Meaning of word albion the poetic name of great britain mean

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This article is about the archaic name for Britain. For other uses, see Albion (disambiguation).

Albion is an alternative name for Great Britain. The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language. It is sometimes used poetically and generally to refer to the island, but is less common than ‘Britain’ today. The name for Scotland in most of the Celtic languages is related to Albion: Alba in Scottish Gaelic, Albain (genitive Alban) in Irish, Nalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh and Cornish. These names were later Latinised as Albania and Anglicised as Albany, which were once alternative names for Scotland.

New Albion and Albionoria («Albion of the North») were briefly suggested as names of Canada during the period of the Canadian Confederation.^[1][2] Francis Drake gave the name New Albion to what is now California when he landed there in 1579.

Etymology[edit]

The toponym is thought to derive from the Greek word Ἀλβίων,^[3] Latinised as Albiōn (genitive Albionis). It was seen in the Proto-Celtic nasal stem *Albiyū (oblique *Albiyon-) and survived in Old Irish as Albu (genitive Albann). The name originally referred to Britain as a whole, but was later restricted to Caledonia (giving the modern Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland: Alba).

The root *albiyo- is also found in Gaulish and Galatian albio- ‘world’ and Welsh elfydd (Old Welsh elbid ‘earth, world, land, country, district’). It may be related to other European and Mediterranean toponyms such as Alpes, Albania or the river god Alpheus (originally ‘whitish’). It has two possible etymologies: either from the Proto-Indo-European word *albʰo- ‘white’ (cf. Ancient Greek ἀλφός, Latin albus ), or from *alb- ‘hill’.

The derivation from a word for ‘white’ is thought to refer perhaps to the white Cliffs of Dover in the southeast, visible from mainland Europe and a landmark at the narrowest crossing point. On the other hand, Celtic linguist Xavier Delamarre argued that it originally meant ‘the world above, the visible world’, in opposition to ‘the world below’, i.e. the underworld.^[4][5][6]

Attestation[edit]

Judging from Avienius’ Ora Maritima, for which it is considered to have served as a source, the Massaliote Periplus (originally written in the 6th century BC, translated by Avienus at the end of the 4th century AD), does not use the name Britannia; instead it speaks of nēsos Iernōn kai Albiōnōn «the islands of the Iernians and the Albiones».^[7] Likewise, Pytheas (c. 320 BC), as directly or indirectly quoted in the surviving excerpts of his works in later writers, speaks of Albiōn and Iernē (Britain and Ireland). Pytheas’s grasp of the νῆσος Πρεττανική (nēsos Prettanikē, «Prettanic island») is somewhat blurry, and appears to include anything he considers a western island, including Thule.^[8]

The name Albion was used by Isidore of Charax (1st century BC – 1st century AD)^[9] and subsequently by many classical writers. By the 1st century AD, the name refers unequivocally to Great Britain. But this «enigmatic name for Britain, revived much later by Romantic poets like William Blake, did not remain popular among Greek writers. It was soon replaced by Πρεττανία (Prettanía) and Βρεττανία (Brettanía ‘Britain’), Βρεττανός (Brettanós ‘Briton’), and Βρεττανικός (Brettanikós, meaning the adjective British). From these words the Romans derived the Latin forms Britannia, Britannus, and Britannicus respectively».^[10]

The Pseudo-Aristotelian text On the Universe (393b) has:

Ἐν τούτῳ γε μὴν νῆσοι μέγισται τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι δύο, Βρεττανικαὶ λεγόμεναι, Ἀλβίων καὶ Ἰέρνη
There are two very large islands in it, called the British Isles, Albion and Ierne.^[11] (Britain and Ireland).

Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (4.16.102) likewise has:

It was itself named Albion, while all the islands about which we shall soon briefly speak were called the Britanniae.^[12][13]

In his 2nd century Geography, Ptolemy uses the name Ἀλουΐων (Alouiōn, «Albion») instead of the Roman name Britannia, possibly following the commentaries of Marinus of Tyre.^[14] He calls both Albion and Ierne νῆσοι Βρεττανικαὶ (nēsoi Brettanikai, «British Isles»).^[15][16]

In 930, the English king Æthelstan used the title Rex et primicerius totius Albionis regni («King and chief of the whole realm of Albion»).^[17] His nephew, Edgar the Peaceful, styled himself Totius Albionis imperator augustus «Augustus Emperor of all Albion» in 970.^[18]

The giants of Albion[edit]

A legend exists in various forms that giants were either the original inhabitants, or the founders of the land named Albion.

Geoffrey of Monmouth[edit]

According to the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae («The History of The Kings of Britain») by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the exiled Brutus of Troy was told by the goddess Diana:

Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed, now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne’er destroy, nor bounds confine.

After many adventures, Brutus and his fellow Trojans escape from Gaul and «set sail with a fair wind towards the promised island».^[19]

«The island was then called Albion, and inhabited by none but a few giants. Notwithstanding this, the pleasant situation of the places, the plenty of rivers abounding with fish, and the engaging prospect of its woods, made Brutus and his company very desirous to fix their habitation in it.» After dividing up the island between themselves «at last Brutus called the island after his own name Britain, and his companions Britons; for by these means he desired to perpetuate the memory of his name».^[20] Geoffrey goes on to recount how the last of the giants are defeated, the largest one called Goëmagot is flung over a cliff by Corineus.

