England

Prehistoric Britain
Stonehenge, a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument in Wiltshire, thought to have been erected c.2000-2500BC.Main article: Prehistoric Britain
Bones and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that homo erectus lived in what is now England around 700,000 years ago. At this time, England was linked to mainland Europe by a large land bridge. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and the Seine.
Archaeological evidence has shown that England was inhabited by humans long before the rest of the British isles because of its more hospitable climate.


Roman conquest of Britain
Main article: Roman conquest of Britain
By AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion of Britain, Britain had already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Like other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans and their economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south.


Anglo-Saxon England
An Anglo-Saxon helmet found at Sutton HooMain article: History of Anglo-Saxon England
Further information: Anglo-Saxon conquest of England
The History of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early mediaeval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.
Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the fifth and sixth centuries comes from the British writer Gildas (6th century) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the ninth century), saints' lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name studies.
The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have come from three directions — Rome from the south and Scotland and Ireland to the north and west.
Heptarchy is a term used to refer to the existence (as believed) of the seven petty kingdoms which eventually merged to become the Kingdom of England during the early tenth century. These included Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as Bretwalda, or "Lord of Britain". Generally speaking, the title fell in the seventh century to the kings of Northumbria, in the eighth to those of Mercia, and finally, in the ninth, to Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the Mercians at Ellendun. In the next century his family came to rule all England.


Kingdom of England
Statue of Alfred the Great at Winchester.Originally, England (or Angleland) was a geographical term to describe the territory of Britain which was occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation state. The Kingdom of England was not founded until the separate petty kingdoms were unified under Alfred the Great King of Wessex, who later proclaimed himself King of the English after liberating London from the Danes in 886. For the next few hundred years, the Kingdom of England would fall in and out of power between several West-Saxon and Danish kings. For over half a century, the unified Kingdom of England became part of a vast Danish empire under Canute the Great, before regaining independence for a short period under the restored West-Saxon lineage of Edward the Confessor.
The Kingdom of England continued to exist as an independent nation-state right through to the Acts of Union and the Union of Crowns. However the political ties and direction of England were changed forever by the Norman conquest in 1066.


Norman conquest
The Bayeux TapestryMain article: Norman conquest of England
The Norman conquest of England was the conquest of the Kingdom of England by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. It is an important watershed in English history for a number of reasons. The conquest linked England more closely with Continental Europe and lessened Scandinavian influence. The success of the conquest established one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe, created the most sophisticated governmental system in Europe, changed the English language and culture, and set the stage for English-French conflict that would last into the nineteenth century.
The events of the conquest also paved the way for a pivotal historical document to be produced - the Domesday Book. The Domesday Book was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William the Conqueror. The survey was similar to a census by a government of today and is England's earliest surviving public records document.
To date, the Norman conquest remains the last successful military conquest of England.


Mediaeval England
The signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. It was one of the first steps towards the creation of modern democracy. Fifteenth-century miniature depicting the English victory over France at the Battle of Agincourt.Main article: Britain in the Middle Ages
The next few hundred years saw England as an important part of expanding and dwindling empires based in France, with the "King of England" being a subsidiary title of a succession of French-speaking Dukes of territories in what is now France. Only when English kings realised that their losses in France meant that England was now their richest and most important possession did they accept the same "nationality" and language as their subjects in England. They used England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for many years (Hundred Years' War); in fact the English crown did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was lost during the reign of Mary Tudor (the Channel Islands are still crown dependencies, though not part of the UK).
The Principality of Wales, under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called England and later England and Wales.


Reformation
Portrait of Elizabeth made to commemorate the English victory over the Spanish Armada (1588).Main article: English Reformation
The English Reformation was the process whereby the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with Royal Supremacy and the establishment of a Church of England outside the Roman Catholic Church and under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its other European counterparts in that it was more of a political than a theological dispute which was at the root of it. The break with Rome started in the reign of Henry VIII.
The English Reformation ultimately paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism in the church and other institutions.