Toponymy

See also: Toponymy of England

The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means
"land of the Angles".[11] The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in
Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Angeln peninsula
in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea.[12] According to the Oxford English Dictionary,
the first known use of "England" to refer to the southern part of the island of Great
Britain occurs in 897, and its modern spelling was first used in 1538.[13]
The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus,
Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used.[14] The etymology of the tribal name
itself is disputed by scholars; it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the
Angeln peninsula, an angular shape.[15] How and why a term derived from the name of
a tribe that was less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the
entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of
calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons.[16] In Scottish
Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe
gave their name to the word for England (Sasunn);[17] similarly, the Welsh name for the
English language is "Saesneg".
An alternative name for England is Albion. The name Albion originally referred to the
entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the
Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo:[18] "Beyond the Pillars
of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth. In it are two very large islands called
Britannia; these are Albion and Ierne".[18][19] But modern scholar consensus ascribes
De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written later in the GraecoRoman period or afterwards. The word Albion () or insula Albionum has two
possible origins. It either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a
reference to the white cliffs of Dover, the only part of Britain visible from the European
Continent,[20] or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones[21] in the now lost
Massaliote Periplus, that is attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima[22] to which the
former presumably served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic
capacity.[23] Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word
for England, Lloegr, and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend.

History
Main article: History of England

Prehistory and antiquity

Main article: Prehistoric Britain

Stonehenge, a
Neolithic monument
The earliest known
evidence of human
presence in the area
now known as
England was that of
Homo antecessor,
dating to
approximately
780,000 years ago.
The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago.[24]
Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic
period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years.
[25][26] After the last ice age only large mammals such as mammoths, bison and woolly
rhinoceros remained. Roughly 11,000 years ago, when the ice sheets began to recede,
humans repopulated the area; genetic research suggests they came from the northern part
of the Iberian Peninsula.[27] The sea level was lower than now and Britain was
connected by land bridge to Ireland and Eurasia.[28] As the seas rose, it was separated
from Ireland 10,000 years ago and from Eurasia two millennia later.
The Beaker culture arrived around 2,500 BC, introducing drinking and food vessels
constructed from clay, as well as vessels used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores.[29]
It was during this time that major Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury
were constructed. By heating together tin and copper, which were in abundance in the
area, the Beaker culture people made bronze, and later iron from iron ores. The
development of iron smelting allowed the construction of better ploughs, advancing
agriculture (for instance, with Celtic fields), as well as the production of more effective
weapons.[30]
Boudica led an uprising against the

Roman Empire

During the Iron Age, Celtic culture,

deriving from the Hallstatt and La Tne
cultures, arrived from Central Europe. Brythonic was the spoken language during this
time. Society was tribal; according to Ptolemy's Geographia there were around 20 tribes
in the area. Earlier divisions are unknown because the Britons were not literate. Like
other regions on the edge of the Empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the
Romans. Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic attempted to invade twice in 55 BC;
although largely unsuccessful, he managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes.
The Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 during the reign of Emperor Claudius,
subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman

Empire as Britannia province.[31] The best-known of the native tribes who attempted to
resist were the Catuvellauni led by Caratacus. Later, an uprising led by Boudica, Queen
of the Iceni, ended with Boudica's suicide following her defeat at the Battle of Watling
Street.[32] This era saw a Greco-Roman culture prevail with the introduction of Roman
law, Roman architecture, sewage systems, many agricultural items and silk.[33][34][35]
In the 3rd century, Emperor Septimius Severus died at Eboracum (now York), where
Constantine was subsequently proclaimed emperor.[36]
There is debate about when Christianity was first introduced; it was no later than the 4th
century, probably much earlier. According to Bede, missionaries were sent from Rome by
Eleutherius at the request of the chieftain Lucius of Britain in AD 180, to settle
differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials, which were disturbing the church.
There are traditions linked to Glastonbury claiming an introduction through Joseph of
Arimathea, while others claim through Lucius of Britain.[37] By 410, during the Decline
of the Roman Empire, Britain was left exposed by the End of Roman rule in Britain and
the withdrawal of Roman army units, to defend the frontiers in continental Europe and
partake in civil wars.[38] Celtic Christian monastic and missionary movements
flourished: Patrick (5th-century Ireland) and in the 6th century Brendan (Clonfert),
Comgall (Bangor), David (Wales), Aiden (Lindisfarne) and Columba (Iona). This period
of Christianity was influenced by ancient Celtic culture in its sensibilities, polity,
practices and theology. Local "congregations" were centred in the monastic community
and monastic leaders were more like chieftains, as peers, rather than in the more
hierarchical system of the Roman-dominated church (see Early Christian Christianity,
Brendan Lehane, Constable, London: John Murray Ltd., 1968).