Anglo-Norman Albina story[edit]

Later, in the 14th century, a more elaborate tale was developed, claiming that Albina and her sisters founded Albion and procreated there a race of giants.^[21] The «Albina story» survives in several forms, including the octosyllabic Anglo-Norman poem «Des grantz geanz» dating to 1300–1334.^{[22][a][23][24][b][26]} According to the poem, in the 3970th year of the creation of the world,^[c] a king of Greece married his thirty daughters into royalty, but the haughty brides colluded to eliminate their husbands so they would be subservient to no one. The youngest would not be party to the crime and divulged the plot, so the other princesses were confined to an unsteerable rudderless ship and set adrift, and after three days reached an uninhabited land later to be known as «Britain». The eldest daughter Albina (Albine) was the first to step ashore and lay claim to the land, naming it after herself. At first, the women gathered acorns and fruits, but once they learned to hunt and obtain meat, it aroused their lecherous desires. As no other humans inhabited the land, they mated with evil spirits called «incubi», and subsequently with the sons they begot, engendering a race of giants. These giants are evidenced by huge bones which are unearthed. Brutus arrived 260 years after Albina, 1136 before the birth of Christ, but by then there were only 24 giants left, due to inner strife.^[26] As with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s version, Brutus’s band subsequently overtake the land, defeating Gogmagog in the process.^[26]

Manuscripts and forms[edit]

The octosyllabic poem appears as a prologue to 16 out of 26 manuscripts of the Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, which derives from Wace. Octosyllabic is not the only form the Anglo-Norman Des Grantz Geanz, there are five forms, the others being: the alexandrine, prose, short verse, and short prose versions.^[22][27] The Latin adaptation of the Albina story, De Origine Gigantum, appeared soon later, in the 1330s.^[28] It has been edited by Carey & Crick (1995),^[29] and translated by Ruth Evans (1998).^[30]

Diocletian’s daughters[edit]

A variant tale occurs in the Middle English prose Brut (Brie ed., The Brut or the Chronicles of England 1906–1908) of the 14th century, an English rendition of the Anglo-Norman Brut deriving from Wace.^[d][31][32] In the Prolog of this chronicle, it was King «Dioclician» of «Surrey» (Syria^[33]), who had 33 daughters, the eldest being called «Albyne». The princesses are all banished to Albion after plotting to murder their husbands, where they couple with the local demons; their offspring became a race of giants. The chronicle asserts that during the voyage Albyne entrusted the fate of the sisters to «Appolyn,» which was the god of their faith. The Syrian king who was her father sounds much like a Roman emperor,^[33] though Diocletian (3rd century) would be anachronistic, and Holinshed explains this as a bungling of the legend of Danaus and his fifty daughters who founded Argos.^[34]

Later treatment of the myth[edit]

Because Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work was regarded as fact until the late 17th century, the story appears in most early histories of Britain. Wace, Layamon, Raphael Holinshed, William Camden and John Milton repeat the legend and it appears in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.^[35]

William Blake’s poems Milton and Jerusalem feature Albion as an archetypal giant representing humanity.^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, artist Mark Sheeky donated the 2008 painting «Two Roman Legionaries Discovering The God-King Albion Turned Into Stone» to the Grosvenor Museum collection.^[36]

See also[edit]

• Britain (place name) – Place name
• Clas Myrddin, an early name for Great Britain given in the Third Series of Welsh Triads.
• New Albion – Historical name of the United States Pacific coast
• Nordalbingia, based on the Latin name for the Elbe River: Alba
• Perfidious Albion – Pejorative epithet for Great Britain
• Terminology of the British Isles – Overview of the terminology of the British Isles

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Asked by: Dr. Mustafa Bergstrom MD

Score: 4.7/5
(62 votes)

The name Albion has been translated as “white land”; and the Romans explained it as referring to the chalk cliffs at Dover (Latin albus, “white”). …

What does Albion mean in Latin?

Can Albion be a name?

The name Albion is primarily a male name of English origin that means White Land — Great Britain. Oldest known name of Great Britain, said to have come from the Latin word Albus meaning white.

What do you call someone from Albion?

Albionian — a citizen of Albion with diverse cultures (like Italy and Italian) Albionese — a cultural nation of Albion (like Spain and Spanish) Albioner — a people founded on a Germanic city of Albion (like Hamburg and Hamburger)

What does the poetic name Albion stand for?

Albion is an ancient poetic name for Britain. May derive from the Latin «albus» referring to the whiteness of cliffs seen from the sea, or from the Celtic «alp». Used in England until the 1930s.

41 related questions found

REPUBLIC
OF IRELAND

©
Oxford University Press

GREAT
BRITAIN

ENGLAND

London

Channel

Islands’*»

►
Identifying
symbols of the four nations

England Wales

l

Some
historical and poetic names

Albion
is
a
word used in some
poetic or
rhetorical contexts to refer to England. It was the original
Roman
name for Britain. It rnay coilie from the Latin word albus, meaning
‘white’. The white chalk cliffs around Dover on
the
south coast are the first part of England to be seen when Crossing
tlie
sea from the European mainland.

Britannia
is the name that the Romans gave to their Southern British province
(which covered, approximately, the area of present-day England). It
is also the name given to the female ernbodi- ment of Britain,
always shown wearing a helmet and holding a trident {the symbol of
power over the sea), hence the patriotic song which begins ‘Rule

Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves’. The figtire of Britannia has been on the
reverse side of many Britisli coins for more than 300 years.

People
often
refer to Britain
by
another name,
They call it
‘England’. But
this
is
not
striclly correct,
and it can make some
people
angry, England
is
only
one of
the four
nations of
the
British
Isles (England, Scotland,
Wales
and
Ireland).
Their
political
unification was
a gradual
process
that
took
several
hundred years
(see chapter
2).
It was completed
in
1
800
when the Irish
Parliament
was joined
with the Parliament
for
England, Scotland
and
Wales
in Westminster, so
that the
whole
of
the
British
Isles
became a
single
state
— the United Kingdom
of Great Britain
and Ireland.
However, in
1922,
most
of
Ireland
became
a
separate
state
(see chapter 12).

