A Concise English/British Chronology

Since the Roman Conquest Until the Glorious Revolution

● 55 B.C.: Attempted Roman invasion of Britain led by Julius Caesar.

● A.D. 43-409 : The conquest of Britain under Emperor Claudius lasted until the collapse
of the Roman Empire in the British Isles.
● A.D. 61: Rebellion against the Romans by Celts (the Iceni tribe) under the leadership
of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea).
● A.D. 98: First description of Germanic society in Roman historian Tacitus' Germania.
● 122: The Romans started building Hadrian's Wall, a defense to mark the northern
frontier of Britain. This approx. 73 mile-long stone and turf construction linked castles
and forts and acted as a frontier, stretching from the Tyne to the Solway Firth
separating the Romanized south from the undefeated north.
● 367: Invasion of Picts and Scots from Northern Britain.
● approx. 410: Withdrawal of Roman troops from the Roman province of Britain.
● 436: Complete Roman withdrawal (administration and some Romanized Britons) from
Britain.
● 449: Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain began with waves of invasions by continental
pagan tribes Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and Saxons (all Germanic), supposedly led by
legendary chieftains Hengest and Horsa.
● 450-480: Earliest Old English inscriptions date from this period.
● c. 450-600: Invasion of Britain by numerous bands of Germanic tribesmen (Angles,
Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, et al.); warfare and strife with the native British (the Britons or
Welsh). Gradually, the Heptarchy (the 7 Anglo-Saxon historical kingdoms) is
established as follows: the Jutes (Kent), the Angles (East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria:
including sub-kingdoms Bernicia and Deira), and the Saxons (Essex, Wessex,
Sussex). Also linguistic sedimentation of the main Anglo-Saxon dialects: Kentish,
Mercian, Anglian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon.
● c. 521: Date of a raid by Geatish king Hygelac (Southern Sweden against the Franks
(an event mentioned in Beowulf), recorded by the Frankish historian Gregory of Tours.
● 597: Roman monk Augustine (St Austin), sent by Pope Gregory the Great, arrived in
Canterbury, Britain. It was the beginning of the Christian conversion of the Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms. Augustine's mission is believed to have been an effort by Rome to
 countermeasure an earlier programme initiated particularly by the Celtic Church of
Ireland, or, according to other interpretations, to increase more Christianity in England.
● 657-680: Caedmon, monk of Whitby (originally an illiterate neatherd), divinely inspired
to compose Christian poetry in English; according to Venerable Bede.
● 663: Synod of Whitby, resolving dispute between Celtic and Roman Christianity.
● c. 671-735: Lifespan of Venerable Bede, Northumbrian scholar and author of the
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People).
● 700-750 (revised approx.1000): The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dated from
this period.
● 731: Venerable Bede published The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in
Latin; providing the most complete picture of life from the Roman conquest to his own
time as the English nation started to emerge. He popularized the Anno Domini (A.D.)
dating system.
● 757-796: Offa, King of Mercia, built an approx. 70 mile-long dike to mark the boundary
between Wales and England.
● 792: Viking raids (mainly by Norsemen and Danes) and settlements started.
● 793: Sacking of the Lindisfarne Monastery (on Holy Island) by Vikings marked many
decades of raiding and invasions
● 843: Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots (of Celtic origin like the Welsh), whose
Gaelic-speaking ancestors came from Ireland, took the Pictish throne and united the
two peoples into the kingdom of Scotland (Alba in Gaelic).
● 865: The Danes occupied Northumbria.
● 871-899: Alfred became king of Wessex. He translated Latin works into English (De
Consolatione Philosophiae by Roman philosopher Boethius) and initiated the practice
of English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was started during his reign.
● 886: The formalization of the Treaty between Alfred the Great and Guthrum, King of
the Danes, some time after Alfred's victory in the Battle of Edington (878) led to the
establishment of the Danelaw (Dena Lagu in Old English) – a territorial division which
ceded northern and eastern England to the Danes.
● 911: Charles II of France granted the Duchy of Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the
Ganger, later Duke Rollo (Robert of Normandy). This marked the linguistic beginning of
Norman French.
● 926: King Æthelstan of Wessex was acknowledged as King of All the English (Rex
 Angulsaxonum). The Kingdom of Wessex started to be assimilated with what is
commonly referred to as England.
● 937: The Battle of Brunanburh, a West Saxon victory by the army of Æthelstan, King of
England, and his brother, Edmund, over a coalition of Norsemen, Scots and Irish. The
poetic fragment of the same name preserved in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded
the event.
● 991: The Battle of Maldon between an English army of King Æthelred II (Aethelred the
Unready), led by thane Byrhtnoth and an invading Viking expeditionary corps. The
English were defeated and Byrhtnoth killed (the event is documented in the Anglo-
Saxon poetic fragment The Battle of Maldon, written shortly after). After this event, the
English had to buy Vikings off paying annual tribute.
● 1016-1035: Reign of the Dane Knut (Canute the Great), King of England and
Scandinavia.
● 1066: The Norman Conquest. At the Battle of Hastings (October 14), the Normans, led
by Duke William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold of England, putting an end to
roughly 600 years of Anglo-Saxon rule. Under the Norman administration, the
centralization of the realm was completed.
● 1086: William ordered the drafting of the Domesday Book, mainly for the purpose of
taxation. Similar to a present-day census, this survey was surprinsingly detailed, as the
still running Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commented with bitter irony.
● 1095: Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade with the double purpose of conquering
the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land and freeing the Eastern Christians from
Islamic rule.
● c.1150: The oldest surviving manuscripts in Middle English date from this period.
● 1171: Henry II, the first of the Plantagenet dynasty, the great-grandson of William the
Conqueror, conquered Ireland.
