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History of England

The history of England did not begin until the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, when the partition of Britain into several countries largely began. It was the history of Britain that began in the prehistoric during which time Stonehenge was erected. At the height of the Roman Empire, Britannia was under the rule of the Romans. Their rule lasted until about 410, at which time the Romano-British formed various independent kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxons gradually gained control of England and became the chief rulers of the land.[1] Raids by the Vikings were frequent after about AD 800. In 1066, the Normans invaded and conquered England. There was much civil war and battles with other nations throughout the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, England was ruled by the Tudors. England had conquered Wales in the 12th century and was then united with Scotland in the early 18th century to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Following the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain ruled a worldwide empire, of which, physically, little remains. However, its cultural impact is widespread and deep in many countries of the present day.

Prehistoric Britain

Prehistoric Britain was a period in the human occupation of Great Britain that was the later part of prehistory, conventionally ending with the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, though some historical information is available about Britain before this. The period of prehistory prior to occupation by the genus Homo is part of the Geology of the British Isles. The prehistoric period is conventionally divided into a number of smaller periods but their boundaries are uncertain and the changes between them are gradual. The times of change are generally different from those of continental Europe.

Preface

Britain has been intermittently inhabited by members of the Homo genus for hundreds of thousands of years and by Homo sapiens for tens of thousands of years. DNA analysis has shown that modern man arrived in Britain before the last ice age but retreated to Southern Europe when much of Britain was ice covered, with the remainder being tundra. At this time the sea level was around 127m (416.67ft.) lower than today so that Britain was joined to Ireland and to the continent of Europe.
After the end of the last Ice Age (around 9500 years ago) Ireland became separated from Britain and later (around 6000 BC) Britain was cut off from the rest of Europe. By 12,000 BC Britain had been reoccupied, as shown by archaeology. By around 4000 BC, the island was populated by people with a Neolithic culture. However, none of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain have any known surviving written language. No literature of pre-Roman Britain has survived, so its history, culture and way of life are known mainly through archaeological finds. Though the main evidence for the period is archaeological, there is a growing amount of genetic evidence which is still changing. There is also a little amount of linguistic evidence, from river and hill names, which is covered in the articles on Pre-Celtic and Celtic.
The first significant written record of Britain and its inhabitants was by the Greek navigator Pytheas, who explored the coastal region of Britain around 325 BC. However, there may be some information on Britain in the "Ora Maritima" which is lost but incorporated in later authors' writing. Ancient Britons were however involved in extensive trade and cultural links with the rest of Europe from the Neolithic onwards, especially in exporting tin which was in abundant supply. Julius Caesar wrote of Britain around 50 BC.
Located at the fringes of Europe, Britain received foreign technological and cultural achievements much later than mainland areas did during prehistory. The story of ancient Britain is traditionally seen as one of successive waves of settlers from the continent, bringing with them new cultures and technologies. More recent archaeological theories have questioned this migrationist interpretation and argue for a more complex relationship between Britain and the continent. Many of the changes in British society demonstrated in the archaeological record are now suggested to be the effects of the native inhabitants adapting foreign customs rather than being subsumed by an invading population.

The Palaeolithic

Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) Britain is the period of the earliest known occupation of Britain by man. This huge length of time saw many changes in the environment, encompassing several glacial and interglacial periods which greatly affected human settlement in the region. Providing dating for this distant period of time is difficult and contentious. The inhabitants of the region at this time were bands of hunter-gatherers who roamed all over northern Europe following herds of animals or supported themselves by fishing.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis suggests that 21% of the maternal lines in modern Britain came in the pre-glacial period and 51% in the Late Upper Palaeolithic.
However, by stark contrast, several studies of the Y-chromosome have shown that a mass migration of 50–100% of English males occurred in the past 2,500 years, most probably during the Anglo-Saxon invasion. For example, the 2002 study: "Y-chromosome evidence for Anglo-Saxon mass migration" and the 2005 study: "The place of the Basques in the European Y-chromosome diversity landscape". Both these studies found that only in Wales was there a significant population of pre-Anglo-Saxon Y-chromosomes and that the English Y-chromosome was indistinguishable from that of Friesland in the Netherlands.
Recent (2006) scientific evidence regarding mtDNA sequences from ancient and modern Europe has shown a distinct pattern for the different time periods sampled in the course of the study. Despite some limitations regarding sample sizes the results were found to be non-random. As such, the results indicate that, in addition to populations in Europe expanding from southern refugia after the last glacial maximum (especially the Franco-Cantabrian region), evidence also exists for various northern refugia.
Other studies have shown genetic links between the people of the British Isles and Basques.

Lower Palaeolithic (up to 250,000 years ago)

There is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits near Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pakefield in Suffolk that a species of Homo was present in what is now Britain around 700,000 years ago. At this time, southern and eastern Britain were linked to continental Europe by a wide land bridge allowing humans to move freely. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and Seine. Reconstructing this ancient environment has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. Archaeologists have found a string of early sites located close to the route of a now lost watercourse named the Bytham River which indicate that it was exploited as the earliest route west into Britain.
Sites such as Boxgrove in Sussex illustrate the later arrival in the archaeological record of an archaic Homo species called Homo heidelbergensis around 500,000 years ago. These early peoples made Acheulean flint tools (hand axes) and hunted the large native mammals of the period. They drove elephants, rhinoceri and hippopotami over the tops of cliffs or into bogs to more easily kill them.
The extreme cold of the following Anglian Stage is likely to have driven humans out of Britain altogether and the region does not appear to have been occupied again until the ice receded during the Hoxnian Stage. This warmer time period lasted from around 300,000 until 200,000 years ago and saw the Clactonian flint tool industry develop at sites such as Barnfield Pit in Kent. The period had produced a rich and widespread distribution of sites by Palaeolithic standards, although uncertainty over the relationship between the Clactonian and Acheulean industries is still unresolved.
This period saw also Levallois flint tools introduced, possibly by humans arriving from Africa. Finds from Swanscombe and Botany Pit in Purfleet support Levallois technology being a European rather than African introduction however. The more advanced flint technology permitted more efficient hunting and therefore made Britain a more worthwhile place to remain until the following period of cooling Wolstonian Stage, 352,000–130,000 years ago).
However, there is little evidence of human occupation during the subsequent Ipswichian Stage between around 130,000 and 110,000 years ago. Meltwaters from the previous glaciation cut Britain off from the continent for the first time during this period which may explain the lack of activity. Overall, there appears to have been a gradual decline in population between the Hoxnian Stage and this time suggesting that the absence of humans in the archaeological record here was the result of gradual depopulation.

Middle Palaeolithic (from around 180,000 to 40,000 years ago)

From 180 to 60 kya there is no evidence of human occupation in Britain. From 60 to 40 kya Britain was grass land with giant deer and horse, with woolly mammoths, rhino and carnivores. Neanderthal man had arrived in Britain by around 40,000 years ago.

Upper Palaeolithic (around 40,000 – 10,000 years ago)

This period is often divided into three subperiods: the Early Upper Palaeolithic (before the main glacial period), the Middle Upper Palaeolithic (the main glacial period) and the Late Upper Palaeolithic (after the main glacial period). Evidence of Neanderthal occupation of Britain is limited and by 30,000 BC the first signs of modern human (Homo sapiens) activity, the Aurignacian industry, are known. The most famous example from this period is the burial of the "Red Lady of Paviland" (actually now known to be a man) in modern day coastal south Wales. A final ice age covered Britain between around 70,000 and 10,000 years ago with an extreme cold snap between 22,000 and 13,000 years ago called the Dimlington stadial (with the Last Glacial Maximum at around 20,000 years ago). This may well have driven humans south and out of Britain altogether, pushing them back across the land bridge that had resurfaced at the beginning of the glaciation, possibly to a refuge in Southern France and Iberia. Sites such as Gough's Cave in Somerset dated at 12,000 BC provide evidence suggesting that humans returned to Britain towards the end of this ice age, in a warm period known as the Dimlington interstadial although further extremes of cold right before the final thaw may have caused them to leave again and then return repeatedly. The environment during this ice age period would have been a largely treeless tundra, eventually replaced by a gradually warmer climate, perhaps reaching 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 Fahrenheit) in summer which encouraged the expansion of birch trees as well as shrub and grasses.
The first distinct culture of the Upper Palaeolithic in Britain is what archaeologists call the Creswellian industry, with leaf-shaped points probably used as arrowheads. It produced more refined flint tools but also made use of bone, antler, shell, amber, animal teeth, and mammoth ivory. These were fashioned into tools but also jewellery and rods of uncertain purpose. Flint seems to have been brought into areas with limited local resources; the stone tools found in the caves of Devon, such as Kent's Cavern, seem to have been sourced from Salisbury Plain, 100 miles (161 km) east. This is interpreted as meaning that the early inhabitants of Britain were highly mobile, roaming over wide distances and carrying 'toolkits' of flint blades with them rather than heavy, unworked flint nodules or improvising tools extemporaneously. The possibility that groups also travelled to meet and exchange goods or sent out dedicated expeditions to source flint has also been suggested.
The dominant food species were equines (Equus ferus) and Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) although other mammals ranging from hares to mammoth were also hunted, including rhino and hyena. From the limited evidence available, burial seemed to involve skinning and dismembering a corpse with the bones placed in caves. This suggests a practice of excarnation and secondary burial, and possibly some form of ritual cannibalism. Artistic expression seems to have been mostly limited to engraved bone although the cave art at Creswell Crags and Mendip caves are notable exceptions.
From 12,700 to 11,500 years ago the climate became cooler and dryer, in what is known as the Younger Dryas period. Food animal populations seem to have declined although woodland coverage expanded. Tool manufacture in the Final Upper Palaeolithic revolved around smaller flints but bone and antler work became less common. Typically there are parallel-sided flint blades known as "Cheddar Points". There are scrapers, some of which are annoted with what may be calendars. However, the number of known sites is much larger than before and more widely spread. Many more open air sites are known such as that at Hengistbury Head.

Mesolithic (around 10,000 to 5500 years ago)

Around 10,000 years ago the ice age finally ended and the Holocene era began. Temperatures rose, probably to levels similar to those today, and forests expanded further. By 9,500 years ago, the rising sea levels caused by the melting glaciers cut Britain off from Ireland, and by around 6500 years ago continental Europe was cut off for the last time. The warmer climate changed the Arctic environment to one of pine, birch, and alder forest; this less open landscape was less conducive to the large herds of reindeer and wild horse that had previously sustained humans. Those animals were replaced in people's diets by pig and less social animals such as elk, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and aurochs (wild cattle) which would have required different hunting techniques in order to be effectively exploited. Tools changed to incorporate barbs which could snag the flesh of a hunted animal, making it harder for it to escape alive. Tiny microliths were developed for hafting onto harpoons and spears. Woodworking tools such as adzes appear in the archaeological record, although some flint blade types remained similar to their Palaeolithic predecessors. The dog was domesticated because of its benefits during hunting and the wetland environments created by the warmer weather would have been a rich source of fish and game. It is likely that these environmental changes were accompanied by social changes amongst the Britons of this time. Humans spread and reached the far north of Scotland during this period. Sites from the British Mesolithic include the Mendips, Star Carr in Yorkshire and Oronsay in the Inner Hebrides. Excavations at Howick in Northumberland uncovered evidence of a large circular building dating to c. 7,600 BC which is interpreted as a dwelling. A further example has also been identified at Deepcar in Sheffield. The older view of Mesolithic Britons as being exclusively nomadic is now being replaced with a more complex picture of seasonal occupation or, in some cases, permanent occupation and attendant land and food source management where conditions permitted it. Travel distances seem to have become shorter, typically with movement between high and low ground.

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition

Though the Mesolithic environment was of a bounteous nature, the rising population and ancient Britons' success in exploiting it eventually led to local exhaustion of many natural resources. The remains of a Mesolithic elk found caught in a bog at Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire demonstrated that it had been wounded by hunters and escaped on three different occasions, indicating unsuccessful-hunting during the Mesolithic. A few Neolithic monuments overlie Mesolithic sites but little direct continuity can be demonstrated. Farming of both crops and domestic animals was adopted in Britain around 4,500 BC at least partly because of the need for reliable food sources. Hunter-gathering ways of life would have persisted into the Neolithic at first, but the increasing sophistication of material culture with the concomitant control of local resources by individual groups would have caused it to be replaced by distinct territories occupied by different tribes. Other elements of the Neolithic such as pottery, leaf-shaped arrowheads and polished stone axes would have been adopted earlier as part of the Neolithic 'package'. The climate had been warming since the later Mesolithic and continued to improve, replacing the earlier pine forests with woodland.
In 1997 DNA analysis was undertaken on a tooth from a Mesolithic Cheddar Man from 9000 BC whose remains were found in Gough's Cave at Cheddar Gorge. His mitochondrial DNA was of Haplogroup U5, a subclade of Haplogroup U (mtDNA) found in 11% of modern European populations.

The Neolithic(4000 – 2000 BC)

The Neolithic was the period of domestication of plants and animals. A debate is currently being waged between those who believe that the introduction of farming and a sedentary lifestyle was brought about by resident peoples adopting new practices or by continental invaders bringing their culture with them and, to some degree, replacing the indigenous populations.
Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of modern European populations shows that over 80% are descended in the female line from European hunter-gatherers. Less than 20% are descended in the female line from Neolithic farmers from the Middle East. The percentage in Britain is smaller at around 11% with the paternal varying from 10–100% across the country, being higher in the east. However, as already noted, this situation is reversed when looking at English and Scottish Y-chromosomes, which show a large degree of population replacement during the Anglo-Saxon invasion and a nearly complete masking over of whatever population movement (or lack of it) went before on these two countries. Looking from a more Europe-wide standpoint, researchers at Stanford University have found overlapping cultural and genetic evidence that supports the theory that migration was, at least, partially responsible for the Neolithic Revolution in Northern Europe (including Britain). The science of genetic anthropology is changing very fast and a clear picture across the whole of human occupation of Britain has yet to emerge.
Pollen analysis shows that woodland was decreasing and grassland increasing, with a major decline of elms. The winters were typically 3 degrees colder than at present but the summers some 2.5 degrees warmer.
The arrival of farming and a sedentary lifestyle as shorthand for the Neolithic is increasingly giving way to a more complex view of the changes and continuities in practices that can be observed from the Mesolithic period onwards. For example the development of Neolithic monumental architecture apparently venerating the dead may represent more comprehensive social and ideological changes involving new interpretations of time, ancestry, community and identity.
In any case, the Neolithic Revolution, as it is called, introduced a more settled way of life and ultimately led to societies becoming divided into differing groups of farmers, artisans and leaders. Forest clearances were undertaken to provide room for cereal cultivation and animal herds. Native cattle and pigs were reared whilst sheep and goats were later introduced from the continent as were the wheats and barleys grown in Britain. However, only a few actual settlement sites are known in Britain, unlike the continent. Cave occupation was common at this time.
The construction of the earliest earthwork sites in Britain began during the early Neolithic (c. 4400 BC – 3300 BC) in the form of long barrows used for communal burial and the first causewayed enclosures, sites which have parallels on the continent. The former may be derived from the long house although no long house villages have been found in Britain, only individual examples. The stone-built houses on Orkney such as those at Skara Brae are however indicators of some nucleated settlement in Britain. Evidence of growing mastery over the environment is embodied in the Sweet Track, a wooden trackway built to cross the marshes of the Somerset Levels and dated to 3807 BC. Leaf-shaped arrowheads, round-based pottery types and the beginnings of polished axe production are common indicators of the period. Evidence of the use of cow's milk comes from analysis of pottery contents found beside the Sweet Track.
The Middle Neolithic (c. 3300 BC – c. 2900 BC) saw the development of cursus monuments close to earlier barrows and the growth and abandonment of causewayed enclosures as well as the building of impressive chamber tombs such as the Maeshowe types. The earliest stone circles and individual burials also appear.
Different pottery types such as Grooved ware appear during the later Neolithic (c. 2900 BC – c.2200 BC) whilst new enclosures, called henges were built, along with stone rows and the famous sites of Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill reached their peak. Industrial flint mining such as that at Cissbury and Grimes Graves began, with evidence of long distance trade. Wooden tools and bowls were common, and bows were constructed.