Middle Ages
Main article: England in the Middle Ages
Replica of a 7thcentury ceremonial
helmet from the
Kingdom of East
Anglia, found at
Sutton Hoo
Roman military
withdrawals left
Britain open to
invasion by pagan,
seafaring warriors
from north-western
continental Europe,
chiefly the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who had long raided the coasts of the Roman
province and began to settle, initially in the eastern part of the country.[38] Their advance
was contained for some decades after the Britons' victory at the Battle of Mount Badon,

but subsequently resumed, over-running the fertile lowlands of Britain and reducing the
area under Brythonic control to a series of separate enclaves in the more rugged country
to the west by the end of the 6th century. Contemporary texts describing this period are
extremely scarce, giving rise to its description as a Dark Age. The nature and progression
of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is consequently subject to considerable
disagreement. Roman-dominated Christianity had in general disappeared from the
conquered territories, but was reintroduced by missionaries from Rome led by Augustine
from 597 onwards.[39] Disputes between the Roman- and Celtic-dominated forms of
Christianity ended in victory for the Roman tradition at the Council of Whitby (664),
which was ostensibly about haircuts and the date of Easter, but more significantly, about
the differences in Roman and Celtic forms of authority, theology, and practice (Lehane).
During the settlement period the lands ruled by the incomers seem to have been
fragmented into numerous tribal territories, but by the 7th century, when substantial
evidence of the situation again becomes available, these had coalesced into roughly a
dozen kingdoms including Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia, Essex, Kent and
Sussex. Over the following centuries this process of political consolidation continued.
[40] The 7th century saw a struggle for hegemony between Northumbria and Mercia,
which in the 8th century gave way to Mercian preeminence.[41] In the early 9th century
Mercia was displaced as the foremost kingdom by Wessex. Later in that century
escalating attacks by the Danes culminated in the conquest of the north and east of
England, overthrowing the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. Wessex
under Alfred the Great was left as the only surviving English kingdom, and under his
successors it steadily expanded at the expense of the kingdoms of the Danelaw. This
brought about the political unification of England, first accomplished under thelstan in
927 and definitively established after further conflicts by Eadred in 953. A fresh wave of
Scandinavian attacks from the late 10th century ended with the conquest of this united
kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013 and again by his son Cnut in 1016, turning it into
the centre of a short-lived North Sea empire that also included Denmark and Norway.
However the native royal dynasty was restored with the accession of Edward the
Confessor in 1042.
King Henry V at the Battle of
Agincourt, fought on Saint
Crispin's Day and concluded with
an English victory against a larger French army in the Hundred Years' War.
A dispute over the succession to Edward led to the Norman conquest of England in 1066,
accomplished by an army led by Duke William of Normandy.[42] The Normans
themselves originated from Scandinavia and had settled in Normandy in the late 9th and
early 10th centuries.[43] This conquest led to the almost total dispossession of the
English elite and its replacement by a new French-speaking aristocracy, whose speech
had a profound and permanent effect on the English language.[44]

Subsequently the House of Plantagenet from Anjou inherited the English throne under
Henry II, adding England to the budding Angevin Empire of fiefs the family had
inherited in France including Aquitaine.[45] They reigned for three centuries, some noted
monarchs being Richard I, Edward I, Edward III and Henry V.[45] The period saw
changes in trade and legislation, including the signing of the Magna Carta, an English
legal charter used to limit the sovereign's powers by law and protect the privileges of
freemen. Catholic monasticism flourished, providing philosophers, and the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge were founded with royal patronage. The Principality of Wales
became a Plantagenet fief during the 13th century[46] and the Lordship of Ireland was
given to the English monarchy by the Pope.
During the 14th century, the Plantagenets and the House of Valois both claimed to be
legitimate claimants to the House of Capet and with it France; the two powers clashed in
the Hundred Years' War.[47] The Black Death epidemic hit England; starting in 1348, it
eventually killed up to half of England's inhabitants.[48][49] From 1453 to 1487 civil war
occurred between two branches of the royal familythe Yorkists and Lancastrians
known as the Wars of the Roses.[50] Eventually it led to the Yorkists losing the throne
entirely to a Welsh noble family the Tudors, a branch of the Lancastrians headed by
Henry Tudor who invaded with Welsh and Breton mercenaries, gaining victory at the
Battle of Bosworth Field where the Yorkist king Richard III was killed.[51]