel, the Strait of Dover, and the North Sea separate it from the continent of Europe. The Isle of Wight, off the southern mainland in the English Channel, and the Scilly Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the southwestern tip of the mainland, are considered part of England. London , the capital of Great Britain, is located in the southeastern portion of England. The Thames and the Severn are the longest rivers.

Behind the white chalk cliffs of the southern coast lie the gently rolling downs and wide plains stretching to the Chiltern Hills and the Cotswold Hills . Along the east coast are the lowlands of Norfolk, reaching up to the Fens , formerly marshy country that has been drained, lining The Wash , an inlet of the North Sea. In the east and southeast, river estuaries lead to some of England's great commercial and industrial centers: London, on the Thames; Hull , on the Humber; Middlesbrough and Stockon-on-Tees, on the Tees; and Newcastle upon Tyne , on the Tyne. The north of England, above the Humber, is mountainous; the chief highlands are the Cumbrian Mts. in the northwest and the Pennines, which run north-south in N central England. The famous Lake District , in the Cumbrians, has England's highest points. The center of England, the Midlands , is a large plain, interrupted and bordered by hills. In the Midlands are the industrial centers of Birmingham and the Black Country . The Midlands, especially its northern edge, was formerly a great coal-mining region. On the Lancashire plain is the great city of Manchester , the center of the English textile industry. Durham and W Yorkshire are also highly industrialized, but E Yorkshire is an area of bleak moors and wolds, and the upper reaches of Northumberland are sparsely populated. In the west and southwest the border with Wales and the peninsula of Devonshire and Cornwall have a hilly, upland terrain. The main ports in the west are Bristol , on the Avon (which flows into Bristol Channel), and Liverpool , on the Mersey. In southern England, the main ports are London, Southampton , and Plymouth .

Despite its northerly latitudes (London is on the same parallel as the easterly tip of Labrador), England has a mild climate, attributable to warm currents in the surrounding seas. Most of the region is subject to much wet weather, and some of it experiences severe cold, but in general the climate is favorable to a wide variety of agricultural and industrial pursuits.

England has 27 administrative counties: Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Sussex, and Worcestershire. Nonmetropolitan areas, the counties are further divided into districts. Cornwall, Durham, Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, Northumberland, Rutland, Shropshire, and Wiltshire are historical counties that have abandoned the two-tier county council–district council structure for a single-tier unitary council; administratively, they are unitary authorities. The former counties of Avon, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Cheshire, Cleveland, and Humberside have been dissolved into smaller unitary authorities; these and other areas that were administratively part of the remaining counties are now independent local governing authorities.

From 1974 to 1986 there were also seven metropolitan counties: Greater London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, and West Yorkshire; the administrative districts that comprised these counties are now responsible for most local government functions. Greater London consists of the City of London and 32 boroughs and, unlike the other former metropolitan counties, has an elected mayor and assembly. The 39 so-called ancient or geographical counties of England (Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire) typically differ in area from the existing counties even when they share a name with a modern county or unitary authority. Some ancient counties (Sussex and Yorkshire) have been divided into separate counties or counties and other administrative units, while others (Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, and Westmorland) have been subdivided into smaller administative units.

For the history of England as well as more information on government and economy, see Great Britain .

England

While new scholarship and art were flowering in fifteenth-century Italy, England was recovering from defeat in the Hundred Years' War, and English claimants to the throne from the houses of York and Lancaster were fighting a long and bloody civil war. In 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated his rival Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the Tudor dynasty was established. Returning to political and social stability, England began absorbing humanist ideas from the continent. English schools followed the new humanism, instructing their students in Latin, Greek, and the classical authors. The first printed books spread literacy, while scholars from the continent, notably Desiderius Erasmus, arrived seeking patronage. In 1509, with the start of the reign of Henry VIII, England's Renaissance took its first steps at the king's royal court, where the painter Hans Holbein worked and the renowned scholar Sir Thomas More served the king as lord chancellor. The classical languages were taught at Saint Paul's school, founded by John Colet; William Lily wrote a Latin grammar in the 1520s and Thomas Elyot a dictionary of Latin and English words.