The Bronze Age (around 2200 to 750 BC)

This period can be sub-divided into an earlier phase (2300 to 1200) and a later one (1200 – 700). Beaker pottery appears in England around 2475–2315 cal BC along with flat axes and burial practices of inhumation. With the revised Stonehenge chronology, this is after the Sarsen Circle and trilithons were erected at Stonehenge. Believed to be of Iberian origin, (modern day Spain and Portugal), Beaker techniques brought to Britain the skill of refining metal. At first the users made items from copper, but from around 2,150 BC smiths had discovered how to make bronze (which was much harder than copper) by mixing copper with a small amount of tin. With this discovery, the Bronze Age arrived in Britain. Over the next thousand years, bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making.
Britain had large, easily accessible reserves of tin in the modern areas of Cornwall and Devon in what is now southwest England, and thus tin mining began. By around 1,600 BC the southwest of Britain was experiencing a trade boom as British tin was exported across Europe, evidence of ports being found in southern Devon at Bantham and Mount Batten. Copper was mined at the Great Orme in North Wales.
The Beaker people were also skilled at making ornaments from gold, and examples of these have been found in graves of the wealthy Wessex culture of central southern Britain.
Early Bronze Age Britons buried their dead beneath earth mounds known as barrows, often with a beaker alongside the body. Later in the period, cremation was adopted as a burial practice with cemeteries of urns containing cremated individuals appearing in the archaeological record, with deposition of metal objects such as daggers. People of this period were also largely responsible for building many famous prehistoric sites such as the later phases of Stonehenge along with Seahenge. The Bronze Age people lived in round houses and divided up the landscape. Stone rows are to be seen on. for example, Dartmoor. They ate cattle, sheep, pigs and deer as well as shellfish and birds. They carried out salt manufacture. Pytheas says that the Britons were renowned wheat farmers. The wetlands were a source of wildfowl and reeds. There was ritual deposition of offerings in the wetlands and in holes in the ground. The Lindow man may have been ritually killed as an offering.
There was some debate amongst archaeologists as to whether the 'Beaker people' were a race of people who migrated to Britain en masse from the continent, or whether a prestigious Beaker cultural "package" of goods and behaviour (which eventually spread across most of western Europe) diffused to Britain's existing inhabitants through trade across tribal boundaries. Modern thinking tends towards the latter view. Alternatively, a ruling class of Beaker individuals may have made the migration and come to control the native population at some level. Genetics suggests that there was only a small infux of people to Britain at this time, around a few percent.
There is evidence of a relatively large scale disruption of cultural patterns which some scholars think may indicate an invasion (or at least a migration) into southern Great Britain circa the 12th century BC. This disruption was felt far beyond Britain, even beyond Europe, as most of the great Near Eastern empires collapsed (or experienced severe difficulties) and the Sea Peoples harried the entire Mediterranean basin around this time. Some scholars consider that the Celtic languages arrived in Britain at this time.

The Iron Age (around 750 BC – 43 AD)

In around 750 BC iron working techniques reached Britain from southern Europe. Iron was stronger and more plentiful than bronze, and its introduction marks the beginning of the Iron Age. Iron working revolutionised many aspects of life, most importantly agriculture. Iron tipped ploughs could churn up land far more quickly and deeply than older wooden or bronze ones, and iron axes could clear forest land far more efficiently for agriculture. There was a landscape of arable, pasture and managed woodland. There were many enclosed settlements and land ownership was important.
By 600 BC, British society changed again. Often termed the "Celtic culture", it had by 500 BC covered most of the British Isles. The Celts were highly skilled craftsmen and produced intricately patterned gold jewellery and weapons in bronze and iron. It is disputed whether Iron Age Britons were "Celts", with numerous academics such as John Collis and Simon James actively opposing the idea of 'Celtic Britain', since the term was only applied at this time to a tribe in Gaul. However, placenames and tribal names from the later part of the period suggest that a Celtic language was spoken, for example the people were said to be "Pretanni". The term "Celtic" continues to be used by linguists to describe the family that includes many of the ancient languages of Western Europe and modern British languages such as Welsh without controversy.
Iron Age Britons lived in organised tribal groups, ruled by a chieftain.
As people became more numerous, wars broke out between opposing tribes. This was traditionally interpreted as the reason for the building of hill forts, although the siting of some hill forts on the sides of hills undermined their defensive value, hence "hill forts" may represent increasing communal areas or even 'Elite Areas'. However some hillside constructions may simply have been cow enclosures. Although the first had been built about 1,500 BC, hillfort building peaked during the later Iron Age. There are over 2000 Iron Age hillforts known in Britain.[10] By about 350 BC many hillforts went out of use and the remaining ones were reinforced. Large farmsteads produced food in industrial quantities and Roman sources note that Britain exported hunting dogs, animal skins and slaves.

The Late pre-Roman Iron Age (LPRIA)

The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw an influx of refugees from Gaul (modern day France and Belgium) known as the Belgae, who were displaced as the Roman Empire expanded around 50 BC. They settled in the area around Winchester. A tribe known as the Parisii, who had cultural links to the continent, were in north-east England.
From around 175 BC, the areas of Kent, Hertfordshire and Essex had especially advanced pottery-making skills. The tribes of south-east England were partially Romanised and were responsible for creating the first settlements (oppida) large enough to be called towns.
The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw increasing sophistication in British life. About 100 BC, iron bars began to be used as currency, while internal trade and trade with continental Europe flourished, largely due to Britain's extensive mineral reserves. Coinage was developed, based on continental types but bearing the names of local chieftains. This was used in south-east England, but not in areas such as Dumnonia.
As the Roman Empire expanded northwards, Rome began to take interest in Britain. This may have been caused by an influx of refugees from Roman occupied Europe, or Britain's large mineral reserves. See Roman Britain for the history of this subsequent period.

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Roman Britain

Roman Britain refers to those parts of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire between AD 43 and 410. The Romans referred to their province as Britannia. Prior to the Roman invasion, Iron Age Britain already had cultural and economic links with Continental Europe, but the invaders introduced new developments in agriculture, urbanization, industry and architecture, leaving a legacy that is still apparent today.
Historical records beyond the initial invasion are sparse, although many Roman historians mention the province in passing. Most of the knowledge of the period stems from archaeological investigations and especially epigraphic evidence.

Chronological history

Early contact

Britain was not unknown to the Classical world. As early as the 4th century BC the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin:the Greeks refer to the Cassiterides or "tin islands" and describe them as being situated somewhere near the west coasts of Europe. The Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 5th century BC, and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th. But it was regarded as a place of mystery, with some writers even refusing to believe it existed.
The first direct Roman contact came when the Roman general and future dictator, Julius Caesar, made two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC as an offshoot of his conquest of Gaul, believing the Britons had been helping the Gallic resistance. The first expedition, more a reconnaissance than a full invasion, gained a foothold on the coast of Kent but, undermined by storm damage to the ships and a lack of cavalry, was unable to advance further. The expedition was a military failure, but was at least a political success: the Roman Senate declared a 20-day public holiday in Rome in honour of this unprecedented achievement.
In his second invasion Caesar took with him a substantially larger force and proceeded to coerce or invite many of the native celtic tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for peace. A friendly local king, Mandubracius, was installed, and his rival, Cassivellaunus, was brought to terms. Hostages were taken, but historians disagree over whether the tribute agreed was paid by the Britons after Caesar's return to Gaul with his forces.
Caesar had conquered no territory and had left behind no troops, but had established clients on the island and had brought Britain into Rome's sphere of political influence. Augustus planned invasions in 34, 27 and 25 BC, but circumstances were never favourable, and the relationship between Britain and Rome settled into one of diplomacy and trade. Strabo, writing late in Augustus's reign, claims that taxes on trade brought in more annual revenue than any conquest could.Likewise, archaeology shows an increase in imported luxury goods in southeastern Britain.Strabo also mentions British kings who sent embassies to Augustus, and Augustus' own Res Gestae refers to two British kings he received as refugees. When some of Tiberius's ships were carried to Britain in a storm during his campaigns in Germany in AD 16, they were sent back by local rulers, telling tall tales of monsters.
Rome appears to have encouraged a balance of power in southern Britain, supporting two powerful kingdoms: the Catuvellauni, ruled by the descendants of Tasciovanus, and the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Commius. This policy was followed until AD 39 or 40, when Caligula received an exiled member of the Catuvellaunian dynasty and staged an invasion of Britain that collapsed in farcical circumstances before it had even left Gaul.When Claudius successfully invaded in 43 AD, it was in aid of another fugitive British ruler, this time Verica of the Atrebates.

Roman invasion

The invasion force in 43 AD was led by Aulus Plautius. It is not known how many Roman legions were sent; only one legion, the II Augusta, commanded by the future emperor Vespasian, is directly attested to have taken part. The IX Hispana, the XIV Gemina (later styled Martia Victrix) and the XX (later styled Valeria Victrix) are attested in 60/61 during the Bodicean Revolt, and are likely to have been there since the initial invasion. However, the Roman Army was flexible, with units being used and moved whenever necessary, so this is not certain. Only the Legio IX Hispana is certain to have stayed there, until its eventual annihillation by the Scots.
The invasion was delayed by a mutiny of the troops, who were eventually persuaded by an imperial freedman to overcome their fear of crossing the Ocean and campaigning beyond the limits of the known world. They sailed in three divisions, and probably landed at Richborough in Kent, although some suggest that at least part of the invasion force landed on the south coast, in the Fishbourne area of West Sussex.
The Romans defeated the Catuvellauni and their allies in two battles: the first, assuming a Richborough landing, in a battle on the river Medway, the second on the Thames. One of the Catuvellaunian leaders, Togodumnus, was killed, but his brother King Caractacus survived to continue resistance elsewhere. Plautius halted at the Thames and sent for Claudius, who arrived with reinforcements, including artillery and elephants, for the final march to the Catuvellaunian capital, Camulodunum (Colchester). The future emperor Vespasian subdued the southwest, Cogidubnus was set up as a friendly king of several territories, and treaties were made with tribes outside the area under direct Roman control.

Roman rule is established

Roman province of Britannia in 125 AD, showing native tribes, cities, main roads and legions deployed

After capturing the south of the island, the Romans turned their attention to what is now Wales. The Silures, Ordovices and Deceangli remained implacably opposed to the invaders and for the first few decades were the focus of Roman military attention, despite occasional minor revolts among Roman allies like the Brigantes and the Iceni. The Silures were led by King Caractacus, and he carried out an effective guerrilla campaign against Governor Publius Ostorius Scapula. Finally, in 51 AD, Ostorius lured Caractacus into a set-piece battle and defeated him. The British leader sought refuge among the Brigantes, but their queen, Cartimandua, proved her loyalty by surrendering him to the Romans. He was brought as a captive to Rome, where a dignified speech he made during Claudius's triumph persuaded the emperor to spare his life. However, the Silures were still not pacified, and Cartimandua's ex-husband Venutius replaced Caractacus as the most prominent leader of British resistance.

In 60-61 AD, while Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus was campaigning in Wales, the southeast of Britain rose in revolt under Queen Bodicea, widow of the recently-deceased king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, provoked by the seizure of the tribe's lands and the brutal treatment of the queen and her daughters. Prasutagus had left a will leaving half his kingdom to Nero in the hope that the rest would be left untouched. He was wrong. The Iceni, joined by the Trinovantes, destroyed the Roman colony at Camulodunum (Colchester) and routed the part of the IXth legion that was sent to relieve it. Suetonius Paulinus rode to London, the rebels' next target, but concluded it could not be defended. Abandoned, it was destroyed, as was Verulamium (St Albans). Between seventy and eighty thousand people are said to have been killed in the three cities. But Suetonius regrouped with two of the three legions still available to him, chose a battlefield, and, despite being heavily outnumbered, defeated the rebels in the Battle of Watling Street. Bodicea died not long afterwards, by self-administered poison or by illness. The revolt had almost persuaded Nero to withdraw from Britain altogether.
There was further turmoil in 69 AD, the "year of four emperors". As civil war raged in Rome, weak governors were unable to control the legions in Britain, and Venutius of the Brigantes seized his chance. The Romans had previously defended Cartimandua against him, but this time were unable to do so. Cartimandua was evacuated, and Venutius was left in control of the north of the country. After Vespasian secured the empire, his first two appointments as governor, Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Sextus Julius Frontinus, took on the task of subduing the Brigantes and Silures respectively. Frontinus extended Roman rule to all of South Wales, and initiated exploitation of the mineral resources, such as the gold mines at Dolaucothi.

The Lunt Fort near Coventry, a reconstructed Roman fort

In the following years, the Romans conquered more of the island, increasing the size of Roman Britain. Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, father-in-law to the historian Tacitus, conquered the Ordovices in 78 AD. With the XXth Valeria Victrix legion, Agricola defeated the Caledonians in 84 AD at the Battle of Mons Graupius, in northern Scotland. This was the high water mark of Roman territory in Britain: shortly after his victory, Agricola was recalled from Britain back to Rome, and the Romans retired to a more defensible line along the Forth-Clyde isthmus, freeing soldiers badly needed along other frontiers.
For much of the history of Roman Britain, a large number of soldiers were garrisoned on the island. This required that the emperor station a trusted senior man as governor of the province. As a result, many future emperors served as governors or legates in this province, including Vespasian, Pertinax, and Gordian I.

Occupation and retreat from southern Scotland

There is no historical source describing the decades that followed Agricola's recall. Even the name of his replacement is unknown. Archaeology has shown that some Roman forts south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus were rebuilt and enlarged, although others appear to have been abandoned. Roman coins and pottery have been found circulating at native settlement sites in the Scottish Lowlands in the years before 100 AD, indicating growing Romanisation. Some of the most important sources for this era are the writing tablets from the fort at Vindolanda in Northumberland, mostly dating to AD 90-110. These tablets provide vivid evidence for the operation of a Roman fort at the edge of the Roman Empire, where officers' wives maintained polite society while merchants, hauliers and military personnel kept the fort operational and supplied.
Around 105 AD, however, there appears to have been a serious setback at the hands of the tribes of the Picts of Albu: several Roman forts were destroyed by fire, with human remains and damaged armour at Trimontium (at modern Newstead, in SE Scotland) indicating hostilities at least at that site. There is also circumstantial evidence that auxiliary reinforcements were sent from Germany, and an unnamed British war of the period is mentioned on the gravestone of a tribune of Cyrene. However, Trajan's Dacian Wars may have led to troop reductions in the area or even total withdrawal followed by slighting of the forts by the Picts rather than an unrecorded military defeat. The Romans were also in the habit of destroying their own forts during an orderly withdrawal, in order to deny resources to an enemy. In either case, the frontier probably moved south to the line of the Stanegate at the Solway-Tyne isthmus around this time.

Hadrian's Wall viewed from Vercovicium

A new crisis occurred at the beginning of Hadrian's reign (117 AD): a rising in the north which was suppressed by Quintus Pompeius Falco. When Hadrian reached Britannia on his famous tour of the Roman provinces around 120 AD, he directed an extensive defensive wall, known to posterity as Hadrian's Wall, to be built close to the line of the Stanegate frontier. Hadrian appointed Aulus Platorius Nepos as governor to undertake this work who brought the VIth Victrix legion with him from Lower Germany. This replaced the famous IXth Hispana legion, whose disappearance has been much discussed. Archaeology indicates considerable political instability in Scotland during the first half of the second century, and the shifting frontier at this time should be seen in this context.
In the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-161 AD) the Hadrianic border was briefly extended north to the Forth-Clyde isthmus, where the Antonine Wall was built around 142 AD following the military reoccupation of the Scottish lowlands by a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus. This northward extension of the empire was probably the result of attacks, maybe by the Selgovae of southeast Scotland, on the Roman buffer state of the Votadini who lived north of the Hadrianic frontier.
The first Antonine occupation of Scotland ended as a result of a further crisis in 155-157 AD, when the Brigantes revolted. With limited options to despatch reinforcements, the Romans moved their troops south, and this rising was suppressed by Governor Cnaeus Julius Verus. Within a year the Antonine Wall was recaptured, but by 163 or 164 AD it was abandoned. The second occupation was probably connected with Antonius' undertakings to protect the Votadini or his pride in enlarging the empire, since the retreat to the Hadrianic frontier occurred not long after his death when a more objective strategic assessment of the benefits of the Antonine Wall could be made. The Romans did not entirely withdraw from Scotland at this time, however: the large fort at Newstead was maintained along with seven smaller outposts until at least 180 AD.
During the twenty year period following the reversion of the frontier to Hadrian's Wall, Rome was concerned with continental issues, primarily problems in the Danube provinces. Increasing numbers of hoards of buried coins in Britain at this time indicate that peace was not entirely achieved. Sufficient Roman silver has been found in Scotland to suggest more than ordinary trade, and it is likely that the Romans were reinforcing treaty agreements by paying tribute to their implacable enemies, the Picts.
In 175 AD a large force of Sarmatian cavalry, consisting of 5,500 men, arrived in Britannia, probably to reinforce troops fighting unrecorded uprisings. In 180 AD Hadrian's Wall was breached by the Picts and the commanding officer or governor was killed there in what Dio Cassius described as the most serious war of the reign of Commodus. Ulpius Marcellus was sent as replacement governor and by 184 AD he had won a new peace, only to be faced with a mutiny from his own troops. Unhappy with Marcellus' strictness, they tried to elect a legate named Priscus as usurper governor; he refused, but Marcellus was lucky to leave the province alive. The Roman army in Britannia continued its insubordination: they sent a delegation of 1,500 to Rome to demand the execution of Tigidius Perennis, a Praetorian Prefect who they felt had earlier wronged them by posting lowly equites to legate ranks in Britannia. Commodus met the party outside Rome and agreed to have Perennis killed, but this only made them feel more secure in their mutiny.
The future emperor Pertinax was sent to Britannia to quell the mutiny and was initially successful in regaining control. However, a riot broke out among the troops. Pertinax was attacked and left for dead, and asked to be recalled to Rome, where he briefly succeeded Commodus as emperor in 192 AD.