At
one time the four nations
were distinct
from
each other in
almost every
aspect
oflife.
In
the
first
place,
they
were
different

Scotland Ireland

Flag

St
George’s Cross

Plant

Britannia

Dragon
of St Andrews St Patricks

Cadwallader Cross Cross

I
I

Rose

Lion
rampant Republic of Ireland

Leek/Daffodil¹
Thistle

Shamrock

Coiour¹

St
Andrew St Patrick

30
November I 7 March

Patron
saint St
George St David

Saint’s
day 23
April I March

racially.
The people in Ireland, Wales and highland Scotland belonged to the
Celtic race; those in England and lowiand Scotland were mainly of
Germanic origin. This difference was reflected in the languages
they spoke. People in the Celtic areas spoke Celtic languages:
Irish Gaelic, Scottisli Gaelic and Welsh. People in the Germanic
areas spoke Germanic dialects (including the one which has
developed into modern English). The nations also tended to have
different economic, social and legal Systems.

Today
these differences have become blurred. But they have not compietely
disappeared. Although there is only one government for the whole of
Britain, and people have the same passport regardless of where in
Britain they live, some aspects of government are organized
separately (and sometimes differently) in the four parts of the
United Kingdom. Moreover, Welsh, Scottisli and Irish people feel
their iden­tity very strongly.

Other
signs
of
national identity

The
following are also associated by British people with one or more of
the four nations.

Names

The
prefix ‘Mac’ or ‘.Mc’ in surnames (such as McCall,
MacCarthy, MacDonald) is always either Scottisli or Irish. The
prefix ‘O’ (as in O’Brien, O’Hara) is distinctly Irish. A very
large number of surnames (for example, Davis, Evans, Jones, Lloyd,
Morgan, Price, Rees, Williams) suggest Welsh origin (although many
of these are found throughout England). The most common surname in
both England and Scotland is actually ‘Smith’.

First
names can also be indicative, The Scottish form of‘John’ is Tan’
and its Irish form is ‘Sean’ (although all three names are
common throughout Britain). There are also nicknames for Scottish,
Irish and Welsh men. For example, an English, Welsh or Irish person
might refer to and address a Scottish friend as ‘Jock’, whatever
his first name is. Irishmen are called ‘Paddy’ or ‘Mick’ and
Welshmen are known as ‘Dai’ or ‘Taffy’. If the person is not a
friend the mckname can sound rather
insulting.

Clothes

The
kilt, a skirt with a tartan pallern worn by men, is a very
well-known symbol of Scottishness (though it is hardly ever worn in
everyday life).

Musical
instrmnents

The
harp is an emblem of both Wales and Ireland. The bagpipes are
regarded as disiinclively Scottish (though a smaller type is also
used in traditional Irish music).

Characteristics

There
are ceriain stereotypes of national character which are well- known
in Britain. For instance, the Irish are supposed to be great
talkers, the Scots have a reputation for being careful with money,
and the Welsh are renowned for their singing ability. These
characteristics are, of course, only caricatures and are not
reliable descriptions of indi­vidual people from these
countries. Nevertheless, they indicate some slighl differences in
the value attached to certain kinds of beliavi- our in the countries
concerned.

John
Bull is a
ficdonal
character
who is supposed to personify Englishness and certain English
virtues. (He can be compared to Uncle Sam in the USA.) He features
in liuncLreds of nineteenth Century Cartoons.
His
appearance is typical of an eighteenlh Century
country’
gentleman, evoking an idyllic rural past (see chapter <;).

John
Bull

Briton
is a word used in official con- texts and in formal writing to
describe a Citizen
of
the United Kingdom. ‘Ancient Brilons’ is the name given to the
race of people who lived in England before and during the Roman
occupation (ad
43-410).
These are the ancestors of the present-day Welsh people.

Caledonia,
Cambria and Hibernia

were
tlie Roman names for Scotland, Wales and Ireland respectively. The
words are commonly used today in scholarly classifications (for
example, the type of English used in Ireland is sometimes called
‘Hiberno-Engiish’) and for the names of organizations (for
example, the airline ‘British Caledonian).

Erin
is a poetic name for Ireland. ‘The Emeraid Isle’ is another way of
refer- ring to Ireland, evoking the lush greenery of its
countryside.

►
The
invisible Scot

Here
are some brief extracts from an article vmtten by a Scotswoman,
Janet Swinney, which expresses anger at how the dominance of England
over Scotland is reflected in ihe way things are described.

First,
there is ‘domination by otnission’. Amap appeared in the Observer
newspaper in May 1989 under the heading ‘Britam’s Dirty Rivers’.
It showed only England and Wales. Janet Swinney says: ‘What is the
meaning of this Illustration? Does Scotland have no rivers or no
dirty rivers, or has someone sirnply used the word Britain to mean
England and Wales?’

Second,
she points out the common use of England/English io mean
Brinim/British: ‘When I werit to Turkey a few years ago with an
assorted group of Britons, most of the English were happy to record
their nalionality on their embarka- tion cards as English, and saw
nothing offensive about it. It s not unusual, either, for Scots to
receive mail from elsewhere in the UK addressed Scot­land,
England , .. Last year, Werks of art from the Soviet Union intended
for display ai Lhe Edinburgh Interna­tiona] Festival were sent
to the City Art Gallery addressed Edinburgh, England’.

