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England is the largest and most populous of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The division dates from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century. The territory of England has been politically united since the 10th century. This article concerns that territory. However, before the 10th century and after the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603, it becomes less convenient to distinguish Scottish and Welsh from English history since the union of these nations with England.

England before the English

Main articles: Prehistoric Britain, Iron Age Britain and Roman Britain

Archaeological evidence indicates that what is now southern England was colonised by humans long before the rest of the British Isles due to its more hospitable climate between and during the various ice ages of the distant past. The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, although cultural and trade links with the continent had existed for millennia prior to this. Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his trading journey to the island around 325 BC. Later writers such as Pliny the Elder (quoting Timaeus) and Diodorus Siculus (probably drawing on Poseidonius) mention the tin trade from southern England but there is little further historical detail of the people who lived there. Tacitus wrote that there was no great difference in language between the people of southern England and northern Gaul and noted that the various tribes of Britons shared physical characteristics with their continental neighbours.

Julius Caesar visited southern England in 55 and 54 BC and wrote in De Bello Gallico that the population of southern England was extremely large and shared much in common with the other barbarian tribes on the continent. Coin evidence and the work of later Roman historians have provided the names of some of the rulers of the disparate tribes and their machinations in what was to become England.

Surprisingly few historical sources describe Roman England. For example, we have only one sentence describing the reasons for the construction of Hadrian's Wall. The Claudian invasion itself is well attested and Tacitus included the uprising of Boudica, or "Boadicea", in 61 in his history. Following the end of the 1st century, however, Roman historians only mention tantalising fragments of information from the distant province. The Roman presence strengthened and weakened over the centuries, but by the 5th century Roman influence had declined to such a point that the peoples who were to become the English were emerging.

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Celtic Britain

In the wake of the Romans, who had abandoned the south of the island by 410 in order to concentrate on more pressing difficulties closer to home, what is now England was progressively settled by successive and often complementary waves of Germanic tribesmen.

These Germanic tribes first came when they were invited by Vortigern, King of the Britons, as mercenaries to help the Britons during their wars against the Irish and the Picts.

The prevailing view is that waves of Germanic people, Jutes together with undoubtedly large numbers of Frisians and Ripuarian Franks, Saxons from northern Germany and Angles from what is now Denmark - commonly known as Anglo-Saxons - who had been partly displaced on mainland Europe, invaded Britain again around the middle of the 6th century. They came under military leaders and settled on the eastern shore. They are believed to have fought their way westward up the River Thames, looking for more land to cultivate, taking lowland and leaving less desirable lands in the hills to the Celtic Britons.

Professors John Davies and A.W. Wade-Evans believe that the Saxons did not sweep away the entire population of the Celtic Britons in the areas they overran, as was supposed by 19th century historians. Population estimates based on the size and density of settlements put Britain's population at about 3.5 million by the time Romans invaded in A.D. 43. Many historians now believe subsequent invaders from mainland Europe had little genetic impact on the British. The notion that large-scale migrations caused drastic change in early Britain has been widely discredited, according to Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University, England. For the English, their defining period was the arrival of Germanic tribes known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons. Some researchers suggest this invasion consisted of as few as 10,000 to 25,000 people—not enough to displace existing inhabitants.

Analysis of human remains unearthed at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England, indicates that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side by side. "Probably what we're dealing with is a majority of British people who were dominated politically by a new elite", Miles said. "They were swamped culturally but not genetically". "It is actually quite common to observe important cultural change, including adoption of wholly new identities, with little or no biological change to a population", Simon James, the Leicester University archaeologist, writes.

Increasingly, the Romano-British population (the Britons) was assimilated, a process enabled by a lack of clear unity amongst the British people against a unified armed foe, and the culture pushed westwards and northwards. The settlement (or invasion) of England is known as the Saxon Conquest or the Anglo-Saxon (sometimes "English") Conquest.

In 495, at the Battle of Mount Badon (Badbury rings, Latin Mons Badonicus, Welsh Mynydd Baddon) near the Roman Porchester-Southampton-Poole road, Britons inflicted a severe defeat on an invading Anglo-Saxon army. While it was a major political and military event of the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain, there is no certainty about who commanded the opposing forces. This victory by the British army made it possible to stop the Saxon invasion and secured a long period of peace for Celtic Britain.

In the decisive Battle of Deorham, in 577, the British people of Southern Britain were separated into the West Welsh (Cornwall, Devon and western Somerset) and the Welsh by the advancing Saxons.

By the 4th century AD, many Britons had escaped across the English Channel from Wales, Cornwall and southern Britain, with their chiefs, soldiers, families, monks and priests, and started to settle and colonize the west part (Armorica) of Gaul (France) where they founded a new nation: Brittany.

This flow of Britons increased when Roman troops and authority were withdrawn from Britain, and raiding and settling by Anglo-Saxons and Scotti into Britain increased. The immigrant Britons gave their new country its current name and contributed to the Breton language, Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish. The name Brittany (from "Little Britain") arose at this time to distinguish the new Britain from "Great Britain". Brezhoneg (the British language) is still spoken in Brittany in 2005.

Beginning with the raid in 793 on the monastery at Lindisfarne, Vikings made many raids on England.

At Dore (now a suburb of the City of Sheffield) Egbert of Wessex received the submission of Eanred of Northumbria in 829 and so became the first Saxon overlord of all England.

After a time of plunder and raids, the Vikings began to settle in England and trade, eventually ruling the Danelaw from the late 9th century. One Viking settlement was in York, called Jorvik by the Vikings. Viking rule left significant traces in the English language; the similarity of Old English and Old Norse led to much borrowing.

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived from the Britons' names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Several place-name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, coomb for a small deep valley.

Until recently it has been believed that those areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or the Britons had fled before them. However, genetic studies show that the British were not pushed out to the Celtic fringes – many tribes remained in what was to become England (see C. Capelli et al. 'A Y chromosome census of the British Isles'. Current Biology 13, 979–984, (2003)). Capelli's findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of Birmingham University; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only very lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

See also

• Hengest (Saxon leader, arrived in England in 449, died 488)
• Cerdic of Wessex (Saxon leader)
• The Venerable Bede (c672-735)
• Offa (reign 757 - 796)
• Egbert of Wessex (770 - 839)
• Alfred the Great (848 - 900)
• Anglo-Saxon Kings
• Ælfric (c.955 - 1020?)