Third century

The death of Commodus put into motion a series of events which eventually led to civil war. Following the short reign of Pertinax, several rivals for the throne emerged, including Septimius Severus and Clodius Albinus. The latter was the new governor of Britannia, and had seemingly won the natives over after their earlier rebellions; he also controlled three legions, making him a potentially significant claimant. His sometime rival Severus promised him the title of Caesar in return for Albinus' support against Pescennius Niger in the east. Once Niger was neutralised however, Severus turned on his ally in Britannia—though it is likely that Albinus saw he would be the next target and was already preparing for war.
Albinus crossed to Gaul in 195 AD, where the provinces were also sympathetic to him, and set up at Lugdunum. Severus arrived in February 196, and the ensuing battle was decisive. Although Albinus came close to victory, Severus' reinforcements won the day, and the British governor committed suicide. Severus soon purged Albinus' sympathisers and perhaps confiscated large tracts of land in Britain as punishment.
Albinus had demonstrated the major problem posed by Roman Britain. In order to maintain security, the province required the presence of three legions; but these provided an ambitious man, whose loyalty to the emperor was weak, with a powerful base for rebellion. Deploying those legions elsewhere, however, would strip the island of its garrison, leaving the province defenceless against uprisings by the native Celtic tribes and against invasion by the Picts and Scots.
The traditional view is that northern Britain descended into anarchy during Albinus' absence. Cassius Dio records that the new Governor, Virius Lupus, was obliged to buy peace from a fractious northern tribe known as the Maeatae. The succession of militarily distinguished governors who were subsequently appointed suggests that enemies of Rome were posing a difficult challenge, and Lucius Alfenus Senecio's report to Rome in 207 AD describes barbarians "rebelling, over-running the land, taking loot and creating destruction". In order to rebel, of course, one must be a subject - although the Maeatae clearly did not consider themselves such. Senecio requested either reinforcements or an Imperial expedition, and Severus chose the latter, despite being 62 years old.
Archaeological evidence shows that Senecio had been rebuilding the defences of Hadrian's Wall and the forts beyond it, and Severus' arrival in Britain prompted the enemy tribes to sue for peace immediately. The emperor had not come all that way to leave without a victory, however, and it is likely that he wished to provide his teenage sons Caracalla and Geta with first-hand experience of controlling a hostile barbarian land.
An expedition led by Severus and probably numbering around 20,000 troops moved north in AD 208 or 209, crossing the Wall and passing through eastern Scotland on a route similar to that used by Agricola. Harried by punishing guerrilla raids by the northern tribes and slowed by an unforgiving terrain, Severus was unable to meet the Caledonians on a battlefield. The emperor's forces pushed north as far as the River Tay, but little appears to have been achieved by the invasion, as peace treaties were signed with the Caledonians. By 210 Severus had returned to York, and the frontier had once again become Hadrian's Wall. He assumed the title Britannicus, but the title meant little with regard to the unconquered north, which (with Rome's power still ending at the Wall) clearly remained outside the authority of the Empire. And almost immediately another northern tribe, the Maeatae, again went to war. Caracella left with a punitive expedition, but by the following year his ailing father had died and he and his brother left the province to press their claim to the throne.
As one of his last acts, Severus tried to solve the problem of powerful and rebellious governors in Britain by dividing the province into Upper Britain and Lower Britain. This kept the potential for rebellion in check for almost a century. Historical sources provide little information on the following decades, a period known as the Long Peace. Even so, the number of buried hoards found from this period rises, suggesting continuing unrest. A string of forts were built along the coast of southern Britain to control piracy; and over the following hundred years they increased in number, becoming the Saxon Shore Forts.
During the middle of the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire was convulsed by barbarian invasions, rebellions and new imperial pretenders. Britannia apparently avoided these troubles, although increasing inflation had its economic effect. In 259 a so-called Gallic Empire was established when Postumus rebelled against Gallienus. Britannia was part of this until 274 when Aurelian reunited the empire.
In the late 270s a half-Brythonic usurper named Bononus rebelled to avoid the repercussions of letting his fleet be burnt by barbarians at Cologne. He was quickly crushed by Probus, but soon afterwards an unnamed governor in Britannia also attempted an uprising. Irregular troops of Vandals and Burgundians were sent across the Channel by Probus to put down the uprising, perhaps in 278 AD.
The last of the string of rebellions to affect Britannia was that of Carausius and his successor Allectus. Carausius was a naval commander, probably in the English Channel. He was accused of keeping pirate booty for himself, and his execution was ordered by the Emperor Maximian. In 286 AD he set himself up as emperor in Britain and northern Gaul and remained in power whilst Maximian dealt with uprisings elsewhere. In 288 an invasion failed to unseat the usurper. An uneasy peace ensued, during which Carausius issued coins proclaiming his legitimacy and inviting official recognition.
In 293 AD Constantius Chlorus launched a second offensive, besieging the rebel's port at Boulogne and cutting it off from naval assistance. After the town fell, Constantius tackled Carausius' Frankish allies. Subsequently the usurper was murdered by his treasurer, Allectus. Allectus' brief reign was brought to an end when Julius Asclepiodotus landed near Southampton and defeated him in a land battle.
Constantius arrived in London to receive the victory and chose to divide the province further, into four provinces (each with its own governor):

• Maxima Caesariensis (based on London), from Upper Britannia
• Britannia Prima, from Upper Britannia
• Flavia Caesariensis, from Lower Britannia
• Britannia Secunda, from Lower Britannia

In the same year, under the Tetrarchy reforms of the emperor Diocletian, Britannia became one of the four dioceses—governed by a vicarius—of the praetorian prefecture of Galliae ('the Gauls'), comprising the provinces of Gaul, Britannia, Germania and Hispania. This added, in effect, a fifth governor of Britannia. Thus, in place of one unchallenged military commander, the province now had five officers, each with command of only a small fraction of the garrison.

Fourth century

Constantius Chlorus returned in 306 AD, aiming to invade northern Britain. The province's defences had been rebuilt in the preceding years, and although his health was poor Constantius wished to penetrate into enemy territory. Little is known of his campaigns, and there is little archaeological evidence for them. From fragmentary historical sources it seems he reached the far north of Britain and won a great battle in early summer before returning south to York.
Constantius remained in Britain for the rest of the time he was part of the Tetrarchy, dying in York in July 306. His son, Constantine I, was at his side at that moment and assumed his duties in Britannia. Unlike the earlier usurper, Albinus, he succeeded in using his base in Britannia as the starting point of his march to the imperial throne.
In the middle of the century, for a few years the province was loyal to the usurper Magnentius, who succeeded Constans following the latter's death. After the defeat and death of Magnentius in the Battle of Mons Seleucus in 353 AD, Constantius II dispatched his chief imperial notary Paul "Catena" to Britain to hunt down Magnentius' supporters. The investigation deteriorated into a witch hunt, which forced the vicarius Flavius Martinus to intervene. When Paul retaliated by accusing Martinus of treason, the vicarius physically attacked Paul with a sword, with the aim of assassinating him, but in the end he committed suicide.
As the 4th century progressed there were increasing attacks from the Saxons in the east and the Irish in the west. A series of forts was already being built, starting around 280 AD, to defend the coasts, but these preparations were not enough when a general assault of Saxons, Irish and Attacotti, combined with apparent dissension in the garrison on Hadrian's Wall, left Roman Britain prostrate in 367 AD. This crisis, sometimes called the Barbarian Conspiracy or the Great Conspiracy, was settled by Count Theodosius with a string of military and civil reforms.
Another imperial usurper, Magnus Maximus, raised the standard of revolt at Segontium (Caernarfon) in north Wales in 383 AD, and crossed the English Channel. Maximus held much of the western empire, and fought a successful campaign against the Picts and Scots around 384. His continental exploits required troops from Britain, and it appears that forts at Chester and elsewhere were abandoned in this period, triggering raids and settlement in north Wales by the Irish. His rule was ended in 388, but not all the British troops may have returned: the Empire's military resources were struggling after the catastrophic Battle of Adrianople in 378. Around 396 there were increasing barbarian incursions into Britain, and an expedition - possibly led by Stilicho - brought naval action against the raiders. It seems peace was restored by 399, although it is likely that no further garrisoning was ordered; and indeed by 401 more troops were withdrawn, to assist in the war against Alaric I.

End of Roman rule

Roman Britain in the year 410

The traditional view of historians, informed by the work of Michael Rostovtzeff, was of a widespread economic decline at the beginning of the fifth century. However, consistent archaeological evidence has told another story, and the accepted view is undergoing re-evaluation. The abandonment of some sites is now believed to be later than had formerly been thought. Many buildings changed use but were not destroyed. There were growing barbarian attacks, but these were focused on vulnerable rural settlements rather than towns. Some villas such as Great Casterton in Rutland and Hucclecote in Gloucestershire had new mosaic floors laid around this time, suggesting that economic problems may have been limited and patchy, although many suffered some decay before being abandoned in the fifth century; the story of Saint Patrick indicates that villas were still occupied until at least 430. New buildings were still going up in this period in Verulamium and Cirencester. Some urban centres, for example Canterbury, Cirencester, Wroxeter, Winchester and Gloucester, remained active during the fifth and sixth centuries, surrounded by large farming estates.
Urban life had generally grown less intense by the fourth quarter of the fourth century, and coins minted between 378 and 388 are very rare, indicating a likely combination of economic decline, diminishing numbers of troops, and problems with the payment of soldiers and officials. Coinage circulation increased during the 390s, although it never attained the levels of earlier decades. Copper coins are very rare after 402, although minted silver and gold coins from hoards indicate they were still present in the province even if they were not being spent. By 407 there were no new Roman coins going into circulation, and by 430 it is likely that coinage as a medium of exchange had been abandoned. Pottery mass production probably ended a decade or two previously; the rich continued to use metal and glass vessels, while the poor probably adopted leather or wooden ones.

Sub-Roman Britain

Britain came under increasing pressure from barbarian attack on all sides towards the end of the 4th century, and troops were too few to mount an effective defence. The army rebelled and, after elevating two disappointing usurpers, chose a soldier, Constantine III, to become emperor in 407. He soon crossed to Gaul with an army and was defeated by Honorius; it is unclear how many troops remained or ever returned, or whether a commander-in-chief in Britain was ever reappointed. A Saxon incursion in 408 was apparently repelled by the Britons, and in 409 Zosimus records that the natives expelled the Roman civilian administration (although Zosimus may be referring to the Bacaudic rebellion of the Breton inhabitants of Armorica since he describes how, in the aftermath of the revolt, all of Armorica and the rest of Gaul followed the example of the Brettaniai). A later appeal for help by the British communities was rejected by the Emperor Honorius in 410. This apparent contradiction has been explained by EA Thompson as a peasant revolt against the landowning classes, with the latter group asking for Roman help; an uprising certainly occurred in Gaul at the time. With the higher levels of the military and civil government gone, administration and justice fell to municipal authorities, and small warlords gradually emerged all over Britain, still aspiring to Roman ideals and conventions. Laycock (Britannia the Failed State, 2008) has investigated this process of fragmentation and emphasised elements of continuity from the British tribes in the pre-Roman and Roman periods to the kingdoms that formed in the post-Roman period.
By tradition, the pagan Saxons were invited by Vortigern to assist in fighting the Picts and Irish, though archaeology has suggested some official settlement as landed mercenaries as early as the third century. Germanic migration into Roman Britannia may well have begun much earlier even than that. There is recorded evidence, for example, of Germanic Roman auxiliaries being brought to Britain in the first and second centuries to support the legions. The new arrivals rebelled, plunging the country into a series of wars that eventually led to the Saxon occupation of Lowland Britain by 600. Around this time many Britons fled to Brittany (hence its name). Similar orders were sent out in the 490s but met with no response. A significant date in sub-Roman Britain is the famous Groans of the Britons, an unanswered appeal to Aëtius, leading general of the western Empire, for assistance against Saxon invasion in 446; another is the Battle of Dyrham in 577, after which the significant cities of Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester fell and the Saxons reached the western sea.
Most scholars reject the historicity of the later legends of King Arthur, which seem to be set in this period, but some such as John Morris see it as evidence behind which may lie a plausible grain of truth.

Themes

Trade and industry

By the time of the Roman occupation, Britain's tin exports to the Mediterranean had been largely eclipsed by the more convenient supply from Iberia. Gold, tin, iron, lead, silver, jet, marble and pearls however were all exploited by the Romans in Britain along with more everyday commodities such as hunting dogs, animal skins, timber, wool and slaves. Foreign investment created a vigorous domestic market, and imports to Roman Britain were often of exotic continental items such as fine pottery such as Samian, olive oil, lavastone querns, fine glassware, wines, garum and fruit.

Development of mine

Mineral extraction sites such as the Dolaucothi gold mine was probably first worked by the Roman army from ca 75 AD, and at some later stage passed to civilian operators. The mine developed as a series of opencast workings, mainly by the use of hydraulic mining methods. They are described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia in great detail. Essentially, water supplied by aqueducts was used to prospect for ore veins by stripping away soil to reveal the bedrock. If veins were present, they were attacked using fire-setting and the ore removed for crushing and comminution. The dust was washed in a small stream of water and the heavy gold dust and gold nuggets collected in riffles. The diagram at right shows how Dolaucothi developed from ca 75 AD through to the first century. When opencast work was no longer feasible, tunnels were driven to follow the veins. The evidence from the site shows advanced technology probably under the control of army engineers.
The Wealden ironworking zone, the lead and silver mines of the Mendip Hills and the tin mines of Cornwall seem to have been private enterprises leased from the government for a fee. Although mining had long been practised in Britain (see Grimes Graves), the Romans introduced new technical knowledge and large-scale industrial production to revolutionise the industry. It included hydraulic mining to prospect for ore by removing overburden as well as work alluvial deposits. The water needed for such large-scale operations was supplied by one or more aqueducts, those surviving at Doalucothi being especially impressive. Many prospecting areas were in dangerous, upland country, and, although mineral exploitation was presumably one of the main reasons for the Roman invasion, it had to wait until these areas were subdued.
Although Roman designs were most popular, rural craftsmen still produced items derived from the Iron Age La Tène artistic traditions. Local pottery rarely attained the standards of the Gaulish industries although the Castor ware of the Nene Valley was able to withstand comparison with the imports. Most native pottery was unsophisticated however and intended only for local markets.
By the third century, Britain's economy was diverse and well-established, with commerce extending into the non-Romanised north. The design of Hadrian's Wall especially catered to the need for customs inspections of merchants' goods.

Provincial government

Under the Roman Empire, administration of peaceful provinces was ultimately the remit of the Senate, but those, like Britain, that required permanent garrisons were placed under the Emperor's control. In practice imperial provinces were run by resident governors who were former senators and had held the consulship. These men were carefully selected often having strong records of military success and administrative ability. In Britain, a governor's role was primarily military, but numerous other tasks were also his responsibility such as maintaining diplomatic relations with local client kings, building roads, ensuring the public courier system functioned, supervising the civitates and acting as a judge in important legal cases. When not campaigning he would travel the province hearing complaints and recruiting new troops.
To assist him in legal matters he had an adviser, the legatus iuridicus, and those in Britain appear to have been distinguished lawyers perhaps because of the challenge of incorporating tribes into the imperial system and devising a workable method of taxing them. Financial administration was dealt with by a procurator with junior posts for each tax-raising power. Each legion in Britain had a commander who answered to the governor and in time of war probably directly ruled troublesome districts. Each of these commands carried a tour of duty of two to three years in different provinces. Below these posts was a network of administrative managers covering intelligence gathering, sending reports to Rome, organising military supplies and dealing with prisoners. A staff of seconded soldiers provided clerical services.
Colchester was probably the earliest capital of Roman Britain, but it was soon eclipsed by London with its strong mercantile connections.

Provincial subdivisions

Britannia
43-early 3rd c.
Capital Camulodunum
(43-c.65),
then Londinium,
Britannia Inferior,
Early 3rd c. - 293,
capital at Eboracum
Britannia Superior
Early 3rd c. - 293,
capital at Londinium
Flavia Caesariensis,
293-410,
capital Lindum
Britannia Secunda,
293-410,
capital Eboracum
Maxima Caesariensis,
293-410,
capital Londinium
Britannia Prima,
293-410,
capital Corinium

Town and country

During their occupation of Britain the Romans founded a number of important settlements, many of which still survive.
Cities and towns which have Roman origins, or were extensively developed by them, include: (with their Latin names in brackets)

• Alcester - (Aluana)
• Bath - (Aquae Sulis)
• Caerleon - (Isca Augusta)
• Caernarfon - (Segontium)
• Caerwent - (Venta Silurum)
• Canterbury - (Durovernum Cantiacorum)
• Carlisle - (Luguvalium)
• Carmarthen - (Moridunum)
• Colchester - (Camulodunum)
• Corbridge - (Coria)
• Chichester - (Noviomagus Regnorum. Noviomagus means New Market and is also the Roman place name of a town in the Netherlands, now called Nijmegen)
• Chester - (Deva Victrix)
• Cirencester - (Corinium)
• Dover - (Portus Dubris)
• Dorchester - (Durnovaria)
• Exeter - (Isca Dumnoniorum)
• Gloucester - (Glevum)
• Leicester - (Ratae Corieltauvorum)
• London - (Londinium)
• Lincoln - (Lindum Colonia)
• Manchester - (Mamucium)
• Newcastle upon Tyne - (Pons Aelius)
• Northwich - (Condate)
• St Albans - (Verulamium)
• Towcester - (Lactodorum)
• Whitchurch - (Mediolanum)
• Winchester - (Venta Belgarum)
• York - (Eboracum)

Religion

Pagan

The druids, the Celtic priestly caste who were believed to originate in Britain, were outlawed by Claudius,and in 61 they vainly defended their sacred groves from destruction by the Romans on the island of Mona (Anglesey). However, under Roman rule the Britons continued to worship native Celtic deities, such as Ancasta, but often conflated with their Roman equivalents, like Mars Rigonemetos at Nettleham.
The degree to which earlier native beliefs survived is difficult to gauge precisely. Certain northern European ritual traits such as the significance of the number 3, the importance of the head and of water sources such as springs remain in the archaeological record, but the differences in the votive offerings made at the Roman Baths (Bath), Bath, Somerset before and after the Roman conquest suggest that continuity was only partial. Worship of the Roman Emperor is widely recorded, especially at military sites. The founding of a Roman temple to Claudius at Camulodunum was one of the impositions that led to the revolt of Boudica. By the third century Pagans Hill Roman Temple in Somerset was able to exist peaceably into the 5th century.
Eastern cults such as Mithraism also grew in popularity towards the end of the occupation. The Temple of Mithras is one example of the popularity of mystery religions amongst the rich urban classes and temples to Mithras also exist in military contexts at Vindobala on Hadrians Wall (the Rudchester Mithraeum) and at Segontium in Roman Wales (the Caernarfon Mithraeum).