A
tliird aspect of domination can be seen in the names given to pub-
lications and organizations: ‘The practice is to label anything that
per- tains to England and (usually) Wales as though it were the
norm, and anything Scottish as though it were a deviation from it.
Why eise do we have The Times Educational Supplement and The Times
Educational Supplemeni (Scotland), the “National Trust” and the
“National Trust for Scotland», the “Trades Union Congress”
and the “Scottish Trades Union Con­gress»? In a society
of equals, all these names would carry their geo- graphical markers:
The Times Educa­tional Supplement (England and Wales) etc’.

J
Swinney, ‘The Invisible Scot’,

English
Today, April 19 89

There
is, perhaps, an excuse for people who use the word ‘England’
when they mean ‘Britain’. It cannot be denied that the dominant
culture of Britain

today
is
specifically
English.
The
system
of
politics that
is used
in
all
four
nations today
is
of
English origin, and
English
is
the
main language of all
four nations.
Many aspects of everyday life are organiz.ed according
to
English
custom
and practice.
But
the
polit­ical
unification
of Britain was not achieved by
mutual agreement. O11 the contrary,
It
happened
because England was able
to exert her economic and
military
power over the other
three
nations (see
chapter
2).

Today
English domination can
be
detected
in
the
way in which various
aspects
of British
public life are
described (t> The invisible Scot). For
example,
the
supply
of
money
in
Britain is
controlled
by the Bank
of England (there
is
no
such
thfng as
a ‘Bank
of
Britain’).
The
present
queen
of
the country
is universally known
as
‘Elizabeth the Second’,
even though
Scotland
and Northern
Ireland have
never
had
an
‘Eliza­beth
the
First’! (Elizabeth
I
of England
and
Wales
ruled
from
1
^53
to 1603.)
The
term
‘Anglo’ is
also
commonly
used.
(The Angles
were
a
Germanic
tribe
who
settled
in
England
in the
fifth Century. The word ‘England’
is derived from
their name.) For
example,
newspapers
and the
television
news
talk about ‘Anglo-American
relations’
to
refer
to relations
between
the
governments
of
Britain
and
the
USA (and not
just
those between England and
the
USA).

National
loyalties

When
you
are
talking
to
people
from
Britain, it
is safest
to use ‘
Britain’
when
talking
about where
they
live
and
‘British’
as
the adjective to describe
their
nationality.
This
way you
will
be
less
likely
to
offend anyone.
It
is,
of
course, not
wrong
to
talk
about ‘people in
England’
if
that is what
you
mean
— people who
live
within the geographica] boundaries
of
England,
After all,
most
British
people
live
there
(>
Populations
in
1993).
But
it
should
always
be
remembered
that
England
does not
make
up
the whole of
the UK.

There
has
been
a long
history of
migration
from Scotland, Wales and
Ireland to
England. As
a
result
there are
millions of
people
who live in
England but who
would
never describe
themselves
as English. They may have
lived
in
England
all their
lives, but as
far
as
they are concerned they
are Scottish
or
Welsh
or Irish —
even
if, in
the
last
case, they
are
citizens
of
Britain
and not of
Eire.
These
people
support
the
country
of
their parents or
grandparents rather than
England
in
sporting
contests. They
would also, given
the clrance, play for
that
country
rather
than
England.
If,
for
example,
you had heard
the
meinbers of the
Republic
of Ireland
World Cup
football
leam talking in
1994,
you
would have heard
several different kinds of
English accent
and
some
Scottish
accents,
but only
a
few
Irish accents.
Most

of
tlie
players did
not live
in
Ireland
and were
not
brought up
in
Ireland.
Nevertbeless,
most
of them would
never have
considered
playing
for
any
country other than
Ireland!

The
same
holds
true for the further millions of
British
citizens
whose family
origins
lie
outside
the
British
Isles
altogetlier.
People
of
Caribbean
or
south Asiat! descent, for instance, do not
mind
being
described as ‘British’ (many are proud
of it),
but
many
of them
would
not
like to
be called
‘English’.
And whenever the West Indian
or
Indian cricket
team plays
against England,
it is
certainly not
England
that
they
support!

There
is, in fact,
a
complicated
division of
loyalties
among
many people
in
Britain,
and especially
in England. A black
person
whose family
are
from
the
Caribbean will passionately supporl
the
West Indies
when they play
cricket
against
England. But
the
same
person
is
quite
happy
to support England
just
as
passionately
in
a
sport
such
as
football, which the
West Indies
do not
play.
A
person
whose
family
are from
Ireland
but who
has always lived
in
England
would want
Ireland
to
beat England
at
Football but
would
want
England to
beat
(for
example)
Italy just
as much.
This
crossover
of loyalties
can
work the
other
way as well.
English
people do
not
regard
the ScotLish,
the Welsh
or
the
Irish
as
‘foreigners’
(or, at least,
not
as the
same kind
of
foreigners
as
other
foreigners!).
An English commentator of
a spordng
event in
which
a
Scottish,
Irish
or
Welsh
team is
playing
against a team from outside the
British
Isles
tends
to identify
with
that
team as
if it
were
English.

A
wonderful example
of
double
identity
was
heard
on the
BBC
during
the Eurovision Song
Contest in
1992.
The
commentator
for
theBBC
was
Terry
Wogan. Mr Wogan is
an Irishman
who
had
become
Britain’s
most
populär
television
talk-show host during
the
1980s.
Towards the
end
of
the programme, with the
voting
for
the
songs
nearly
complete,
it became
clear that
the
contest (in
which
European
countries compete to present the
best
new populär
song)
was going
to be
won
by
either
Ireland or
the
United
Kingdom.
Within
a
five-
minute
period,
Mr Wogan could be heard using
the pronouns
‘we’ and ‘us’
several
times;
sometimes he
meant
the
UK
and sometimes
he
meant
Ireland!