The pivotal year in English Renaissance history was 1536, when Henry established the Church of England. The king became the supreme head of the church, which adopted many of the doctrines of Martin Luther and Protestant Reformation. Catholic property was seized and members of the church were arrested or driven into exile. Monasteries were closed and nuns and monks forced to renounce their vows. As monastic property was confiscated, large collections of books, including manuscripts of ancient Greek and Latin authors, spread to the universities. During the Tudor dynasty, religion played an important role in English foreign policy.

Henry's reign was followed by those of his son Edward and daughter Mary. Edward supported the cause of reform. During his reign the English Book of Common Prayer was published, advancing Protestant doctrine. Mary, however, was a fervently devout Catholic. She restored the traditional faith and had many Protestant leaders and nobles executed. After a short reign, she died without an heir, passing the throne to her Protestant half sister Elizabeth. Tutored by Roger Ascham, one of the foremost scholars of Latin and ancient literature, Elizabeth had an open mind to new ideas and encouraged humanist education. The queen was a lively and intelligent leader who enthusiastically patronized scholars and artists. English literature, art, architecture, and music flourished in the Elizabethan age of the late sixteenth century.

Music, drama, and pageantry were hallmarks of Elizabeth's royal court. Italian forms, such as the sonnet and the madrigal, were taken up in English poetry and music. The composer Thomas Morley set Shakespeare's poetry to music in the Italian style; Thomas Tallis and William Byrd also experimented in musical form and style. Edmund Spenser glorified the Tudor dynasty in his epic poem The Faerie Queene. The theater was brought to new heights by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and many others. The thorough knowledge of history and classical literature reflected in their plays demonstrated the broad humanistic education that was now widely available to English students. In the field of natural philosophy, Sir Francis Bacon made an important contribution with his concepts of the scientific method.

England still faced serious threats from the continent. England's support of Protestant rebels in the Netherlands prompted the Spanish king, Philip II, to send a powerful armada of warships to invade and conquer England. The Spanish Armada was turned away in 1588 by storms and outmaneuvered by skilled English navigators. In the meantime, England was joining the era of exploration, sending ships to North America to search for a northwest passage to Asia and establishing American colonies after the turn of the seventeenth century. These voyages expanded the kingdom's trade and stimulated its economy, as chartered companies such as the East India Company, the Hudson Bay Company, and the Muscovy Company set up operations in Asia, North America, and Russia.

See Also: Bacon, Francis; Elizabeth I; Henry VIII; Marlowe, Christopher; Milton, John; Shakespeare, William

England Largest nation within the United Kingdom, bounded by the North Sea (e), the English Channel (s), Wales and the Irish Sea (w), and Scotland (n); the capital is London.

Land and economy

The landscape is complex. In general, the n and w are higher and geologically older than the s and e. The chief rivers are the Severn, Thames, Trent, Ouse, Humber, and Mersey. The principal lakes include Windermere and Derwentwater in the Lake District. The s of the country has low hills and downs, while much of e England is flat fenland. The n is predominantly upland, and includes the Pennines, Cheviot Hills, and Cumbrian Mountains.

History

There are traces of Palaeolithic settlements in England. Occupied by the Celts from c.400 bc, England was later conquered by the Romans, whose rule lasted until the 5th century. Germanic tribes began arriving in the 3rd century ad, and gradually established independent kingdoms. Christianity arrived in the 6th century. In the 9th century, Alfred the Great led a united England against the Danes. The Norman Conquest (1066) brought strong central government and inaugurated the feudal system. England conquered Ireland in the late 12th century, and Wales became a principality of England in 1284. The 13th century saw the foundations of parliamentary government and the development of statute law. During the Middle Ages, England's fortunes continued to be linked with France, as English kings laid claim to French territory. The Wars of the Roses curbed the power of the English nobility. Under the Tudors, Wales was united politically with England and became a strong Protestant monarchy. The reign of Elizabeth I was one of colonial expansion. In 1603, James I merged the English and Scottish crowns. For the subsequent history of England, see United Kingdom. Area: 130,362sq km (50,333sq mi). Pop. (1997 est.) 49,752,900.