Christianity

It is not clear when or how Christianity came to Britain. A 2nd century "word square" has been discovered in Mamucium, the Roman settlement of Manchester. It consists of an anagram of PATER NOSTER carved on a piece of amphora. There has been discussion by academics whether the "word square" is actually a Christian artefact, but if it is, it is one of the earliest examples of early Christianity in Britain. The earliest confirmed written evidence for Christianity in Britain is a statement by Tertullian, c. 200, in which he described "all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ". Archaeological evidence for Christian communities begins to appear in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Small timber churches are suggested at Lincoln and Silchester and baptismal fonts have been found at Icklingham and the Saxon Shore Fort at Richborough. The Water Newton Treasure is a hoard of Christian silver church plate from the early fourth century and the Roman villas at Lullingstone and Hinton St Mary contained Christian wall paintings and mosaics respectively. A large 4th century cemetery at Poundbury with its east-west oriented burials and lack of grave goods has been interpreted as an early Christian burial ground, although such burial rites were also becoming increasingly common in pagan contexts during the period.
The Church in Britain seems to have developed the customary diocesan system as evidenced from the records of the Council of Arles in Gaul in 314. Represented at the Council were bishops from thirty-five sees from Europe and North Africa, including three bishops from Britain: Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius. Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire by Constantine I in 313. Theodosius I made Christianity the state religion of the empire in 391, and by the 5th century it was well-established.
Saint Alban, the first British Christian martyr, is believed to have died in the early 4th century (although some date him in the middle 3rd century), followed by Saints Aaron and Julius of Isca Augusta. One heresy, Pelagianism, was originated by a British monk teaching in Rome: Pelagius lived c. 354 to c. 420/440.
A letter found on a lead tablet in Bath, Somerset, datable to c. 363, had been widely publicized as documentary evidence regarding the state of Christianity in Britain during Roman times. According to its first translator, it was written in Wroxeter by a Christian man called Vinisius to a Christian woman called Nigra, and was claimed as the first epigraphic record of Christianity in Britain. However, this translation of the letter was apparently based on grave paleographical errors, and the text, in fact, has nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact relates to pagan rituals.

Legacy

Roman roads

During their occupation of Britain the Romans built an extensive network of roads which continued to be used in later centuries and many are still followed today.
The Romans also built water supply, sanitation and sewage systems.
Many of Britain's major cities, such as London (Londinium), Manchester (Mamucium) and York (Eburacum), were founded by the Romans.
Britain is also noteworthy as having the largest European region of the former Roman Empire that currently speaks neither (as a majority language):

• A Romance language (for example, Romania, where territory was under Roman control about half as long as Britain), nor
• A language descended from the pre-Roman inhabitants (such as Greek), though Welsh exists as a minority language, with many borrowings from Latin, such as llaeth ("milk"), ffenestr ("window"). The Cornish language also survived into the early modern period and is currently undergoing some revival.

Significant Germanic migration to Britain seems to have taken place only after the coming of the Romans. The Germanic speakers came originally as Roman auxiliary troops to support the Romans in their conquest of the Celts.

Source

[HipHopRocK]

History of Anglo-Saxon England

The history of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early medieval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The fifth and sixth centuries are known archaeologically as Sub-Roman Britain, or in popular history as the "Dark Ages"; from the sixth century larger distinctive kingdoms are developing, still known to some as the Heptarchy. For most of this period England was split between areas controlled by the Anglo-Saxons and by the British. The arrival of the Vikings at the end of the eighth century brought many changes to Britain. Danish raiders attacked places throughout Britain but their later settlement was restricted to the eastern part of England, while Norwegian raiders (via Ireland) attacked the west coast of both England and Wales. Eventually the Anglo-Saxons gained control of the whole of England though there was a short intermission of Danish control. Relations with the continent were important right up to the end of Anglo-Saxon England, traditionally held to be the Norman Conquest.

Sources

There is a wide range of source material that covers Anglo-Saxon England. Various myths and legends surround the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, some based on documentary evidence, some far less so. Four main literary sources provide the evidence. Gildas' The Ruin of Britain (c. 540) is polemical and more concerned with criticising British kings than accurately describing events. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People is based in part on Gildas, though brings in other evidence. However, this was written in the early 8th century, some time after events. The History of the British, generally known by its supposed author Nennius, was possibly written about 800 AD. Nennius, like Gildas, describes events from the British point of view. Later still is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is in part based on Bede but also brings in legends regarding the foundation of Wessex. The main narrative sources are Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Other evidence can be brought in to aid the literary sources. Archaeologically Anglo-Saxon settlement can be traced by following burial patterns and land usage. Analysis of human remains unearthed at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England, has been claimed to indicate that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side by side. There is much academic debate as to whether the Anglo-Saxon migrants replaced, or merged with, the Romano-British people who inhabited southern and eastern Britain. Dark (Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, 2002) and Laycock (Britannia the Failed State, 2008) both explore this question, examining a range of different possibilities.
A range of laws are available back to the reigns of Æthelberht of Kent and Ine of Wessex though they become far more numerous after the reign of Alfred the Great. Charters (usually land grants) provide a wide range of evidence across the period. Other written sources include hagiography, letters (often between churchmen, but sometimes between political leaders, such as Charlemagne and Offa) and poetry.
In the last decade there have been a number of molecular genetic studies of the modern population of England which have been used to infer information about the population in Anglo-Saxon times and the size of the Anglo-Saxon immigration. In the 19th century a mass immigration was assumed but more recently only a small immigration of an elite has been considered more likely. This has also been suggested by the latter DNA studies.

Migration and the formation of kingdoms (400-600)

It is very difficult to establish a coherent chronology of events from Rome's departure from Britain, to the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The story of the Roman departure as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae is dubious except as documenting Medieval legend. However it can be partially reconstructed from the other sources. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Bernicia, Deira and Lindsey, it is usually argued, derive from a Celtic source, which could suggest some political continuity. The more westerly kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia show little sign of following existing boundaries.

Kingdoms and tribes in England and Wales at about AD 600.

The archaeological records of the final decades of Roman rule show undeniable signs of decay, in stagnant urban and villa life. There are records of Saxon raids on Britain during the fourth century and a Count of the Saxon Shore was established with a number of "forts" around the south east coast of Britain. However, some scholars see these as trading posts where Saxons were established rather than defences. Coins minted past 402 are rare which suggests that there were no payments to the Roman Army. Constantine III was declared emperor by his troops in 407 and crossed the channel with units of the British garrison. Constantine was killed in battle in 411. In 410, Emperor Honorius told the Romano-British to look to their own defence, yet in the mid-fifth century the Romano-British still felt they could appeal to the consul Aetius for help against invaders. Roman imperial control effectively ceased to exist but a Romanised way of life may well have continued for several generations.
Roman Britannia seems to have broken up into a number of separate kingdoms but with an overall controlling council. Gildas relates that this council invited Saxon mercenaries to Britain to repel raiders but that these later rebelled when their supplies ceased. Bede dated the Coming of the Saxons to 446 but this is now doubted. A period of fighting resulted with victories both by the Saxons and British. Though one cannot be sure of dates, places or people involved, it does seem that in 495, at the Battle of Mount Badon (Latin Mons Badonicus, Welsh Mynydd Baddon), possibly Badbury rings, the Britons inflicted a severe defeat on the Anglo-Saxons. Archaeological evidence, coupled with the ambiguous source Gildas, would suggest that the Anglo-Saxon migration was temporarily stemmed. In the sixth century there was another Saxon landing in the Southampton area with a further Saxon advance into the Cotswolds and Chilterns. In the seventh century the Saxons gained control of South-west England apart from Cornwall, the latter not coming under full control until the tenth century. Although generally known to the British as "Saxons", there were other tribes who came to Britain, including Angles, Frisians and Jutes. The Saxons probably gave their name to Essex, Middlesex, Sussex and Wessex. The Angles were in East Anglia, Mercia, Bernicia and Deira, while the Jutes were in Kent and the Isle of Wight. There are records of Angles returning fron Britain to Germany in the sixth century.[citation needed]
Archaeological finds show that the earliest "Saxon" artifacts are in the east of England rather than in Kent as suggested by the historical documents. There are also early artifacts in the upper Thames valley. These have been interpreted as belonging to mercenaries of British kings. Gildas says that there was a period of civil war between the British. There were also wars between the various Saxon proto-states.
Already from the fifth century AD, Britons had migrated across the English Channel and started to settle in the large western peninsula (Armorica) of Gaul (France), forming what is now Brittany. There seems to have been later phases of migration from Devon and Cornwall. Others migrated to northern Spain (Britonia). The migration of the British to the continent and the Anglo-Saxons to Britain should be considered in the context of wider European migrations. However, some doubt, based on genetic and archaeological work, has been cast on the extent of Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain.

Heptarchy and Christianisation (600-800)

Britain about the year 802, showing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in red/orange and the Celtic kingdoms in green.

Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England began around AD 600, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the northwest and by the Roman Catholic Church from the southeast. The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine took office in 597. In 601, he baptised the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelbert of Kent. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon king, Penda of Mercia, died in 655. The Anglo-Saxon mission on the continent took off in the eighth century, leading to the Christianisation of practically all of the Frankish Empire by AD 800.
Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms. Bede records Aethelbert of Kent as being dominant at the close of the sixth century, but power seems to have shifted northwards to the kingdom of Northumbria, which was formed from the amalgamation of Bernicia and Deira. Edwin probably held dominance over much of Britain, though Bede's Northumbria bias should be kept in mind. Succession crises meant Northumbrian hegemony was not constant, and Mercia remained a very powerful kingdom, especially under Penda. Two defeats essentially ended Northumbrian dominance: the Battle of the Trent (679) against Mercia, and Nechtanesmere (685) against the Picts.
The so-called 'Mercian Supremacy' dominated the 8th century, though again was not constant. Aethelbald and Offa, the two most powerful kings, achieved high status; indeed, Offa was considered the overlord of south Britain by Charlemagne. That Offa could summon the resources to build Offa's Dyke is testament to his power. However, a rising Wessex, and challenges from smaller kingdoms, kept Mercian power in check, and by the end of the 8th century the 'Mercian Supremacy', if it existed at all, was over.
This period has been described as the Heptarchy, though this term has now fallen out of academic use. The word arose on the basis that the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. More recent scholarship has shown that other kingdoms were politically important across this period: Hwicce, Magonsaete, Lindsey and Middle Anglia.

Viking challenge and the rise of Wessex (9th century)

Britain about the year 886, showing the Danish kingdoms in purple, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in orange, and Celtic kingdoms in green.

The first recorded Viking attack in Britain was in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery as given by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, by then the Vikings were almost certainly well established in Orkney and Shetland, and it is probable that many other non-recorded raids occurred before this. Records do show the first Viking attack on Iona taking place in 794. The arrival of the Vikings, in particular the Danish Great Heathen Army, upset the political and social geography of Britain and Ireland. Alfred the Great's victory at Edington in 878 stemmed the Danish attack; however, by then Northumbria had devolved into Bernicia and a Viking kingdom, Mercia had been split down the middle, and East Anglia ceased to exist as an Anglo-Saxon polity. The Vikings had similar effects on the various kingdoms of the Irish, Scots, Picts and (to a lesser extent) Welsh. Certainly in North Britain the Vikings were one reason behind the formation of the Kingdom of Alba, which eventually evolved into Scotland.
After a time of plunder and raids, the Vikings began to settle in England. An important Viking centre was York, called Jorvik by the Vikings. Various alliances between the Viking Kingdom of York and Dublin rose and fell. Danish and Norwegian settlement made enough of an impact to leave significant traces in the English language; many fundamental words in modern English are derived from Old Norse, though of the 100 most used words in English the vast majority are Old English in origin. Similarly, many place-names in areas of Danish and Norwegian settlement have Scandinavian roots.
An important development of the ninth century was the rise of the Kingdom of Wessex. Though it was somewhat of a roller-coaster journey, by the end of Alfred's reign (899) the West Saxon kings came to rule what had previously been Wessex, Sussex and Kent. Cornwall (Kernow) was subject to West Saxon dominance, and several kings of the more southerly Welsh kingdoms recognised Alfred as their overlord, as did western Mercia under Alfred's son-in-law Æthelred.

English Unification (10th century)

Alfred of Wessex died in 899 and was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder. Edward, and his brother-in-law Æthelred of (what was left of) Mercia, fought off Danish attacks and began a programme of expansion, seizing territory from the Danes and establishing fortifications to defend it. Upon Æthelred's death, his wife (Edward's sister) Æthelflæd ruled as "Lady of the Mercians" and continued expansion in conjunction with Edward. By 918 Edward had gained control of the whole of England south of the Humber. In that year Æthelflæd died, and Mercia was fully integrated with Wessex into a single kingdom. Edward's son Æthelstan was the first king to achieve direct rulership of the whole of England, following his conquest of Northumbria in 927. The titles attributed to him in charters and on coins suggest a still more widespread dominance. He defeated an attempt to reverse the conquest of Northumbria by a combined Scottish-Viking army at the Battle of Brunanburh. However, after his death the unification of England was repeatedly contested. His successors Edmund and Eadred each lost control of Northumbria to fresh Norse attacks before regaining it once more. Nevertheless, by the time of Eadred's successor Edgar, who ruled the same expanse as Æthelstan, the unification of England had been permanently established.

England under the Danes and the Norman Conquest (978-1066)

There were renewed Norse attacks on England at the end of the 10th century. Æthelred ruled a long reign but ultimately lost his kingdom to Sweyn of Denmark, though he recovered it following the latter's death. However, Æthelred's first son Edmund II Ironside died shortly afterwards, allowing Canute, Sweyn's son, to become king of England, one part of a mighty empire stretching across the North Sea. It was probably in this period that the Viking influence on English culture became ingrained.
Rule over England fluctuated between the descendants of Æthelred and Canute for the first half of the 11th century. Ultimately this resulted in the well-known situation of 1066, where several people had a claim to the English throne. Harold Godwinson became king as he claimed that he was appointed by his brother-in-law, Edward the Confessor, on his deathbed, and his ascendency was confirmed by the Witenagemot. However William of Normandy, a descendant of Æthelred and Canute's wife Emma, and Harald Hardraader of Norway (who invaded Northumberland at York two weeks before and separately from William and who was aided by Harold Godwinson's estranged brother Tostig) both had a claim. Perhaps the strongest claim went to Edgar the Ætheling, whose minority prevented him from playing a larger part in the struggles of 1066, though he was made king for a short time by the English Witenagemot.
Invasion was the rest of this situation. Harold Godwinson defeated Harald of Norway and Tostig at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, but fell in battle against William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings. William began a program of consolidation in England, being crowned on Christmas Day, 1066. However, his authority was always under threat in England, and the little space spent on Northumbria in the Domesday Book is testament to the troubles there during William's reign.

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House of Plantagenet

The House of Plantagenet (IPA: [planˈtadʒɪnɪt] or First House of Anjou) was a royal house founded by Henry II of England, son of Geoffrey V of Anjou. The Plantagenet kings first ruled the Kingdom of England in the 12th century. Their male line originated in Gâtinais, while their direct ancestors had ruled the County of Anjou since the 9th century. The dynasty gained several other holdings building the Angevin Empire, which at its peak stretched from the Pyrenees to Ireland.
In total, fifteen Plantagenet monarchs, including those belonging to cadet branches, ruled England from 1154 until 1485. The initial branch ruled from Henry II of England until the deposition of Richard II of England in 1399. After that, two Plantagenet branches named the House of Lancaster and the House of York clashed in a civil war known as the Wars of the Roses over control of the house. After three ruling Lancastrian monarchs, the crown returned to senior primogeniture with three ruling Yorkist monarchs; the last being Richard III of England who was killed in battle during 1485.
A distinctive English culture and art emerged during the Plantagenet era, encouraged by some of the monarchs who were patrons of the "father of English poetry"; Geoffrey Chaucer. The Gothic architecture style was popular during the time, with buildings such as the Westminster Abbey and York Minster remodelled in that style. There was also lasting developments in the social sector, such as John I of England's signing of the Magna Carta. This was influential in the development of common law and constitutional law. Political institutions such as the Parliament of England and the Model Parliament originate from the Plantagenet period, as do educational institutions including the University of Cambridge and Oxford.
The eventful political climate of the day saw the Hundred Years' War, where the Plantagenets battled with the House of Valois for the control of the Kingdom of France, related to both claiming House of Capet seniority. Some of the Plantagenet kings were renowned as warriors; Henry V of England left his mark with the victory against larger numbers at the Battle of Agincourt, while earlier Richard the Lionheart had distinguished himself in the Third Crusade and was later romanticised as an iconic figure in English folklore.

Origins

Etymology

The name Plantagenet itself has its origins as the nickname of Geoffrey V of Anjou. The name is derived from the plant common broom, which is known in the Latin language as planta genista. It is most commonly claimed that the nickname arose because he wore a sprig of it in his hat. Its significance has been said to relate to its golden flower or contemporary belief in its vegetative soul. The surname Plantagenet has, since the 15th century, been only retroactively applied to the descendants of Geoffrey of Anjou, and was not used as a contemporary term, as the house itself used no surname until the legitimist claimant Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, father of both Edward IV and Richard III, assumed the name about 1448.