►
Populations
in 1995

England 48.9 million

Scotland 5.1 million

Wales 2.9 million

Northern
ireland 1.6 million

UK
total 58,6 million

These
figures are estimates provided by the Government Actuary ‘s
Department of the UK, hased on the t
9 91 Census.

It
is expected that the total population of Britain will continue to
rise by very small amounts until around the year 202$.

►
The
Union Jack

The
Union Jack is the national flag of the UK. It is a combination of
the cross of S t George, the cross of St Andrew and the cross of St
Patrick (D> Identifying Symbols of the four nations).

The
Union Jack

QUESTIONS

1. Think
   of
   the
   most well-known
   symbols and tokens
   of
   nationality
   in your
   country.
   Are they the
   same
   types
   of
   real-life objects (e.g.
   plants, clothes)
   that
   are
   used in
   Britain?

2. In
   1970, the
   BBC
   showed
   a
   series
   of pro­grammes
   about the history of
   the British Empire.
   Before the series started,
   they
   advertised it.
   The advertisement
   mentioned ‘England’s
   history’. Within
   a
   few
   hours,
   the BBC had received thou- sands
   of
   angry
   ealls
   of protest
   and
   it
   was forced
   to
   make
   an
   apology.
   Who do you think the
   angry callers were?
   Why
   did the
   BBC
   apologize?

3. In
   1991, UEFA
   (the
   Union
   of
   European Football Associations) introduced
   a
   new
   regulation. This limited
   the
   number
   of
   foreign players
   who
   were allowed
   to
   play
   for
   a football
   club in European
   competitions. For example, a German club team
   could
   have
   only
   a
   certain number
   of
   players in
   it who
   were
   not
   German.
   Under
   the
   new regula­tion
   a player
   in
   the
   Liverpool
   team, Ian
   Rush, was classified as ‘foreign’, even though
   he
   was
   born only
   twenty
   miles
   from Liverpool and had lived
   in
   the same area all
   his life.
   Many other players
   of
   English
   club
   teams
   found
   themselves
   in
   the
   same
   position.
   Many people
   in
   England
   thought that
   this was ridiculous. How did
   this
   happen?
   Do
   you think
   it
   was ridiculous?

4
The
dominance
of
England in Britain is reflected in the
Organization
of
the government.
There are
ministers for Scotland, Wales
and
Northern
Ireland, but there is
no
minister
for
England,

Do
you
think
this
is
good for
the
people of the
other
British nations (they
have
special
atten­tion
and recognition
of their distinct identity)
or is it bad (it gives them
a kind of second-class, colonial
Status)? y Are there
any
distinct
national loyalties
in
your
country (or
are
they better described as
regional
loyalties)?
If
so,
is the relationship
between
the
‘nations’
in
any way
similar to that between
the
nations in
Britain?
If
not,
can
you think
of
any
other countries
where such loyalties
exist? Do
these
loyalties
cause
problems
in those
coun­tries?

SUGGESTIONS

Britain,
an Ofiicial
Handbook (HMSO) is published
annually
and is pre- pared
by the
Central Office of Information. It includes
facts
and figures
on aspects
of British life
such
as politics and law,
economic and
social
affairs, arts
and sport.

Dictionary
of Britain by Adrian Room (Oxford University Press) is an
alphabetical
guide
to
well-known
British organizations,
people,
events, traditions and other
aspects oflife in Britain.

Prehistory

Two
thousand years
ago
there was an
Iron
Age Celtic
cnlture
through­out
the British
Isles. It
seems
that the
Celts, who had been arriving
from Europe from the
eighth
Century BC onwards, intermingled with the
peoples
who were already there. We know that religious sites
that
had been built long
before
the arrival of
the
Celts continued to be used
in
the
Celtic
period.

For
people in
Britain today,
the chief
significance
of the prehistoric period (for which no
written
records exist) is
its
sense
of
mystery.
This
sense
finds its
focus
most
easily in the astonishing monumental architecture of this period,
the remains of which exist throughout
the
country. Wiltshire, in
south-western
England,
has
two spectacular
examples:
Silbury
Hill, the
largest burial mound in Europe, and Stonehenge (e>
Stonehenge). Such places have a special importance for anyone
interested
in
the
cultural
and
religious
practices of prehistoric Britain. We know very
little about
these practices, but there are some organizations
today
(for example, the
Order
of
Bards,
Ovales and Druids —
a
small group of eccentric intellectuals
and
mystics) who base their beliefs on them.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Stonehenge
was built on Salisbury Plain some time between 3030 and 2300 BC. It
is one of the most famous and mysterious archaeological sites in the
world. One of its mysteries is how it was ever built at all with the
technology of the time (the stones corae from over 200 miles away in
Wales). Another is its purpose. It appears to function as a kind of
astronomical clock and we know it was used by the Druids for cere-
monies marking the passing of the seasons. It has always exeried a
fas- cination on the British imagination, and appears in a number of
novels, such as Thomas Hardy’sTess of the D’Urbevilles,

These
days Stonehenge is not only of interest to lourists, but is also a
gathering point for certain minority gröups such as hippies and
‘New Age Travellers’ (see chapter 13). It is now fenced off to
protect it from damage.

Hadrian’s
Wall

Hadrian’s
Walf

Hadrian’s
Wall was buill by the Romans in the second Century across the
northern border of their province of Britannia (along nearly the
same line as the present English- Scottish border) in order to
protect their territory from attacks by the Scots and the Picts.