● 1204: King John, ironically nicknamed Lackland for his political incompetence, lost the
province of Normandy to France.
● 1215: At Runnymede, The Magna Carta [Libertatum] (Great Charter of Freedoms) was
signed between King John and his barons. Among its 63 clauses was the proposition
that no man was above the law; the King included, creating a milestone in
constitutional history.
● 1272-1307: Reign of Edward I Longshanks, which marked the conquest of Wales and
 the attempted conquest of Scotland (Edward was fiercely opposed during the Scottish
Wars of Independence by Scottish patriot William Wallace - “Braveheart” and King
Robert the Bruce). Edward I also consolidated the parliamentarian system in England
and expelled all Jews from England (1290).
● 1337-1453: The Hundred Years War between England and France: the Plantagenet
Kings of England, who had their roots in the French regions of Anjou and Normandy,
tried to preserve their territorial rights obtained by birth or by marriage, while the Valois
kings of France strove to unify the kingdom of France under centralized rule.
● 1343: Geoffrey Chaucer's approximate date of birth.
● 1348: English replaced Latin as the language of instruction in schools, other than
Oxford and Cambridge which eventually dropped Latin for English too.
● 1349-1350: The terrible epidemic of bubonic plague that ravaged all Europe, known as
the Black Death, killed one third (or more) of the population of Britain.
● 1362: "The Statute of Pleading" replaced Norman French, used since the reign of
William the Conqueror, with English as the language of all legislative processes.
Records continued to be kept in Latin. English was also used in Parliament for the first
time.
● 1384: Theologian and religious reformer John Wycliffe published his English translation
of the Bible.
● c.1388: Chaucer started writing his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales.
● c.1400: The Great Vowel Shift started.
● 1455-87: The Wars of the Roses: a cycle of dynastic civil wars fought in England
between supporters of the Houses of Lancaster and York as to their claims to the
throne.
● 1476: William Caxton introduced the first printing press in England. The most important
literary works printed by Caxton were Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, Le
Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
● 1492: Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.
● 1525: Protestant reformer William Tyndale translated the Bible into Early Modern
English, drawing directly from Greek and Hebrew sources – the first English translation
to benefit from the introduction of the printing press.
● 1529-39: Henry VIII's Reformation of Parliament and the dissolution of monasteries.
The English Reformation broke ties with the Church of Rome as the Act of Supremacy
 was passed, making Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
● 1535: Famous humanist Sir Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor and author of
Utopia (1516) was publicly executed, having been found guilty for high treason as he
had never openly endorsed Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy.
● 1536: The first "Act of Union" joined England and Wales politically. A series of "Acts of
Union" formally integrated England and Wales, making English the official language in
Wales and marginalizing the old Celtic (Brythonic) idiom.
● 1549: First version of The Book of Common Prayer, the first religious product of the
English Reformation spurred by the newly established Church of England after the
break with Rome.
● 1554-1558: Brief Catholic restoration under Mary Tudor, a fervent Roman Catholic,
half-sister to her successor, Elizabeth I.
● 1558-1603: The reign of Elizabeth I ended the religious wars and persecutions in
Britain, but she had to resist the Catholic powers of France and Spain. The French
menace forced her to order the execution of the half-French, half-Scottish Mary Queen
of Scots (Mary Stuart) in 1587. Elizabeth's personification as Gloriana ignited English
nationalism as well as artistic sensibility, reflected in the cultural flowering led by
Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare (The Elizabethan
Age).
● 1579: The Venerable English College in Rome was established to train priests for
England and Wales, where Catholics at the time felt persecuted; it was the oldest
English institution anywhere outside of England.
● 1580: Sir Francis Drake, second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish
Armada in 1588, was the first Englishman to sail around the world.
● 1588: Dispersal of the Spanish naval Armada. Elizabeth I's diplomatic approach and
military resolve facing Spain culminated in the defeat of the Armada in 1588.
● c.1590 - c.1613: William Shakespeare wrote his dramatic masterpieces.
● 1603: Union of the English and Scottish crowns under James the I (the VI of Scotland),
son of Mary Stuart. This union was achieved when Elizabeth, who died childless, was
succeeded by the Stuart King, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.
He initiated the the notion of British[ness], introduced the Union Flag, and presided
over the translation of the "Authorized Version" of the Bible , published in 1611.
● 1604: Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall.
● 1607: Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the New World,
was established (Thus started the legend of Captain John Smith and local princess
Pocahontas).
● 1616: Death of William Shakespeare in native Stratford-upon-Avon.
● 1623: Shakespeare's "First Folio" was published.
● 1642-1658: Civil war in England led to the parliamentary Commonwealth of Oliver
Cromwell, leader of a radical Protestant party, after the execution of Charles I Stuart,
1n 1649.
● 1660: The Stuarts were restored to power when Charles II reclaimed the throne.
● 1666: The Great Fire of London. End of The Great Plague. These two calamities
permanently change the face of London, presenting the visitor with today's urban
aspect of the city.
● 1667: John Milton, former secretary of Oliver Cromwell, published his masterpiece,
Paradise Lost.
● 1688-1689: The "Glorious Revolution" secured the Protestant succession, after the
ousting of the Catholic king James II and the accession of William of Orange (Willem
van Oranje) and Mary II of England. The Bill of Rights (An Act Declaring the Rights and
Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown) established the
principle of parliamentary supremacy and excluded Roman Catholics from the
succession, marking the transition from the personal rule of the Stuarts to the more
Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover, which was to follow.