Background

The White Ship sinking

The Plantagenets are also called Angevins, because their immediate paternal progenitors were Counts of Anjou, an autonomous county in northern France. They descend in the male line from from the Counts of Gatinais, one of whom had married an heiress to the county, her Anjou ancestors deriving from an obscure 9th century nobleman named Ingelger.It is due to this lineage that the Plantagenets are sometimes referred to as the First House of Anjou. One of the more notable Counts was Fulk, a crusader who became King of Jerusalem. It was his son, Geoffrey, nicknamed Plantagenet, who gave his name to the dynasty, and Fulk's grandson, Henry, was the first of the family to rule England.
Henry's claim to the English throne came through his mother, the Empress Matilda, who had claimed the crown as the daughter of Henry I of England. Empress Matilda's brother William Adelin had died in the wreck of the White Ship, leaving Matilda her father's only surviving legitimate child. However, on Henry's death in 1135, Matilda's cousin Stephen of Blois was supported by much of the Anglo-Norman nobility, and was able to have himself crowned instead. A tightly fought civil war known as The Anarchy ensued, with Matilda gaining support from her illegitimate half-brother, Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester. The balance swayed both ways during the war, Matilda gained control at one point and carried the title "Lady of the English" before Stephen forced her out to Anjou. Unrest and instability continued throughout Stephen's reign, while on the continent, Geoffrey managed to take control of the Duchy of Normandy for the Angevins in 1141 but seemingly showed no interest in campaigning across the Channel.

Rise of Henry II and his sons

Henry II of England.

Matilda's son the future Henry II of England had grown into a skilled military tactician and arrived in England to follow up his mother's claim. He had married Eleanor of Aquitaine and so the Duchy of Aquitaine was also part of the Plantagenet's vast land holdings in the emerging Angevin Empire. When Henry arrived in England, he and Stephen came to an agreement in November 1153, with the signing of the Treaty of Wallingford where Stephen recognised Henry as his heir to the throne. Most scholars regard Henry's reign as energetic and effective in his governance. Henry overhauled the English judicial system, restoring royal authority in place of the easily manipulated feudal law of the barons which had undermined Stephen's ineffective reign. The system and reforms put in place by Henry restored law and order, creating a self-standing system which utilised competent government clerks and sheriffs. It could in effect operate smoothly with a common law prevailing, even when the king was absent — or through the reign of less skilled monarchs.
After King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough was chased out of his lands by the High King of Ireland, he asked Henry for help. Henry obliged, restoring MacMurrough to Leinster and inserting his son John as Lord of Ireland. Henry also recovered Northumberland and Cumbria from the control of Scotland who had earlier seized the areas from England, under Malcolm II and David I of Scotland respectively. Henry named his son Henry the Young King as his coregent in England, the coronation was carried out by the Archbishop of York. This angered Henry's formerly close friend, Thomas Beckett the Archbishop of Canterbury; in frustration Henry uttered a comment which would see Beckett killed by knights. Henry regretted his former friend's death and did public penance; walking barefoot into Canterbury Cathedral, he allowed monks to scourge him, his excommunication was rescinded.

Statue of Richard the Lionheart outside Westminster Palace.

Henry envisaged in his will a situation somewhat similar to a federal monarchy for the Plantagenet Empire after his death. He planned that his four sons, would inherit various different parts: Henry the Younger (England, Normandy and Anjou), Richard (Aquitaine), Geoffrey (Brittany) and John (Ireland), so each would have home rule with its own monarch. His family under the leadership of his son Henry the Younger who wanted more power during Henry II's lifetime, rebelled against him in the Revolt of 1173–1174. The rebels included power hungry English barons, his second cousin the king of Scotland and the king of France. Despite being attacked on various different fronts, Henry II and his loyalists fought a defensive campaign and humiliated militarily all their enemies.[18] Henry's men led by Ranulf de Glanvill, even captured his second cousin William I of Scotland at Alnwick, but allowed him to swear fealty to Henry at York Castle. Henry the Younger rebelled against his father again in 1183 but died of dysentery.

Magna Carta signing.

Richard the Lionheart as he would later be known, become monarch in 1189. Richard did not focus as much on local governance as his father, rarely spending time in England. However he built up a reputation as a great military leader and warrior for his efforts in the Third Crusade scoring considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, Saladin. For a time Richard was Lord of Cyprus but sold the island to Guy of Lusignan. Since his death Richard has been romanticised in English folklore, as his name remains synonymous with bravery and courage. His brother John of England, nicknamed Lackland, came to power next in 1199. John clashed with Philip II of France, who favoured John's nephew Arthur to control the continental Plantagenet territories. After Arthur was killed, the Norman and Angevin lords rebelled against Plantagenet rule; John lost much of the continent to France, solidified by defeat at Bouvines. It was around this time that the English language gained wider respect. In England, John also had to deal with rebellion as he was forced by barons to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, a document that limited his power and that is popularly regarded as an early first step in the evolution of modern democracy. As John signed the document under duress, the First Barons' War broke out, with the barons inviting an invasion by Louis VIII of France. John died in 1217 and his son Henry III of England succeeded him, with the barons switching their allegiance back to Plantagenet against Capet.

Three Edwards and claim to Capet

The English Justinian

Henry III became king at just nine years old, so nobles such as William Marshal and Hubert de Burgh dominated in the early years. Henry made unsuccessful attempts to regain Plantagenet land in northern France. Henry handed out various honours to foreigners related to his wife Eleanor of Provence, which annoyed the local nobility. The Provisions of Oxford was imposed on the king, led by Simon de Montfort, a council of fifteen nobles were set to help govern the country; Henry asserted himself and so the Second Barons' War began. At Lewes de Montfort captured Henry's son Prince Edward and became de facto ruler of the nation, until royalists won the war at Evesham. It is from this period that the Parliament of England originated, Henry was passionate about aesthetics and had many of England's buildings such as Westminster Abbey and York Minster re-built in the Gothic architecture style. The reign of Edward I of England, nicknamed Longshanks due to his tall height, saw much legitislative activity and improvements in the administration of the judicial institutions which would last almost unchanged for centuries. Due to this he is sometimes called "The English Justinian", a reference to the Byzantine Emperor.

As Duke of Aquitaine, Edward was a vassal to the Capetian King of France.

Edward clashed with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, who ruled directly Gwynedd while other parts of the Principality of Wales were Marcher Lordships existing since Norman times. Llywelyn refused to do homage or attend Edward's coronation; thus in 1277 the two men went to war. Edward was quickly victorious and a peace treaty was issued. Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd broke the treaty and went on the attack; again Edward was victorious, but this time the Principality of Wales became Plantagenet territory, with his son Edward crowned Prince of Wales. After Edward I's brother-in-law Alexander III of Scotland died and Margaret, Maid of Norway became his sole heir, a marriage alliance between Margaret and Edward, Prince of Wales was proposed which would mean Scotland would be a Plantagenet holding within the next generation. Margaret died on her voyage, throwing the succession to Scotland wide open between several candidates. Edward was asked to arbitrate and chose the hereditarily superior John Balliol. However, Balliol later betrayed Edward by setting up the Auld Alliance with France and so the Wars of Scotland began. Edward's campaign was effective, he even captured the Coronation Stone relic and defeated William Wallace at Falkirk. However Edward died at Burgh by Sands on the way to fight Robert I of Scotland, having never solidified a claim to Scotland.

Edward III and his son Edward, the Black Prince.

His son and successor, Edward II of England, was the polar opposite of his warrior statesman father. Edward II's reign was largely unpopular due to several reasons; he was regarded as a poor general and lost out in Scotland to Robert I at Bannockburn. He also angered the nobility by giving large sums of money and gifts to his favourites such as Piers Gaveston. This annoyed the barons to the extent that they rallied around Edward's cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and had Gaveston murdered. Another royal favourite Hugh Despenser came on the scene and again there were conflicts, but this time Edward beat his cousin Thomas at Boroughbridge and had him executed in 1322. Edward's downfall came when his wife Isabella of France and her baronial lover Roger Mortimer set out to depose the king, with the help of the king's second cousin Henry, Earl of Lancaster. The king agreed to abdicate in favour of his and Isabella's son Edward III of England; Edward II was held prisoner in Berkeley Castle for five months before being murdered. After four years of court control by his mother and her lover, Edward at age 18 staged a revolt and had Mortimer executed. Edward overturned the Treaty of Northampton and supported Edward Balliol's claim to Scotland, against David II of the House of Bruce. The campaign was effective as David was captured at Neville's Cross, spending a period in the Tower of London before being released for a large ransom. David's invasion into Northern England had been under the terms of the Auld Alliance with the House of Valois of France.

Hundred Years' War begins

Plantagenet victory at Crécy.

The succession to the rights of the House of Capet was disputed. Philip IV of France had three sons all of whom died without issue, aside from Louis X whose son John I lived for only five days. In following with feudal law the daughter and sole remaining child of Philip IV, Isabella of France, the mother of Edward III of England had a claim to the French throne and the seniority of the House of Capet. However Philip VI of the House of Valois, a more distantly related Capetian cadet branch invoked Salic law and was crowned King of France. When Philip confiscated the Duchy of Aquitaine from Edward for "disobedience", Edward decided to follow up his claim to all of the Kingdom of France; thus the Hundred Years' War between the Plantagenets and Valois began. Early on in the conflict, the Edwardian War was particularly successful for the Plantagenets, specifically the battles at Crécy and Poitiers leading to the Treaty of Brétigny. Edward had to deal with the Black Death during his reign, but was able to make vital developments in legislature and government. In England his reign saw the developed of a strong sense of national identity due partly to the ongoing wars; the chivalric Order of the Garter essentially saw the nationalisation of the aristocracy. His latter years were less successful in comparison with both political problems at home and renewed problems with Valois; the death of Valois' John II in English captivity during 1364 saw the rise of Charles V of France who had far more capable allies.A second period of the Hundred Years' War broke out known as the Caroline War, the Plantagenets were led by Edward's sons Edward, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt.The Black Prince died in 1376 of illness, which may have been cancer, while Edward III himself died the following year.

Richard and the Great Rising

Due to the death of his father Edward, the Black Prince who was the long time heir apparent to England, the ten year old Richard II of England succeeded to the throne instead. The commons of parliament feared that Richard's uncle John of Gaunt would ambitiously influence political decisions if a regency led by him was instated; thus parliament created an environment where a series of councils would essentially control politics. The continuing Hundred Years' War with Valois was an expensive venture, a poll tax was levied to finance it. Levied three times and covering 60% of the population, the 1381 tax costing one shilling for each person over 15 was particularly unpopular and was one of the main reasons behind the Great Rising of 1381. Only fourteen at the time, Richard rode out on horseback and met with the rebel leaders, showing considerable statesmanship qualities in his handling of the rebellion. Due to the king's dependence on a small number of courtiers, in 1389 governance was instead taken over by a group known as the Lord Appellant. Richard regained control in 1389 and after eight years of relative harmony, decided to take revenge on the appellants, executing and exiling some. After John of Gaunt died, the king disinherited Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, who had previously been exiled. Henry invaded England in June 1399 with a small force that quickly grew in numbers. Meeting little resistance, he deposed Richard and had himself crowned as Henry IV of England. Richard died in captivity early the next year; he was probably murdered.

Dynastic dispute

Lancastrians crowned, rebellion

Prior to Henry taking the throne and becoming the first Lancastrian king, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March was actually the heir presumptive to Richard II according to cognatic primogeniture, through his deceased grandmother Philippa Plantagenet who was the only child of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Henry could be deemed more senior only through agnatic succession, meaning that he was a Plantagenet through the male line. Edmund and his brother Roger were just children when Henry took to the throne, as their father had died the previous year. They were kept in custody by Henry, who, despite the threat for rebellion they could eventually pose, treated them honourably. Henry had to deal with numerous rebellions in the Angevin Empire, both in Wales under Owain Glyndŵr and in England, such as the Southampton Plot. The latter was an attempt to put Mortimer on the throne, though he himself never rebelled against Henry. There was also the Percy Rebellion after the king and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland fell out. Henry's wife Joanna of Navarre was accused of practicing necromancy and was later convicted of witchcraft in 1419 during Henry V's reign; this added to diminishing support for the Lancastrians. The execution of Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York after a rebellion achieved the same result; when Henry was later struck down with leprosy and epilepsy, many at the time saw it is a punishment from God for the execution of the archbishop. For the last two years of his reign, Henry was so ill that his son and heir, Henry of Monmouth took up the vast majority of the king's responsibilities.

Victory at the Battle of Agincourt fought on Saint Crispin's Day.

Henry V of England was a soldier from age 14 and a commander at the Battle of Shrewsbury at age 16. He was to be of the warrior-statesman archetype of his ancestors.[51] Henry desired the Plantagenet ancestral lands of the Duchy of Normandy and County of Anjou earlier confiscated by Valois. He first attempted this diplomatically by suggesting a marriage with Charles VI of France's daughter Catherine of Valois. After the proposal was rejected, the Lancastrian War of the Hundred Years' War began. Politically this had two purposes: the first, to gain land; the second, to unite his cousins under a common cause in the hopes of dissuading rebellion at home. Henry presented himself as a chaste and pious king, which was a relief to the masses after the reign of his father. At the Battle of Agincourt, vastly outnumbered, Henry led his men to a famous victory. The Plantagenets were allied with the Duchy of Burgundy in the war, despite Philip the Good himself being of a Valois cadet branch. During the war the Plantagenets took back Normandy, as well as Picardy and much of the Île-de-France. A settlement was reached with the Treaty of Troyes in which it was agreed that, not only would Catherine marry Henry, but Charles VI agreed to name Henry as his heir to the French crown, passing over his own son.Henry died of dysentery in 1422 at Bois de Vincennes, just two months shy of being crowned King of France.

Henry founded King's College.

The young Henry VI of England was crowned King of England and France, controlling both de facto rather than just a titular claim to France as many Plantagenet monarchs had during the Hundred Years' War. During the early years of his reign, as he was still a child his family John, Duke of Bedford, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Henry Beaufort, were regents.The rise of Joan of Arc and Valois claimant to France, Charles VII saw the continuation of the Lancastrian War. Between 1449—1453 the territories of Brittany, Normandy and Gascony had been lost, leaving the Plantagenets with only the Pale of Calais on the continent.In England the government became increasingly unpopular due to the territorial loses, breakdown in law and order and corruption; in 1453 Henry had a mental breakdown. While Henry was suffering from illness, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York was named regent and Protector of the Realm. He benefited from influential allies such as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. By the time Henry had regained his senses, a movement in favour of Richard known as the Yorkists had emerged. Richard had a legitimist claim to the throne due to being the senior descendent of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. What separated Richard from past potential legitimists was that he was also a Plantagenet paternally through Edmund, Duke of York; thus, if he was put on the throne, the male line would still be preserved. Henry himself was trusting and not a man of war. He was more interested in his foundation projects of educational institutions such as Eton College. However his wife Margaret of Anjou was more assertive, showing open enmity towards Richard, and so the English civil war for the throne known as the Wars of the Roses began.

Wars of the Roses, Yorkist reign

Symbolic representation of the Wars of the Roses in art.

The first phase of the conflict was between 1455—1460; after the Yorkist were victorious at St Albans, attempts were made to reconcile differences. Margaret resisted any attempts to have her son Edward of Westminster disinherited and Richard was forced to return to Ireland as lieutenant. Hostilities picked up again after the Duke of York's return; the war continued and at Northampton, Henry was found abandoned in a tent after having another mental breakdown. The Act of Accord was agreed in which it was outlined that Henry would remain as monarch for life, but Richard and his descendants would eventually succeed him. Because Margaret and Lancastrian supporters found this unacceptable, conflict continued. Richard was slain at the Battle of Wakefield, his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland and the Earl of Salisbury were captured and beheaded by the Lancastrians. The head of the Duke of York was set on display at Micklegate Bar, York. Richard's young son Edward, Earl of March took up the cause. Margaret formed an alliance with Mary of Guelders, Queen of Scots against the Yorkists; the Scottish army pillaged its way down to southern England. London refused to open its gates to the queen's army after hearing of the plundering, however the capital city enthusiastically welcomed Edward when the Yorkists arrived. The people demanded that he be made king, which was quickly confirmed by the Parliament of England, and he was crowned Edward IV of England unofficially at Westminster Abbey. It wasn't until the month after Towton that Edward's official coronation in the capital city took place in June 1461.

Edward IV of England.