The
Roman
province
of
Britannia
covered
most
of
present-day England
and
Wales. The
Romans
imposed
their own
way oflife
and
culture,
making
use
of
the existing
Celtic aristocracy
to govern and encouraging this
ruling
dass
to
adopt
Roman dress and
the
Roman language (Latin). They
exerted
an
influence, without
actually
gov­erning
there, over
only the
Southern
part
of
Scotland.
It
was during
this
time
that a Celtic
tribe called
the
Scots migrated from Ireland
to
ScoLland,
where
they
became
allies
of
the Picts (another Celtic
tribe)
and
opponents
of the Romans.
This division
of the Celts
into
those
who experienced
direct
Roman
rule (the Britons
in
England
and
Wales)
and
those
who
did not
(the
Gaels
in
Ireland
and Scotland)
rnay help
io explain
the development of
two
distinct branches of the Celtic group
of languages.

The
remarkable
thing about
the Romans
is that,
despite
their long occupation
of Britain, they
left
very liitle
behind.
To many
other
parts
of Europe
they
bequeathed a
System of
law
and
administration
which
forms
the basis of
the
modern
System
and
a language
which
developed into
the modern Romance
family
of
languages. In
Britain,
they left
neither.
Moreover, most
of their
villas, balhs
and
temples,
their impressive
network
of roads, and
the
cities
they
founded, including
Londinium (London),
were
soon destroyed or
feil
into disrepair.
Almost
the önly lasting reminder
of
their
presence are place-names
like Chester, Lancaster and
Gloucester,
which include
variants
of
the Roman word
castra
(a
military camp).

The
Germanic invasions (410—1066)

One
reason
why
Roman
Britannia
disappeared so quickly
is
probably
that its influence
was largely confined to the towns.
In
the
country- side,
where
most people
lived,
farming
methods had
remained
unchanged
and Celtic speech
continued
to be
dominant.

The
Roman occupation
had
been
a
matter of colonial
control
radier
than
large-scale settlement.
But,
during
the fifth
Century, a
number
of
tribes from the north-western European
mainland
invaded
and
settled
in
large
numbers.
Two of
these
tribes were
the
Angles and

Some
important dates in British history

ss^BC1

The
Roman general Julius Caesar lands in Britain widi an expeditionary
force, wins a battle and lcaves. The first ‘date’ in populär
British history.

ad
43

The
Romans come to stay.

61

Queen
Boudicca (or Boadicea) of the Iceni tribe leads a bloody revolt
against the Roman occupation. It is suppressed. There is a statue of
Boadicea, made in the nineteenth Century, outside the Houses of
Parliament. This has helped to keep die memory of her alive.

King
Artflur, Queen Guinevere and one of the knights of the round tabfe,
from the film ‘Camelot¹

ihe
Saxons. These
Anglo-Saxons
soon
had the
south-east of
the
country
in their
grasp. In
the
west
of
the country
their
advance was temporarily halted by an
army
of (Celtic)
Britons under the command
of
the
legendary King Arthur
(i>
King
Arthur).
Nevertheless, by the
end
of
the sixth
Century,
they
and
their
way
oflife predominated in
nearly
all
of England and
in
parts of Southern
Scotland. The
Celtic
Britons
were
either Saxonized or
driven
westwards, where
their
culture
and language survived
in
south-west
Scotland,
Wales
and. Cornwall.

The
Anglo-Saxons
had
little use
for towns
and
cities.
But
they
had a great
effect
on
the
countryside,
where they
introduced new
fatming metlrods and
founded
the thousands
of
self-sufficient vil-
lages which formed the
basis of
English society
for
the next
thousand or
so years.

The
Anglo-Saxons
were
pagan when they came
to
Britain.
Chris-
tianity
spread
throughout
Britain
from
two
different
directions during
the sixth and
seventh centuries. It came
directly from Rome
when St Augustine
arrived in 597
and established
his headquarters at
Canterbury
in
the
south-east of
England. It
had
already been inLro-
duced into Scotland
and
northern
England
from Ireland, which
had
become
Christian more than
15
o
years
earlier.
Although Roman Christianity
eventually Look over
the whole
of
the British
Isles, the Celtic rnodel
persisted
in Scotland and Ireland for
several
hundred years. It was less
centrally organized,
and
had
less need for a strong
monarchy to
support
it.
This
partly
explains
why
both
secular
and
religious
power in
these
two countries continued
to he
both
more
locally
based
and
less
secure than it
was eise where in Britain
through­out the
medieval period.

Britain
experienced
another
wave
of
Germanic
invasions
in
the
eighth
Century.
These invaders,
known
as
Vikings,
Norsemen or
Danes, came
from Scandinavia.
In the
ninth Century they conquered and
settled
the
extreme
north and
west
of
Scotland,
and
also
some Coastal
regions of
Ireland.
Their
conquest of
England
was halted
when
they were
defeated
by
King Alfred
of the Saxon kingdom
of
Wessex
(•:
• King
Alfred).
This
resulted
in
an
agreement
which
divided England
between
Wessex,
in the
soutli
and
west,
and
the
‘Danelaw’
in
the
north and east.

►
King
Arthur

King
Arthur provides a wonderful example of the distortiqns of populär
history. In folklore and rnytli he is a great English liero, and he
and his knights of the round table are regarded as the perfect
example of medieval nobility and chivalry. In fact, he lived long
before medieval Limes and was a Romanized Celt trying to hold back
the advances of the Anglo-Saxons — the very people who beeatne
‘the English’!