England, UK Englaland ‘Land of the Angles’ from the Old English Engle, the genitive plural of which is Engla, a Germanic tribe which previously lived in Angel (thought to be in Jutland, now part of Denmark) and which crossed the sea to Britain during the 5th century. At much the same time Saxon mercenaries from Germany were invited by a British king, possibly Vortigern (c.425–c.450), to help protect his kingdom from marauding Picts and Scots. These Anglo‐Saxon footholds were then expanded into settlements and, in due course, kingdoms. The name England was first mentioned by the Venerable Bede^† c.730. The seven main Anglo‐Saxon kingdoms during the 7th and 8th centuries, known as the Heptarchy (from the Greek hepta ‘seven’ and ‐archia ‘rule’) since the 16th century, were those of the East Angles (East Anglia), East Saxons (Essex), West Saxons (Wessex), South Saxons (Sussex), Kent, Mercia (the border folk), and Northumbria (the land north of the River Humber). The Kingdom of England was created as a nation in the 10th century (Æthelstan became the undisputed ruler of all England in 937) and lasted until 1536 when Wales was incorporated to become the Kingdom of England and Wales until 1707, apart from the years of the Commonwealth, 1649–60. (See Great Britain and the United Kingdom.) First World War British troops, particularly at first those who had served in India, referred to England as ‘Blighty’ from the Urdu bilāyatī ‘foreign country’, itself from the Arabic wilāyat ‘kingdom’ or ‘province’. British troops still use the word sometimes when abroad.

England The largest constituent country of the United Kingdom, comprising 54 per cent of its territory, and 83 per cent of its population. It has traditionally dominated British politics. Scottish, Welsh, and Irish nationalist movements have developed largely in protest against English domination of their own affairs, which explains why a movement for greater English autonomy from the UK has never developed. Its territorial integrity has remained largely intact since 1066, while the growing power of Parliament, notably the House of Commons since 1360, reinforced the power of the capital. As a result of both of these factors, England became a highly centralized country whose traditional regional identities were underdeveloped by European standards. The cultural diversity that does exist, most notably the difference between northern and southern England, was more an expression of an economic diversity marked by the traditional industrial structures of the north, and a south dominated more by new industries, commerce, and finance. In other words, cultural diversity has been more a factor of class identities than of regional differences. As devolution was realized for Scotland and Wales in 1999, the relative weakness of regional identities in and across England became a fundamental political problem. It precluded the establishment of a federal structure for the UK, in which separate parliaments for Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland would be matched by parliaments for English regions of similar size and economic weight.

England The largest division of the United Kingdom. There were settlements in England from at least palaeolithic times, and considerable remains exist of neolithic and Bronze Age cultures. These were followed by the arrival of the Celtic peoples whose civilization spread over the whole country. The Romans under Julius Caesar raided the south of Britain in 55 and 54 BC, but full-scale invasion did not take place until a century later; the country was then administered as a Roman province until the Teutonic conquest of Gaul in the early 5th century and the subsequent withdrawal of the last Roman garrison. In the 3rd to 7th centuries Germanic-speaking tribes, traditionally known as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, raided and then settled, establishing independent kingdoms, and when that of Wessex became dominant in the 9th century England emerged as a distinct political entity before being conquered by William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066. The neighbouring principality of Wales was gradually conquered during the Middle Ages and politically incorporated in the 16th century. During the period of Tudor rule (1485–1603) England emerged as a Protestant state with a strong stable monarchy and as a naval power. Scotland and England have been ruled by one monarch from 1603, and the two parliaments were formally united in 1707. In 1999 a separate Scottish parliament was established, with tax-raising powers and control over local affairs.