Edward was far more directly involved in governance than his predecessor. Warwick the Kingmaker who had helped Edward come to power and wished to influence him, was deeply unhappy at the marriage the new king had made with Elizabeth Woodville.[65] His family were also angered by this, leading to his mother declaring him a bastard and his brother George, Duke of Clarence revolting against him. After a counter-rebellion, Edward defeated Warwick, eventually seeing the Kingmaker enter a pact with the Lancastrians. In late 1470, Warwick helped the Lancastrians to depose the Yorkists and Henry VI briefly returned to the throne. Edward and his loyal brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester took refuge in Burgundy, until they returned to England the following year. George, Duke of Clarence switched sides at Barnet, leading to Warwick's death and Edward's restoration. After his restoration Edward returned some stability, with heavy personal control in government. He made peace with France on favourable terms, tightened management of royal revenues, paid for the country's administration with Crown Estate profits and patronised William Caxton who set up England's first printing press. Edward's son was crowned Edward V of England at age 12. The protectorship of the young king and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury was entrusted to their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard was suspicious of the influential Woodville faction, who he blamed for the death of his brother George.
A statute of the Parliament of England issued in 1483, known as Titulus Regius, declared the children of Edward IV illegitimate and thus saw the crown passed to Richard III of England.This was due to evidence presented by Ralph Shaa that Edward had contracted to marry Lady Eleanor Talbot before he married Elizabeth Woodville, thus making his marriage to Elizabeth and their issue invalid.The two boys became the Princes in the Tower, with the Tower being a royal residence at the time. Their ultimate fate is unknown, while some have suggested that they died there.Richard had a strong power base in the North of England and he founded the Council of the North to improve governance there. He also founded the College of Arms office of heraldry.The king's son and heir, Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales predeceased him in 1484. Henry Tudor, a Welshman who was a maternal descendant of John of Gaunt and the cognatic primogenture pretender of the House of Lancaster, landed at Milford Haven in the Principality of Wales to invade with an army of foreign mercenaries. The Battle of Bosworth Field took place for the throne of England; Richard was betrayed when the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Stanleys refused to send in their troops. Along with his loyal commander John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Richard fought until the end and was killed in action. The crown passed to the new dynasty, the House of Tudor, with the coronation of Henry VII of England signaling the start of the Tudor period.

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House of Lancaster

The House of Lancaster was a branch of the royal House of Plantagenet. It was one of the opposing factions involved in the Wars of the Roses, an intermittent civil war which affected England and Wales during the 15th century. Lancaster provided England with three Kings.

• Henry IV of England, r.1399-1413
• Henry V of England, r.1413-1422
• Henry VI of England, r.1422-1461 and 1470-1471

Origins

The House descended from Edward III's 3rd surviving son, John of Gaunt. Gaunt did not receive a large inheritance, so he made his fortune through marriage to the heiress Blanche of Lancaster, who brought with her the considerable lands of the Earls of Leicester and Lancaster, making him the wealthiest landowner in England after the King. Created "Duke of Lancaster" by his nephew Richard II, Gaunt enjoyed great political influence during his lifetime. Upon his death in 1399, however, his lands were confiscated.
Gaunt's exiled son and heir Henry of Bolingbroke returned home the same year with an army to reclaim the Lancaster estates, but ended riding a tide of popular opposition to Richard II that saw him take control of the Kingdom. Richard II was deposed and died in captivity, and Bolingbroke was declared King Henry IV of England. In doing so he bypassed the descendants of Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, who eventually became the rival House of York.

Rule

Henry IV was succeeded by his son Henry V, and eventually by his grandson Henry VI. Henry VI was an unpopular monarch who suffered from periods of mental illness. In 1461, he was usurped and imprisoned by his cousin Edward of York, who proclaimed himself Edward IV of England.
Henry VI was able to fight back and re-established his rule in 1470, but 1 year later was forced from the throne once again by Edward IV. He died in captivity in 1471, 14 days after his son and heir, Edward of Westminster, died at the Battle of Tewkesbury, leaving no legitimate heir of John of Gaunt.
Both houses used a Rose emblem, a Red Rose for Lancaster and White Rose for York, so the conflict between the two houses was dubbed the "Wars of the Roses" by later historians.

Tudor Inheritance

Amongst the most ardent supporters of the House of Lancaster were the Beaufort family, descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford. When Gaunt and Swynford married in 1396 (some 25 years after the birth of their first child), the church rewarded them by legitimising their offspring through a papal bull. This was enshrined in an act of parliament the following year, but opinions were divided on whether the Beauforts could have any claim on the English throne.
With the House of Lancaster extinct, the relatively unknown Henry Tudor proclaimed himself the Lancastrian heir from his exile in Brittany, claiming descent through his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, to John of Gaunt. In 1485, Tudor was able to use the unpopularity of the final Yorkist Richard III to take the crown as Henry VII of England. This was not to be a revival of the House of Lancaster, though, as Henry married the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth of York and founded a dynasty of dual Lancastrian and Yorkist descent, the House of Tudor.

Legacy

The Lancaster inheritance, known as the Duchy of Lancaster, has remained in English and then British Royal ownership, with monarchs bearing the title Duke of Lancaster. In 2007, the Duchy was valued at £397 million pounds, and the profits are the primary source of the Monarch's income.
The rivalry between Lancaster and York, in the form of the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire, has continued into the present day, on a friendlier basis. For example, the annual sporting competition between Lancaster University and the University of York is called the Roses Tournament.

English Royalty
House of Lancaster

Armorial of Plantagenet

Source

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Tudor dynasty

The House of Tudor was a prominent European royal house that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms from 1485 until 1603. Founded by Henry Tudor, who, though his paternal family was Welsh —his grandfather was Owen Tudor— was himself (through his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort) also a legitimized descendent of the royal House of Lancaster. Thus, Henry Tudor rose to capture the throne of the Kingdom —and to end the Wars of the Roses— while pursuing his claim for the (cadet) House of Lancaster of successional supremacy within the dynastic House of Plantagenet. He reigned as Henry VII until his death in 1509. The Tudors also ruled their native Wales, achieving through the initiatives of Henry VIII full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542 (Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542); and they asserted full authority of English claims over the Kingdom of Ireland. They also maintained the traditional (i.e., nominal) claims to the Kingdom of France, but none tried to make substance of it.
In total, five Tudor monarchs ruled their domains for just over a century (Lady Jane Grey not counted here as having ever ruled). All five were greatly concerned with the personal and dynastic challenges of producing heir(s), preferably male, for maintaining the throne —while fending off rivals who were real or perceived threats to their lives and the preservation of the dynasty. Henry VIII famously married six times attempting to guarantee one (and more) healthy male heirs. He did not succeed; or if so, only very partially; the only male heir to survive him, Edward VI, died young, at age 16, after 'ruling' (in regency, and in near-chaos) for only six years.
The Tudor line failed in 1603 with the death of Elizabeth, the 'Virgin Queen' of England, who (ultimately) decided not to marry and died without issue. Through secret negotiations with her cousin James, King of Scotland, and of the House of Stuart, (and whose great-grandmother was a Tudor) Elizabeth arranged the ease of his ascending the English throne —as James I of England— after her death (see Elizabeth I of England, 'Death').

Ascent to the throne

The Tudors descended matrilineally from John Beaufort, one of the illegitimate children of 14th Century English Prince John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (third surviving son of Edward III of England), by Gaunt's long-term mistress Katherine Swynford. The descendants of an illegitimate child of English Royalty would normally have no claim on the throne, but the situation was complicated when Gaunt and Swynford eventually married in 1396 (25 years after John Beaufort's birth). In view of the marriage, the church retroactively declared the Beauforts legitimate via a papal bull the same year (also enshrined in an Act of Parliament in 1397). A subsequent proclamation by John of Gaunt's legitimate son, King Henry IV, also recognized the Beauforts' legitimacy, but declared them ineligible to ever inherit the throne. Nevertherless, the Beauforts remained closely allied with Gaunt's other descendants, the Royal House of Lancaster.
John Beaufort's granddaughter Lady Margaret Beaufort, a considerable heiress, was married to Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond. Tudor was the son of Welsh courtier Owain Tewdr (anglicised to "Owen Tudor") and Katherine of Valois, widowed Queen Consort of the Lancastrian King Henry V. Edmund Tudor and his siblings were either illegitimate, or the product of a secret marriage, and owed their fortunes to the goodwill of their legitimate half-brother King Henry VI. When the House of Lancaster fell from power, the Tudors followed.
Edmund's son Henry Tudor grew up in exile in Brittany, while his mother Lady Margaret remained in England and remarried, quietly advancing the cause of her son in a Kingdom now ruled by the rival House of York. With most of the House of Lancaster now dead, Henry proclaimed himself the Lancastrian heir. Capitalising on the unpopularity of King Richard III, his mother was able to forge an alliance with discontented Yorkists in support of her son, who landed in England and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, proclaiming himself King Henry VII. By marrying Richard III's niece, Elizabeth of York, Henry VII successfully bolstered his own disputed claim to the throne, whilst moving to end the Wars of the Roses by presenting England with a new dynasty, of both Lancastrian and Yorkist descent. The new dynasty was symbolized by the "Tudor Rose", a fusion of the White Rose symbol of the House of York, and the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster.
Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth bore several children, four of which survived infancy: Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry, Duke of Richmond, Margaret, who married James IV of Scotland, and Mary, who married Louis XII of France. Henry VII married his eldest son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, cementing an alliance with the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, and the two spent their honeymoon at Ludlow Castle, the traditional seat of the Prince of Wales. However, four months after the marriage, Arthur died, leaving his younger brother Henry as heir apparent. Henry VII acquired a Papal dispensation allowing Prince Henry to marry Arthur's widow; however, Henry VII delayed the marriage, so it did not occur during his lifetime.
The new King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon; the two wed on June 11, 1509, and crowned at Westminster Abbey on June 24 the same year. However, Catherine did not bear Henry the sons he was desperate for; Catherine's first child, a daughter, was stillborn, and her second child, a son named Henry, Duke of Cornwall, died 52 days after the birth. A further set of stillborn children were conceived, until a daughter Mary was born in 1516. When it became clear to Henry that the Tudor dynasty was at risk, he consulted his chief minister Thomas Cardinal Wolsey about the possibility of divorcing Catherine. Wolsey visited Rome, where he hoped to get the Pope's consent for a divorce. However, the church was reluctant to rescind the earlier papal dispensation and felt heavy pressure from Catherine's nephew, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in support of his aunt. Catherine contested the divorce, and a protracted legal battle followed. Wolsey fell from favour as a result of his failure to procure a divorce, and Henry appointed Thomas Cromwell in his place.

King Henry VII, the founder of the royal house of Tudor

Catherine of Aragon: divorced for not producing
a male heir to the Tudor dynasty

Break with Roman Catholicism

In order to allow Henry to divorce his wife, the English parliament enacted laws breaking ties with Rome, and declaring the king Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was then able to declare Henry's marriage to Catherine annulled. This allowed Henry to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn, the daughter of a minor diplomat Sir Thomas Boleyn. Anne became pregnant in 1533, but the child, born in September that year, was a girl, named Elizabeth in honour of Henry's mother. Anne may have had later pregnancies which ended in miscarriage or stillbirth. Thomas Cromwell stepped in again, claiming that Anne had taken lovers during her marriage to Henry, and she was tried for high treason, witchcraft and incest; these charges were most likely fabricated, but she was found guilty, and executed in 1536.

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex,
Henry VIII's chief minister responsible for the
Dissolution of the Monasteries

Protestant alliance

Henry married again, for a third time, to Jane Seymour, the daughter of a Wiltshire knight. Jane became pregnant, and in 1537 produced a son, who became King Edward VI following Henry's death in 1547. Jane died of puerperal fever only a few days after the birth, and Henry was devastated. Cromwell continued to gain the king's favour when he designed and pushed through the Laws in Wales Acts, uniting England and Wales, and continued to hold favour even when Henry faced the biggest threat to his rule.

Henry married for a fourth time, to the daughter of a Protestant German duke Anne of Cleves, thus forming an alliance with the Protestant German states. Henry was reluctant to marry again, especially to a Protestant, but he was persuaded when the court painter Hans Holbein the Younger showed him a flattering portrait of her. She arrived in England in December 1539, and Henry rode to Rochester to meet her on January 1, 1540. Although the historian Gilbert Burnet claimed that Henry called her a Flanders Mare, there is no evidence that he said this; court ambassadors negotiating the marriage praised her beauty. Whatever the circumstances were, the marriage failed, and Anne agreed to a peaceful annulment, assumed the title My Lady, the King's Sister, and received a massive divorce settlement, which included Richmond Palace, Hever Castle, and numerous other estates across the country. Henry chose to blame Cromwell for the failed marriage, and ordered him beheaded on 28 July 1540.
The fifth marriage was to the Catholic Catherine Howard, a cousin of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, who was promoted by Norfolk in the hope that she would persuade Henry to restore Roman Catholicism in England. Henry called her his “rose without a thorn”, but the marriage ended in failure. Catherine, forced into a marriage to an unattractive, obese man over 30 years her senior, had never wanted to marry Henry, and conducted an affair with the King's favourite, Thomas Culpeper, while Henry and she were married. She was accused of treason and was executed on February 13, 1542, destroying the Roman Catholic hopes of a reconciliation with the Roman church.
While Henry conducted another Protestant marriage with his final wife Catherine Parr in 1543, the old Roman Catholic advisers, including the powerful third Duke of Norfolk had lost all their power and influence. Henry himself was still a committed Catholic, and he was nearly persuaded to arrest Catherine for preaching Lutheran doctrines to Henry while she attended his ill health. However, his son Edward was brought up a strict and devout Protestant by numerous tutors, including Bishop Richard Cox, John Belmain, and Sir John Cheke.

Henry VIII of England: Henry's quarrels
with the Pope led to the creation
of the Church of England

Thomas Cranmer, Henry's first Protestant
Archbishop of Canterbury, responsible for t
he Book of Common Prayer
during Edward VI's reign

Edward VI: Protestant extremity

After Henry led troops during the Siege of Boulogne in 1544–an attempt to take French territory for England–he died on January 28, 1547. His will had reinstated his daughters by his annulled marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn to the line of succession, but did not legitimise them. (Because his marriages had been annulled, they legally never occurred, so his children by those marriages were illegitimate.) In the event that all 3 of his children died without heir, the will stipulated that the descendant of his younger sister Mary would take precedence over the descendants of his elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland. Edward, his nine-year old son by Jane Seymour, succeeded as Edward VI of England.

Duke of Somerset's England

Although Henry had specified a group of men to act as regents during Edward's minority, Edward Seymour, Edward's uncle, quickly seized complete control, and created himself Duke of Somerset on February 15, 1547. His domination of the Privy Council, the king's most senior body of advisers, was unchallenged. Somerset aimed to unite England and Scotland by marrying Edward to the young Scottish queen Mary, and aimed to forcibly impose the English Reformation on the Church of Scotland. Somerset led a large and well equipped army to Scotland, where he and the Scottish regent James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, commanded their armies at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh on September 10, 1547. Somerset's army eventually defeated the Scots, but the young Queen Mary was smuggled to France, where she was betrothed to the Dauphin, the future Francis II of France. Despite Somerset's disappointment that no Scottish marriage would take place, his victory at Pinkie Cleugh made his position appear unassailable.
Meanwhile, Edward VI, despite the fact that he was only a child of nine, had his mind set on religious reform. In 1549, Edward ordered the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, containing the forms of worship for daily and Sunday church services. The controversial new book was not welcomed by either reformers or Catholic conservatives; and it was especially condemned in Devon and Cornwall, where traditional Catholic loyalty was at its strongest. In Cornwall at the time, many of the people could only speak the Cornish language, so the uniform English bibles and church services were not understood by many. This caused the Prayer Book Rebellion, in which groups of Cornish non-conformists gathered round the mayor. The rebellion worried Somerset, now Lord Protector, and he sent an army to impose military solution to the rebellion. One in ten of the indigenous Cornish population was slaughtered.[dubious – discuss] The rebellion did not persuade Edward to tread carefully, and only hardened his attitude towards Catholic non-conformists. This extended to Edward's elder sister, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, who was a pious and devout Catholic. Although called before the Privy Council several times to renounce her faith and stop hearing the Catholic Mass, she refused. He had a good relationship with his sister Elizabeth, who was a Protestant, albeit a moderate one, but this was strained when Elizabeth was accused of having an affair with the Duke of Somerset's brother, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, the husband of Henry's last wife Catherine Parr. Elizabeth was interviewed by one of Edward's advisers, and she was eventually found not to be guilty, despite forced confessions from her servants Catherine Ashley and Thomas Parry. Thomas Seymour was arrested and beheaded on March 20, 1549.

The title page of Archbishop Cranmer's
Book of Common Prayer, 1549

Problematic succession

Lord Protector Somerset was also losing favour. After forcibly removing Edward VI to Windsor Castle, with the intention of keeping him hostage, Somerset was removed from power by members of the council, led by his chief rival, John Dudley, the first Earl of Warwick, who created himself Duke of Northumberland shortly after his rise. Northumberland effectively became Lord Protector, but he did not use this title, learning from the mistakes his predecessor made. Northumberland was furiously ambitious, and aimed to secure Protestant uniformity while making himself rich with land and money in the process. He ordered churches to be stripped of all traditional Catholic symbolism, resulting in the plainness often seen in Church of England churches today. A revision of the Book of Common Prayer was published in 1552. When Edward VI became ill in 1553, his advisers looked to the possible imminent accession of the Catholic Lady Mary, and feared that she would overturn all the reforms made during Edward's reign. Perhaps surprisingly, it was the dying Edward himself who feared a return to Catholicism, and wrote a new will repudiating the 1544 will of Henry VIII. This gave the succession to his cousin Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VII's daughter Mary Tudor, who, after the death of Louis XII of France in 1515 had married Henry VIII's favourite Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk. Lady Jane's mother was Lady Frances Brandon, the daughter of Suffolk and Princess Mary. Northumberland married Jane to his youngest son Guildford Dudley, allowing himself to get the most out of a necessary Protestant succession. Most of Edward's council signed the Devise for the Succession, and when Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, Lady Jane was proclaimed queen. However, the popular support for the proper Tudor dynasty–even a Catholic member–overruled Northumberland's plans, and Jane, who had never wanted to accept the crown, was deposed after just nine days. Mary's supporters joined her in a triumphal procession to London, accompanied by her younger sister Elizabeth. Jane and her husband were later executed.