410

The
Romans leave Britain.

S
97

St
Augustine arrives in England.

793

The
great monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in northeast England is
destroyed by Vikings and its monks killea.

878

The
Peace of Edington partitions England between the Saxons, led by King
Alfred, and the Dahes.

973

Edgar,
grandson of Alfred, becomes ktng of all England.

• King
  Alfred

King
Alfred was not only an able warrior but also a dedicated scholar and
a wise ruler. He is known as ‘Alfred the Great’ — the only
monarch in English history to be given this title. He is also
popularly known for the story of the öurning of the cakes.

While
Alfred was wandering around his country organizing res­istance
to the Viking invaders, he travelled in disguise. On one occa- sion,
he stopped at a woman’s house. The woman asked him to watch some
cakes that were cooking to see that they did not bum, while she went
off to get food. Alfred became lost in thought and the cakes burned.
When the woman retumed, she shomed angrily at Alfred and sent him
away. Alfred
never told her that he was her king.

• 1066

This
is the most famous date in English history, On 14 October 1066 an
invading army from Nor­mandy defeated the English at the Battle
of Hastings. The battle was close and extremely bloody. At the end
of it, most of the best warriors in England were dead, including
their leader, King Harold. O11 Christmas day that year the Norman
leader, Duke William of Normandy, was crowned king of England. He äs
known in populär history as ‘William the Conqueror’, The date is
remembered for being the last time that England was successfully
invaded.

However,
the cultural
differences between
Anglo-Saxons and
Danes were comparatively
small.
They
led roughly
the same
way
of
life
and spoke two
varieties
of
the same Germanic
tongue
(which combined
to
form
the basis of
modern
English).
Moreover, the Danes soon converted
to Christianity. These
similarities made
political
uni- fication easier,
and
by the
end
of
the
tenth
Century England was
one king dom
with
a
Germanic
culture throughout.

Most
of modern-day
Scotland was
also
united by this
time, at least in
name,
in
a
(Celtic)
Gaelic
kingdom.

The
medieval period (1066-1485)

The
successfulNorman
invasionof
England in
1066
(t> 1066)
brought Britain into the
mainstream of Western
European culture. Previously most links
had
been with Scandinavia.
Only
in
Scotland
did this link
survive; the western
isles (until the
thirteenth
Century) and
the
northern
islands (until
the
fifteenth
Century) remaining under
the
control
of Scandinavian kings.
Throughout this
period
the
English
kings
also ruled
over areas
of
land
on
the
continent and
were
often
at
war
with the French
kings in
disputes over
ownership.

Unlike
the
Germanic invasions,
the
Norman
invasion was small- scale. There
was no
such thing
as a Norman
village
or a
Norman
area
of settlement. Instead,
the Norman
soldiers
who had been
part of
the invading
army were
given the
ownership
of land
—
and
of the people
living
on
it.
A strict feudal system
was imposed. Great
nobles,
or barons,
were
responsible directly to the
king;
lesser lords,
each
owing a village,
were
directly responsible to
a baron.
Under
them
were
the peasants, tied by a strict system
of mutual duties
and
obliga­tions
to
the
local
lord,
and
forbidden to travel without his permission. The peasants
were
the
English-speaking
Saxons.
The
lords
and
the barons were the
French-speaking
Normans. This was the beginning
of
the
English
dass
system (>
Language
and dass).

The
strong System of government
which
the
Normans introduced meant
that
the Anglo-Norman
kingdom was easily
the
most
power- ful
political
force in
the
British
Isles. Not surprisingly therefore, the
authority of
the English
monarch gradually
extended to
other
parts
of
these islands
in
the
next
250
years.
By the
end of
the thirteenth Century,
a
large
part of eastern Ireland was
controlled by Anglo- Norman
lords in the name of the
English king and
the whole
of Wales

to66

The
Battle of Hastings ([> 1066) 1086

King
William’s officials complete the Domesday Book, a very detailed,
village-by-village record of the people and their possessions
throughout his kingdom.

was
under
his direct
rule
(at
which
time
the
custom
of naming
the
monarch’s
eldest son the
‘Prince
ofWales’ began). Scotland managed to remain politically
independent in
the
medieval period, but was obliged to
fighi occasional wars
to do so.

The
cultural story of this
period is different. Two hundred and fifty years after
the Norman Conquest,
it was
a
Germanic language
(Middle English) and not the
Norman
(French) language
which had become
the dominant one in
all
classes of
society in England. Fur-
thermore, it
was
the
Anglo-Saxon concept
of
common law, and not
Roman law, which formed
the
basis
of the legal
system.

Despitc
English rule, northern
and
central
Wales
was
never settled
in
great
numbers by Saxon or Norman.
As a result the
(Celtic)
Welsh
language and culture remained
strong. Eisteddfods,
national
festivals
of
Welsh
song
and
poetry, continued throughout
the medieval period and
still take
place
today. The Anglo-Norman lords of eastern Ireland remained
loyal
to the English
king but,
despite laws to
the
contrary, mostly
adopted the
Gaelic language and customs.

The
political
independence
of
Scotland
did not prevent a
gradual switch to
English
language
and customs in the lowland (southern) part of
the
country.
First,
the Anglo-Saxon element here was strengthened
by
the arrival
of many Saxon
aristocrats fleeing the
Norman conquest of England. Second,
the Celtic kings saw that the adoption
of
an Anglo-Norman
style of
government would
strengthen royal power. By
the
end of this period
a cultural split had developed
between the
lowlands,
where the
way oflife
and
language
was
similar
to that in England,
and
the
highlands, where
(Celtic) Gaelic culture and language prevailed —
and
where, because of
the mountainous landscape,
the authority of the
king
was
hard
to enforce.