139. England

Anglist

an authority on England, its language, or its literature.

Anglomania

an extreme devotion to English manners, customs, or institutions.

Anglophilia

great admiration for England and things English. —Anglophile , n., adj.

Anglophobia

a hatred or fear of England and things English. —Anglophobe , n., adj.

Englishry

1 . the state or condition of being English, especially by birth.

2 . a population outside of England that is English or of English descent.

heptarchy

English History. the seven principal concurrent early English kingdoms. —heptarch , n. —heptarchic , heptarchical , heptarchal , adj.

squirearchy

the squires or landed gentry as a class.

England England is the paradise of women, the hell of horses, and the purgatory of servants proverbial saying, late 16th century; a similar proverb in French is found applied to Paris in the mid 16th century, in which the categories are a paradise for women, a hell for horses, and a purgatory for those pursuing lawsuits.
England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity this saying, associated with the aspirations of Irish nationalism, is recorded from the mid 19th century.

See also the cat, the rat, and Lovell our dog, rule all England under the hog, what Manchester says today, the rest of England says tomorrow, turkeys, heresy, hops, and beer came into England at turkey.

England. The dominant nation of the island of Great Britain should always be distinguished from Britain, the P-Celtic nation occupied by the Romans which England displaced. This is especially important in Welsh and Cornish literatures, as those peoples are direct descendants of the Celts displaced by the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; the Welsh word for Britain, Prydein, may denote Wales. Other P-Celtic Britons inhabited southern Scotland, migrated to Brittany, or fused with the invaders. ModIr. Sasana; ScG Sasunn; Manx Sostyn; W Lloegr, Lloegyr; Corn. Pow Saws; Bret. Bro-Saoz. Medieval Welsh poets used the term Brynaich, among others, to deride the English.

England OE. Engla land (orig.) country of the Angles (see ANGLE), (later) of the Germanic inhabitants of Great Britain; hence OFris. Angelond, OS. (Du.) Engeland, (O)HG., Icel., etc. England.
So English OE. englisċ pert. to the group of Germanic peoples known coll. as Angelcynn, lit. ‘race of Angles’; also adj. and sb., of their language. Hence Englishman OE. Englisċmon.

England Englaland c.890. ‘Land of the Angles’. OE Engle (genitive plural Engla) ‘the Angles’ (i.e. the people from the Continental homeland of Angel in Schleswig) + land.

ENGLAND

ENGLAND. SeeGreat Britain, Relations with .

England

SeeGreat Britain

England •unironed, viand •prebend •beribboned, riband •husband • house husband •unquestioned • escutcheoned •brigand, ligand •legend •fecund, second, split-second •millisecond • nanosecond •microsecond • rubicund • jocund •Langland • garland • parkland •Cartland, heartland •headland • Shetland • Lakeland •mainland •eland, Leland, Wieland, Zealand, Zeeland •Greenland • heathland • Cleveland •Friesland • Queensland • midland •England • Finland • Maryland •dryland, highland, island •Iceland • Holland • dockland •Scotland •foreland, Westmorland •Auckland, Falkland •Portland • Northland •lowland, Poland, Roland •Oakland • Copland • Newfoundland •woodland • Buckland • upland •Jutland, Rutland •Ireland • moorland •Cumberland, Northumberland •Sunderland • Switzerland •Sutherland • Hammond •almond, Armand •Edmund, Redmond •Desmond, Esmond •Raymond • Grimond • Richmond •Sigmund • Sigismund • Osmond •Dortmund • unsummoned •diamond • gourmand • unopened •errand, gerund •reverend • Bertrand • dachshund •unchastened •old-fashioned, unimpassioned •unsanctioned •aforementioned, undermentioned, unmentioned •unconditioned • unsweetened •unenlightened • unleavened •self-governed • unseasoned •wizened • thousand