A small boy with a big mind: Edward VI, desperate for
a Protestant succession, changed his
father's will to allow Lady Jane Grey to become queen

Mary I: A troubled queen's reign

The early reign of Queen Mary I was successful. The politicians formerly loyal to Lady Jane Grey flocked to support Mary, and she pardoned most of those who would have kept her off the throne. Lady Jane herself was locked in the Tower of London in relative comfort, and allowed to walk outside (within the Tower walls) with relative freedom. However, when Jane's father Henry Grey, the first Duke of Suffolk, attempted to depose Mary and put Jane back on the throne, Mary executed both the Dukes of Suffolk and Northumberland. After some hesitation, and having failed to convert Lady Jane to Catholicism, Mary sent Lady Jane to the scaffold on February 12, 1554, to avoid any further attempts to re-instate her to the throne. The Tudor dynasty's hold on the throne of England was once again secure.
However, Mary soon announced that she was intending to marry the Spanish prince Philip, son of her mother's nephew Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The prospect of a marriage alliance with Spain proved unpopular with the English people, who were worried that Spain would use England as a satellite, involving England in wars without the popular support of the people. Popular discontent grew; a Protestant courtier, Thomas Wyatt the younger led a rebellion against Mary, with the aim of deposing and replacing her with her half-sister Elizabeth. The plot was discovered, and Wyatt's supporters were hunted down and killed. Wyatt himself was tortured, in the hope that he would give evidence that Elizabeth was involved so that Mary could have her executed for treason. Wyatt never implicated Elizabeth, and he was beheaded. Elizabeth spent her time between different prisons, including the Tower of London.
Mary married Philip at Winchester Cathedral, on July 25, 1554. Philip found her unattractive, and only spent a minimal amount of time with her. Despite Mary believing she was pregnant numerous times during her five-year reign, she never reproduced. Devastated that she rarely saw her husband, and anxious that she was not bearing an heir to Catholic England, Mary became bitter. In her aim to restore England to the Catholic faith and to secure her throne from Protestant threats, she had many Protestants burnt at the stake between 1555 and 1558. Mary's main goal was to eradicate Protestant heresy, but her actions, even for Catholic conservatives, were seen as brutal and extreme; she became deeply unpopular with her people, and they hoped for her death so that Elizabeth could succeed her. Mary's dream of a resurrected Catholic Tudor dynasty was finished, and her popularity further declined when she lost the last English area on French soil, Calais, to Francis, Duke of Guise on January 7, 1558. Mary died, bitter and lonely, on November 17, 1558. Elizabeth Tudor was now Elizabeth I of England.

Mary I of England, who returned England to
the Roman Catholic Church



Protestants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley
being burned at the stake during Mary's reign

The Age of Intrigues and Plots: Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I, who was staying at Hatfield House at the time of her accession, rode to London to the cheers of both the ruling class and the common people. She chose as her chief minister Sir William Cecil, a Protestant, and former secretary to Lord Protector the Duke of Somerset and then to the Duke of Northumberland. Under Mary, he had been spared, and often visited Elizabeth, ostensibly to review her accounts and expenditure. Elizabeth also appointed her personal favourite, the son of the Duke of Northumberland Lord Robert Dudley, her Master of the Horse, giving him constant personal access to the queen.

Imposing the Church of England

Elizabeth was a moderate Protestant; she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who played a key role in the English Reformation in the 1520s. At her coronation in January 1559, many of the bishops–Catholic, appointed by Mary, who had expelled many of the Protestant clergymen when she became queen in 1553–refused to perform the service in English. Eventually, the relatively minor Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe, performed the ceremony; but when Oglethorpe attempted to perform traditional Catholic parts of the Coronation, Elizabeth got up and left. Following the Coronation, two important Acts were passed through parliament: the Act of Uniformity and the Act of Supremacy, establishing the Protestant Church of England and creating Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England (Supreme Head, the title used by her father and brother, was seen as inappropriate for a woman ruler). These acts, known collectively as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, made it compulsory to attend church services every Sunday; and imposed an oath on clergymen and statesmen to recognise the Church of England, the independence of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, and the authority of Elizabeth as Supreme Governor. Elizabeth made it clear that if they refused the oath the first time, they would have a second opportunity, after which, if the oath was not sworn, the offender would be deprived of their offices and estates.

Elizabeth I at her coronation
on January 15, 1559

Pressure to marry

The popularity of Elizabeth was extremely high, but her Privy Council, her Parliament and her subjects thought that the unmarried queen should take a husband; it was generally accepted that, once a queen regnant was married, the husband would relieve the woman of the burdens of head of state. Also, without an heir, the Tudor dynasty would end; the risk of civil war between rival claimants was a possibility if Elizabeth died childless. Numerous suitors from nearly all European nations sent ambassadors to the English court to put forward their suit. Risk of death came dangerously close in 1564 when Elizabeth caught smallpox; when she was most at risk, she named Robert Dudley as Lord Protector in the event of her death. After her recovery, she appointed Dudley to the Privy Council and created him Earl of Leicester, in the hope that he would marry Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary rejected him, and instead married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a descendant of Henry VII, giving Mary a stronger claim to the English throne. Although many Catholics were loyal to Elizabeth, many also believed that, because Elizabeth was declared illegitimate after her parents' marriage was annulled, Mary was the strongest legitimate claimant. Despite this, Elizabeth would not name Mary her heir; as she had experienced during the reign of her predecessor Mary I, the opposition could flock around the heir if they were disheartened with Elizabeth's rule.
Numerous threats to the Tudor dynasty occurred during Elizabeth's reign. In 1569, a group of Earls led by Charles Neville, the sixth Earl of Westmorland, and Thomas Percy, the seventh Earl of Northumberland attempted to depose Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1571, the Protestant-turned-Catholic Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, had plans to marry Mary, Queen of Scots and then replace Elizabeth with Mary. The plot, masterminded by Roberto di Ridolfi, was discovered and Norfolk was beheaded. The next major uprising was in 1601, when Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, attempted to raise the city of London against Elizabeth's government. The city of London proved unwilling to rebel; Essex and most of his co-rebels were executed. Threats also came from abroad. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued a Papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance to her. Elizabeth came under pressure from Parliament to execute Mary, Queen of Scots to prevent any further attempts to replace her; though faced with several official requests, she vacillated over the decision to execute an anointed queen. Finally, she was persuaded of Mary's (treasonous) complicity in the plotting against her, and she signed the death warrant in 1586. Mary was executed at Fotheringay Castle on February 8, 1587, to the outrage of Catholic Europe.

Mary, Queen of Scots, who conspired with
English nobles to take the English
throne for herself

Pope St. Pius V, who issued the Papal bull
excommunicating Elizabeth and relieving
her subjects of their allegiance to her

Last hopes of a Tudor heir

Despite the uncertainty of Elizabeth's–and therefore the Tudor dynasty's–hold on England, Elizabeth never married. The closest she came to marriage was between 1579 and 1581, when she was courted by Francis, Duke of Anjou, the son of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Despite Elizabeth's government constantly begging her to marry in the early years of her reign, it now was persuading Elizabeth not to marry the French prince; his mother, Catherine de' Medici, was suspected of ordering the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of six thousand French Protestant Hugenots in 1572. Elizabeth bowed to public discontent against the marriage, learning from the mistake her sister made when she married Philip II of Spain, and sent the Duke of Anjou away. Elizabeth knew that the continuation of the Tudor dynasty was now impossible; she was forty-eight in 1581, and too old to bear children.
By far the most dangerous threat to the Tudor dynasty during Elizabeth's reign was the Spanish Armada of 1588. Launched by Elizabeth's old suitor Philip II of Spain, and commanded by Alonso de Guzmán El Bueno, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Spanish had 22 galleons and 108 armed merchant ships; however, the English and the Dutch Republic outnumbered them. The Spanish lost as a result of bad weather on the English Channel and poor planning and supplies, and the skills of Sir Francis Drake and Charles Howard, the second Baron Howard of Effingham (later first Earl of Nottingham).
While Elizabeth declined physically with age, her running of the country continued to benefit her people. In response to famine across England due to bad harvests in the 1590s, Elizabeth introduced the poor law, allowing peasants that were too ill to work a certain amount of money from the state. All the money Elizabeth had borrowed from Parliament in 12 of the 13 parliamentary sessions was paid back; by the time of her death, Elizabeth not only had no debts, but was in credit. Elizabeth died childless at Richmond Palace on March 24, 1603. She never named a successor. However, her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil had corresponded with the Protestant King James VI of Scotland son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and James's succession to the English throne was unopposed. The Tudor dynasty was survived only in the female line, with the House of Stuart occupying the English throne for most of the following century.

The Spanish Armada: Catholic Spain's
attempt to depose Elizabeth
and take control of England

Source

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House of Stuart

The House of Stuart, also known as the House of Stewart is an important European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century. Their direct ancestors had held the title High Steward of Scotland since the 12th century, after arriving by route of Norman England. The dynasty inherited further territory by the 17th century which covered the entire British Isles, including the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Ireland, also upholding a claim to the Kingdom of France.
In total, nine Stuart monarchs ruled just Scotland from 1371 until 1603. After this there was a Union of the Crowns under James VI & I who had become the senior genealogical claimant to all of the holdings of the extinct House of Tudor. Thus there were five Stuart monarchs who ruled both England and Scotland as well as Ireland. Additionally at the foundation of the Kingdom of Great Britain after the Acts of Union, which politically united England and Scotland, the first monarch was Anne of Great Britain. However, she died without issue and all the holdings passed to the House of Hanover, under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701.
During the reign of the Stewarts, Scotland developed from a relatively poor and feudal country into a prosperous, fairly modern and centralized state. They ruled during a time in European history of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Monarchs such as James IV were known for sponsoring exponents of the Northern Renaissance such as poet Robert Henryson. After gaining control of all of Great Britain the arts and sciences continued to develop; William Shakespeare's best known plays were authored during the Jacobean era, while institutions such as the Royal Society and Royal Mail were established during the reign of Charles II.

Origins

Etymology

The name Stewart derives from the political position of office similar to a governor, known as a steward. It was originally adopted as the family surname by Walter Stewart, 3rd High Steward of Scotland, who was the third member of the family to hold the position. Prior to this, their family name was defined through immediate ancestors and changed from generation to generation; for example the first two High Stewards were known as FitzAlan and FitzWalter respectively. During the 16th century the name underwent a development and the French spelling Stuart was adopted. It was Mary Queen of Scots who adopted the change while living in France; this was to ensure that the Scots name Stewart was pronounced correctly.
The ancestral origins of the Stewart family are quite obscure — what is known for certain is that they can trace their ancestry back to Alan FitzFlaad, who came over to the island of Great Britain not long after the Norman conquest. Alan had been the hereditary steward of the Bishop of Dol in the Duchy of Brittany; though scholars are divided as to whether he himself was Norman or Breton. Alan had a good relationship with the ruling House of Normandy monarch Henry I of England who awarded him with lands in Shropshire. The FitzAlan family quickly established themselves as a prominent Anglo-Norman noble house, with some of its members serving as High Sheriff of Shropshire. It was the great-grandson of Alan named Walter FitzAlan who became the first hereditary High Steward of Scotland, while his brother William's family would go on to become Earls of Arundel.
When the civil war in the Kingdom of England broke out known as The Anarchy, between legitimist claimant Matilda, Lady of the English and her cousin who had usurped her; king Stephen, Walter had sided with Matilda. Another supporter of Matilda was her uncle David I of Scotland from the House of Dunkeld. After Matilda was pushed out of England into the County of Anjou, essentially failing in her legitimist attempt for the throne, many of her supporters in England fled also. It was then that Walter had followed David up to the Kingdom of Scotland, where he was granted lands at Renfrewshire and the title life peerage of the Lord High Steward. The next monarch of Scotland, Malcolm IV made the High Steward title a hereditary arrangement. While High Stewards the family were based at Dundonald, Ayrshire between the 12th and 13th centuries.

History

Background

The sixth High Steward of Scotland, Walter Stewart (1293-1326), married Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and also played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn currying further favour. Their son Robert was heir to the House of Bruce, the Lordship of Cunningham and the Brucean lands of Bourtreehill; he eventually inherited the Scottish throne when his uncle David II died childless in 1371.
In 1503, James IV attempted to secure peace with England by marrying King Henry VII's daughter, Margaret Tudor. The birth of their son, later James V, brought the House of Stewart into the line of descent of the House of Tudor, and the English throne. Margaret Tudor later married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and their daughter, Margaret Douglas, was the mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. In 1565, Darnley married his half-cousin Mary, the daughter of James V. Darnley's father was Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, a member of the Stewart of Darnley branch of the House. Lennox was a descendant of Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland, also descended from James II, being Mary's heir presumptive. Therefore Darnley was also related to Mary on his father's side and at the time of their marriage was himself second in line to the Scottish throne. Because of this connection, Mary's heirs remained part of the House of Stewart. Because of the long French residence at Aubigny, held by Darnley's branch in the Auld Alliance, the surname was altered to Stuart. In feudal and dynastic terms, the Scottish reliance on French support was revived during the reign of Charles II, who had an illegitimate son by Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This descent received the main Stuart appanages of Lennox and Aubigny, as well as the main Tudor appanage of Richmond.
French connections were notoriously unpopular and resulted in the downfall of the Stuarts, whose mutual enemies identified with the emergent Protestant nationalism and urban mercantilism as opposed to Catholic feudalism and rural manorialism. The Glorious Revolution caused the deposition of James II in favor of his son-in-law and his daughter, William and Mary. James continued to claim the thrones of England and Scotland, and encouraged revolts in his name, and his grandson Charles led an ultimately unsuccessful rising in 1745, becoming ironic symbols of conservative rebellion and Romanticism. Due to the identification of the Roman Catholic Church with the Stuarts, Catholic Emancipation was not passed until Jacobitism (as represented by direct Stuart heirs) was extinguished. Despite the Whig intentions of tolerance to be extended to Irish subjects, this was not the preference of Georgian Tories and their failure at compromise played a subsequent role in the present division of Ireland.
The direct male line of the House of Stuart is assumed to be extinct, after the deaths of Henry Benedict Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart (the male line continues through the descendants of several illegitimate sons of Charles II). However, a female line through Henrietta Anne Stuart survived and continues to this day, albeit in the form of the current House of Wittelsbach. Henrietta Anne, or simply 'Minette', was a daughter of Charles I of England and married into the French royal family. Therefore, Franz, Duke of Bavaria, descends from Minette, and is the current Heir general of Charles I and is also the current Head of the House of Stuart.

Armorial of Stuart, 1603 onwards

High Steward arms.

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The Protectorate

In British history, the Protectorate was the period 1653–1659 during which the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland was governed by a Lord Protector.

Background

Prior to the Protectorate, England (and subsequently Scotland and Ireland) had been ruled directly by Parliament since it had declared England to be a Commonwealth in 1649 . The Rump Parliament had been forcibly dissolved in April 1653 by soldiers led by Oliver Cromwell, prompted by the perceived ineffectiveness of its rule and its refusal to dissolve itself. Although the replacement, the Barebones Parliament (July–December 1653), was nominated by Cromwell and the leaders of the army, it proved just as difficult to control and was in addition a subject of popular ridicule.
After the dissolution of the Barebones Parliament, John Lambert put forward a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government, closely modeled on the Heads of Proposals. It made Cromwell Lord Protector for life to undertake “the chief magistracy and the administration of government”. He had the power to call and dissolve parliaments but obliged under the Instrument to seek the majority vote of the Council of State. However, Cromwell's power was also buttressed by his continuing popularity among the army, which he had built up during the civil wars, and which he subsequently prudently guarded. Cromwell was sworn in as Lord Protector on 15 December 1653.

Rule of the Major-Generals

The first Protectorate parliament met on 3 September 1654, and after some initial gestures approving appointments previously made by Cromwell, began to work on a moderate programme of constitutional reform. Rather than opposing Parliament’s bill, Cromwell dissolved them on 22 January 1655. After a royalist uprising led by Sir John Penruddock, Cromwell (influenced by Lambert) divided England into military districts ruled by Army Major Generals who answered only to him. The fifteen major generals and deputy major generals—called "godly governors"—were central not only to national security, but Cromwell's moral crusade. The generals not only supervised militia forces and security commissions, but collected taxes and ensured support for the government in the English and Welsh provinces. Commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth were appointed to work with them in every county. While a few of these commissioners were career politicians, most were zealous puritans who welcomed the major-generals with open arms and embraced their work with enthusiasm. However, the major-generals lasted less than a year. Many feared they threatened their reform efforts and authority. Their position was further harmed by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial backing for their work, which the second Protectorate parliament—instated in September 1656—voted down for fear of a permanent military state. Ultimately, however, Cromwell's failure to support his men, sacrificing them to his opponents, caused their demise. Their activities between November 1655 and September 1656 had, however, reopened the wounds of the 1640s and deepened antipathies to the regime.

Foreign policy

During this period Cromwell also faced challenges in foreign policy. The First Anglo-Dutch War which had broken out in 1652, against the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, was eventually won by Admiral Robert Blake in 1654. As the Lord Protector was aware of the contribution the Jewish community made to the economic success of Holland, now England's leading commercial rival. It was this—allied to Cromwell’s toleration of the right to private worship of those who fell outside evangelical puritanism—that led to his encouraging Jews to return to England, 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars.

Cromwell's role

In 1657, Cromwell was offered the crown by Parliament as part of a revised constitutional settlement, presenting him with a dilemma, since he had been instrumental in abolishing the monarchy. Cromwell agonized for six weeks over the offer. He was attracted by the prospect of stability it held out, but in a speech on 13 April 1657 he made clear that God's providence had spoken against the office of king: “I would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again”. The reference to Jericho harks back to a previous occasion on which Cromwell had wrestled with his conscience when the news reached England of the defeat of an expedition against the Spanish-held island of Hispaniola in the West Indies in 1655—comparing himself to Achan, who had brought the Israelites defeat after bringing plunder back to camp after the capture of Jericho.
Instead, Cromwell was ceremonially re-installed as Lord Protector (with greater powers than had previously been granted him under this title) at Westminster Hall, sitting upon King Edward's Chair which was specially moved from Westminster Abbey for the occasion. The event in part echoed a coronation, utilizing many of its symbols and regalia, such as a purple ermine-lined robe, a sword of justice and a sceptre (but not a crown or an orb). But, most notably, the office of Lord Protector was still not to become hereditary, though Cromwell was now able to nominate his own successor. Cromwell's new rights and powers were laid out in the Humble Petition and Advice, a legislative instrument which replaced the Instrument of Government. Cromwell himself, however, was at pains to minimize his role, describing himself as a constable or watchman.

Post-Cromwell

After Oliver's death in September 1658, his third son and the new Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell, was unable to control the army and resigned in May 1659. After a chaotic short revival of the Commonwealth of England, the monarchy was restored in May 1660, largely through the initiative of General George Monck.

Flag of the Protectorate




Flag of the Protectorate Coat of Arms

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Commonwealth of England

The Commonwealth of England was the republican government which ruled first England and Wales, and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660. Some would call this government a "crowned" republican government. After the English Civil War and the regicide of Charles I, its existence was initially declared in An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth by the Rump Parliament, on May 19, 1649. Executive power had already been entrusted to a Council of State. The government during 1653 to 1659 is properly called The Protectorate, and took the form of direct personal rule by Oliver Cromwell and, after his death, his son Richard, as Lord Protector. The term Commonwealth is, however, loosely used to describe the system of government during the whole of 1649 to 1660, when England was de facto, and arguably de jure, a republic (or, to monarchists, under an Interregnum). It should not be confused with the Commonwealth of Nations (successor to the British Commonwealth in 1949).

The Rump Parliament (1648–1653)

The Rump was created by Pride's Purge of those members of the Long Parliament who did not support the political position of the Grandees in the New Model Army. Just before and after the execution of King Charles I on January 30, 1649, the Rump passed a number of acts of Parliament creating the legal basis for the republic. With the abolition of the monarchy, Privy Council and the House of Lords, it had unchecked executive, as well as legislative, power. The Council of State, which replaced the Privy Council, took over many of the executive functions of the monarchy. It was selected by the Rump, and most of its members were MPs. Ultimately, however, the Rump depended on the support of the Army with which it had a very uneasy relationship.

Structure of the Rump

In Pride's Purge, all MPs (including most of the political Presbyterians) who would not accept the need to bring the King to trial had been removed. Thus the Rump never had more than 200 members (less than half the number in the original Long Parliament). They included: supporters of religious independents who did not want an established church and some of whom had sympathies with the Levellers; Presbyterians who were willing to countenance the trial and execution of the King; and later admissions, such as formerly excluded MPs who were prepared to denounce the Newport Treaty negotiations with the King.
Most Rumpers were gentry, though there was a higher proportion of lesser gentry and lawyers than in previous parliaments. Less than one-quarter of them were regicides. This left the Rump basically a conservative body whose vested interests in the existing land ownership and legal systems made them unlikely to want to reform these.

Rump issues and achievements

For the first two years of the Commonwealth, the Rump faced economic depression and the risk of invasion from Scotland and Ireland. (By 1653 Cromwell and the Army had largely eliminated these threats).
There were many disagreements amongst factions of the Rump. Some wanted a republic, but others favoured retaining some type of monarchical government. Most[citation needed] of England's traditional ruling classes regarded the Rump as an illegal government made up of regicides and upstarts. However, they were also aware that the Rump might be all that stood in the way of an outright military dictatorship. High taxes, mainly to pay the Army, were resented by the gentry. Limited reforms (see below) were enough to antagonise the ruling class but not enough to satisfy the radicals.
Despite its unpopularity, the Rump was a link with the old constitution, and helped to settle England down and make it secure after the biggest upheaval in its history. By 1653, both France and Spain had recognised England's new government.

Rump reforms

Though the national church (now Presbyterian) was retained, the 1559 Act of Uniformity was repealed in 1650. Many independent churches were therefore tolerated, although everyone still had to pay tithes to the established church. This wide toleration came about mainly because of the insistence of the Army.
Some small improvements were made to law and court procedure, for example all court proceedings were now conducted in English rather than in Law French or Latin. However, there were no widespread reforms of the Common Law. This would have upset the gentry, who regarded the Common Law as reinforcing their status and property rights.
The Rump passed many restrictive 'moral' laws to regulate people's behaviour, such as closing down theatres and requiring strict observance of Sunday. This antagonised most of the gentry.

The dismissal of the Rump

Cromwell, aided by Thomas Harrison, forcibly dismissed the Rump on April 20, 1653, for reasons that are unclear. Theories are that he feared the Rump was trying to perpetuate itself as the government, or that the Rump was preparing for an election which could return an anti-Commonwealth majority. Many former members of the Rump continued to regard themselves as England's only legitimate constitutional authority. The Rump had not agreed to its own dissolution when it was dispersed by Cromwell and legislation from the period immediately before the Civil War the Act against dissolving the Long Parliament without its own consent (May 11, 1641) gave them the legal basis for this view.

Barebone's Parliament, July–December 1653

The dissolution of the Rump was followed by a short period in which Cromwell and the Army ruled alone. Nobody had the constitutional authority to call an election, but Cromwell did not want to impose a military dictatorship. Instead, he ruled through a 'nominated assembly' which he believed would be easy for the Army to control, since Army officers did the nominating.
Barebone's Parliament was opposed by former Rumpers and ridiculed by many gentry as being an assembly of 'inferior' people. However, over 110 of its 140 members were lesser gentry or of higher social status. (An exception was Praise-God Barbon, a Baptist merchant after whom the Assembly got its derogatory nickname.) Many were well educated.
The assembly reflected the range of views of the officers who nominated it. The Radicals (approximately 40) included a hard core of Fifth Monarchists who wanted to be rid of Common Law and any state control of religion. The Moderates (approximately 60) wanted some improvements within the existing system and might move to either the radical or conservative side depending on the issue. The Conservatives (approximately 40) wanted to keep the status quo (since Common Law protected the interests of the gentry, and tithes and advowsons were valuable property).
Cromwell saw Barebone's Parliament as a temporary legislative body which he hoped would produce reforms and develop a constitution for the Commonwealth. However, members were divided over key issues, only 25 had previous parliamentary experience, and although many had some legal training, there were no qualified lawyers.
Cromwell seems to have expected this group of 'amateurs' to produce reform without management or direction. When the radicals mustered enough support to defeat a bill which would have preserved the status quo in religion, the conservatives, together with many moderates, surrendered their authority back to Cromwell who sent soldiers to clear the rest of the Assembly. Barebone's Parliament was over.
In 1653, Cromwell established his Protectorate, making himself a king-like figure until the year of his death in 1659.

The Commonwealth (1659–1660)

The Protectorate might have continued if Cromwell's son Richard, who was made Lord Protector on his father's death, had been capable of carrying on his father's policies. Richard Cromwell's main weakness was that he did not have the confidence of the New Model Army.
After seven months the Grandees in the New Model Army army removed him and, on May 6, 1659, they reinstalled the Rump Parliament. Charles Fleetwood was appointed a member of the Committee of Safety and of the Council of State, and one of the seven commissioners for the army. On June 9, he was nominated lord-general (commander-in-chief) of the army. However, his power was undermined in parliament, which chose to disregard the army's authority in a similar fashion to the pre–Civil War parliament. The Commons on October 12, 1659, cashiered General John Lambert and other officers, and installed Fleetwood as chief of a military council under the authority of the speaker. The next day Lambert ordered that the doors of the House be shut and the members kept out. On October 26, a "Committee of Safety" was appointed, of which Fleetwood and Lambert were members. Lambert was appointed major-general of all the forces in England and Scotland, Fleetwood being general. Lambert was now sent, by the Committee of Safety, with a large force to meet George Monck, who was in command of the English forces in Scotland, and either negotiate with him or force him to come to terms.
It was into this atmosphere that General George Monck, governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland. Lambert's army began to desert him, and he returned to London almost alone. On February 21, 1660, Monck reinstated the Presbyterian members 'secluded' by Pride, so that they could prepare legislation for a new parliament. Fleetwood was deprived of his command and ordered to appear before parliament to answer for his conduct. On March 3, Lambert was sent to the Tower, from which he escaped a month later. Lambert tried to rekindle the civil war in favour of the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation calling on all supporters of the "Good Old Cause" to rally on the battlefield of Edgehill. But he was recaptured by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, a regicide who hoped to win a pardon by handing Lambert over to the new regime. The Long Parliament dissolved itself on March 16.
On April 4, 1660, Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda, which made known the conditions of his acceptance of the crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on April 25. On May 8, it proclaimed that King Charles II had been the lawful monarch since the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Charles returned from exile on May 23. He entered London on May 29, his birthday. To celebrate "his Majesty's Return to his Parliament" May 29 was made a public holiday, popularly known as Oak Apple Day. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April, 1661.

Radicals vs. conservatives

Parliament had, to a large degree, encouraged the radical political groups which emerged when the usual social controls broke down during the English Civil War. It had also unwittingly established a new political force when it set up the New Model Army. Not surprisingly, all these groups had their own hopes for the new Commonwealth.

Levellers

Led by John Lilburne, Levellers drew their main support from London and the Army. In the Agreement of the People, 1649, they asked for: a more representative and accountable parliament, to meet every two years; a reform of law so it would be available to, and fair to all; and religious toleration. Though they wanted a more democratic society, their proposed franchise did not extend to women or to the lowest orders of society.
Levellers saw the Rump as little better than the monarchy it had replaced, and they showed their displeasure in demonstrations, pamphlets and mutinies. While their numbers did not pose a serious threat to the government, they scared the Rump into action and the Treasons Act was passed against them in 1649.

Diggers

Led by Gerrard Winstanley, Diggers wanted an even more equal society than the Levellers. They advocated a lifestyle that was an early form of communism, with communal ownership of land, and absolute equality for males and females in law and education. They existed in only very small numbers and faced strong opposition, even from the Levellers.

Religious sects

The breakdown of religious uniformity and incomplete Presbyterian Settlement of 1646 enabled independent churches to flourish. The main sects (see also English Dissenters) were Baptists, who advocated adult rebaptism; Ranters, who claimed that sin did not exist for the "chosen ones"; and Fifth Monarchy Men, who opposed all "earthly" governments, believing they must prepare for God's kingdom on earth by establishing a "government of saints".
Despite greater toleration, extreme sects were opposed by the upper classes as they were seen as a threat to social order and property rights. Catholics were also excluded from the toleration applied to the other groups. The diggers believed that God made land for everyone to share.

Conservatives

Conservatives were still dominant in both central government and local government. In the former, the Rump was anxious not to offend the traditional ruling class whose support it needed for survival, so it opposed radical ideas. In the latter, that ruling class dominated through the influence of traditional regional gentry.

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Coat of arms

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English Restoration

The English Restoration, or simply The Restoration began in 1660 when the English monarchy, Scottish monarchy and Irish monarchy were restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the English Civil War. The term Restoration may apply both to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately following the event.

The End of the Protectorate

The Protectorate, which had preceded the English Restoration and followed the Commonwealth, might have continued if Oliver Cromwell's son Richard, who was made Lord Protector on his father's death, had been capable of carrying on his father's policies. Richard Cromwell's main weakness was that he did not have the confidence of the army. After seven months the army removed him and on 6 May 1659 it reinstalled the Rump Parliament. Charles Fleetwood was appointed a member of the Committee of Safety and of the Council of State, and one of the seven commissioners for the army. On 9 June 1659 he was nominated lord-general (commander-in-chief) of the army. However, his power was undermined in Parliament, which chose to disregard the army's authority in a similar fashion to the post-First Civil War Parliament. The Commons on 12 October 1659, cashiered General John Lambert and other officers, and installed Fleetwood as chief of a military council under the authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons. The next day Lambert ordered that the doors of the House be shut and the members kept out. On 26 October a "Committee of Safety" was appointed, of which Fleetwood and Lambert were members. Lambert was appointed major-general of all the forces in England and Scotland, Fleetwood being general. Lambert was now sent, by the Committee of Safety, with a large force to meet George Monck, who was in command of the English forces in Scotland, and either negotiate with him or force him to come to terms.
It was into this atmosphere that Monck, the governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland. Lambert's army began to desert him, and he returned to London almost alone. Monck marched to London unopposed. The Presbyterian members, excluded in Pride's Purge of 1648, were recalled and on 24 December the army restored the Long Parliament. Fleetwood was deprived of his command and ordered to appear before Parliament to answer for his conduct. Lambert was sent to the Tower of London on 3 March 1660, from which he escaped a month later. Lambert tried to rekindle the civil war in favour of the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation calling on all supporters of the "Good Old Cause" to rally on the battlefield of Edgehill. But he was recaptured by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, a participant in the regicide of Charles I who hoped to win a pardon by handing Lambert over to the new regime. Lambert was incarcerated and died in custody on Drake's Island in 1684; Ingoldsby was pardoned.

Restoration of Charles II

On 4 April 1660, Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda, which made known the conditions of his acceptance of the crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on 25 April. On 8 May it proclaimed that King Charles II had been the lawful monarch since the execution of Charles I in January 1649.[1] Charles returned from exile, leaving The Hague on 23 May and landing at Dover on 25 May.[2] He entered London on 29 May, his birthday. To celebrate "his Majesty's Return to his Parliament" 29 May was made a public holiday, popularly known as Oak Apple Day.[3] He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.[2]
The Cavalier Parliament convened for the first time on 8 May 1661, and it would endure for over 17 years until its dissolution on 24 January 1679. Like its predecessor, it was overwhelmingly Royalist and is also known as the Pensionary Parliament for the many pensions it granted to adherents of the King.
Many Royalist exiles returned and were rewarded. Prince Rupert of the Rhine returned to the service of England, became a member of the privy council, and was provided with an annuity. George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich, returned to be the Captain of the King's guard and received a pension. Marmaduke Langdale returned and was made "Baron Langdale." William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, returned and was able to regain the greater part of his estates, was invested in 1666 with the Order of the Garter (which had been bestowed upon him in 1650), and was advanced to a dukedom on 16 March 1665.

King Charles II, the first monarch to rule
after the English Restoration.

Regicides and rebels

The Indemnity and Oblivion Act, which became law on 29 August 1660, pardoned all past treason against the crown, but specifically excluded those involved in the trial and execution of Charles I. 31 of the 59 Commissioners who had signed the death warrant were living.
In the ensuing trials, twelve were condemned to death, the full penalty for Fifth Monarchy Men. Thomas Harrison was the first person found guilty of the regicide, the seventeenth of fifty-nine commissioners (Judges) to sign the death warrant in 1649. He was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered because he was considered by the new government still to represent a real threat to the re-established order.
In October 1660, at Charing Cross or Tyburn, London, ten were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered: Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scroope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Clement, who had signed the King's death warrant; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtel, who commanded the guards at the King's trial and execution; and John Cooke, the solicitor who directed the prosecution.
On 6 January 1661, 50 Fifth Monarchy Men, headed by a wine-cooper named Thomas Venner, made an effort to attain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus." Most of the 50 were either killed or taken prisoner, and on 19 January and 21, Venner and 10 others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.
John Okey, one of the regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I, was brought back from Holland along with Miles Corbet, friend and lawyer to Cromwell and John Barkstead, former constable of the Tower of London. They were all imprisoned in the Tower. From there they were taken to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A further 19 were imprisoned for life.
Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Judge Thomas Pride, and Judge John Bradshaw were posthumously attainted for high treason. Because Parliament is a court, and the highest in the land, a bill of attainder is a legislative act declaring a person guilty of treason or felony rather than using a regular judicial process of trial and conviction. In January 1661, the corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw were exhumed and hung in chains at Tyburn.

Restoration Britain

Theatres reopened after having been closed during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, Puritanism lost its momentum, and the bawdy 'Restoration comedy' became a recognizable genre. In addition, women were allowed to perform on stage for the first time.
To celebrate the occasion and cement their diplomatic relations, the Dutch Republic presented Charles with the Dutch Gift, a fine collection of old master paintings, classical sculptures, furniture, and a yacht.

The republican new nobility

The Commonwealth's written constitutions gave to the Lord Protector the King's power to grant titles of honour. Cromwell created over 30 new knights. These were all declared invalid upon the Restoration of Charles II. Many were regranted by the restored King, but being non-hereditary, these titles have long since become extinct.
Of the twelve Cromwellian baronetcies, Charles II regranted half of them. Only two now continue: Sir George Howland Francis Beaumont, 12th baronet, and Sir Richard Thomas Williams-Bulkeley, 14th baronet, are the direct successors of Sir Thomas Beaumont and Sir Griffith Williams.
Edmund Dunch was created Baron Burnell of East Wittenham in April 1658, but it was not regranted. The male line failed in 1719 with the death of his grandson, also Edmund Dunch, so no one can lay claim to the title.
The one hereditary viscountcy Cromwell created (making Charles Howard Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland) continues to this day. In April 1661 Howard was created Earl of Carlisle, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, and Baron Dacre of Gillesland. The present Earl is a direct descendant of this Cromwellian creation and Restoration recreation.

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