It
was
in
this
period
that Parliament began
its gradual evolutiön into the
democratic body which
it is today.
The
word ‘parliament’,
which
comes
from the French
word
parier (to speak),
was
first
used
in England
in
the
thirteenth
Century
to
describe
an
assembly of
nobles
called
togetlier by
the
king. In
i
295,
the Model Parliament set the
pattern
for the future
by including
elected representatives from urban and
rural
areas.

• Language
  and dass

The
existence of two words for the larger farm animals in modern English
is a result of the dass divi- sions established by the Norman
conquest. There are the words for the living animals (e.g. cow, pig,
sheep), which have their origins in Anglo-Saxon, and the words for
the meat front the animals (e.g. becf,
pork, mutton), which have their origins in the French language that
the Normans brought to England. Only die Normans normally ate meat;
the poor Anglo-Saxon peasants did not!

• Robin
  Hood

Robin
Hood is a legendary folk hero. King Richard 1
(t 1 89-99) spent most of his reign fighting in the Cru­sades
(the wars between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East). While
Richard was away, England was governed by his brother John, who was
unpopulär because of all the taxes he imposed. According to legend,
Robin Hood lived with his band of‘merry men’ in Sherwood Forest
outside Nottingham, stealing from the rieh and giving to the poor.
He was consiamly hunted by the local sheriff (the royal represema-
tive) but was never captured.

1170

The
murder of Thomas Recket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by soldiers
of King Henry II. Becket (also known as Thomas ä Becket) was made a
saint and his grave was visited by pilgrims for hundreds of years.
The Canterltury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth
Century, recounts the stories told by a fictional group of pilgrims
on their way to Canterbury.

11
71

The
Norman baron known as Strongbow and his followers settle in Ireland.

12
if

An
alliance of aristocracy, Church and merchants force King John to
agree to the Magna Carta (Great Charter), a docu- ment in which the
king agrees to follow certain rules of government. In fact, neither
John nor his successors entirely followed Üiem, but Magna Caita
is remembered as the first time a monarch agreed in writing to abide
by formal procedures.

• The
  Wars of the Roses

During
the fifteenth Century the throne of England was claimed by
representatives of two rival groups. The power of the greatest
nobles, who had their own private axmies, meant. that constant
challenges to the position of the monarch were possible. The
Lancastrians, whose symbol was a red rose, supported the descendants
of the Duke of Lancaster, and the Yorkists, whose symbol was a white
rose, supported the des­cendants of the Duke of York. The
struggle for power led to the ‘Wars of the Roses¹
between 1435 and 148 p. They ended when Henry VII defeated and
killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field and were followed
by an era of stability and strong government which was wel- comed by
those weakened and impoverished by decades of war.

• Off
  with his head!

Being
an important person in the sixteenth Century was not a safe position
to be in. The Tudor mon­archs were disloyal to their officials
and merciless to any nobles who opposed them. More than half of the
most f’amous people of the period finished their lives by being
executed as traitors. Few people who were taken through Traitors
Gate to become prisoners in the Tower of London came out again
alive.

The
power of
the English monarch
increased in this
period.
The
strength
of the great barons had
been
gready weakened by the Wars of
the
Roses
(> The Wars
of the Roses). Bubonic plague (known in
England
as the Black Death) conlributed to the reduction of their power. It
killed
about a third of the population in
its
first ontbreak in England in
the
middle of the fourteenth Century and
continued
to reappear periodically for
another
300 years. The shortage of labour which
this
caused, and the increasing importance of trade
in
the towns, helped to weaken
the
traditional ties between feudal
lord
and peasant.

The
Tudor
dynasty
(148g—!
603) established a system of govern­ment departments, staffed by
professionals who depended for their position on the monarch. As a
result, the feudal
barons
were no longer needed for
implementing
government policy. They were also needed less for making government
policy. Parliament was tradition- ally split into two
‘Houses’.
The House of Lords consisted of the feudal
aristocracy
and
the leaders of
the Church;
the House of Commons
consisted
of representatives from the towns and the less important landowners
in
rural
areas. It
was
now more important for
monarchs
to
get
the agreement of the Commons for policy-making because that was
where the newly powerful merchants and land­owners
(the
people
with the money) were represented.

Unlike
in
much
of the rest
of
Europe,
the direct cause of the rise of Protestantism in England was
political and personal rather than doc- trinal (t>
Henry
7111).
Henry VIII
wanted a divorce which the Pope would not give
him. Also, by
making himself head of the ‘Church of England’, independent of
Rome, all church lands
came
under his control and
gave
him a large
new
source of income.

This
rejection of
the
Roman
Church accorded with a new spirit of patriotic confidence
in England.
The country had finally
lost
any realistic claim
to lands
in
France,
thus
becoming
more consciously a
distinct
‘island nation’. At the same time, increasing European
exploration of the Americas and
other
parts of the world meant that

1273

Llewellyn,
a Welsh prince, refuses to submit to the authority of the English
monarch.

1328

After
several years of war between the Scottish and English kingdoms,
Scot­land is recognized as an independent kingdom.

¹
534

The
Act of Supremacy declares Henry VIII to be the supreme head of the
Church in England.

1284

The
Statute of Wales puts the whole of that country under the control of
the English monarch.

1536

The
adminiscration of government and law in Wales is reformed so that it
is exactly the same as it is in England.

Henry
VIII

England
was
closer to
the geographical
centre of Western civilisation instead
of being,
as previously, on the
edge
of
it.
It
was
in
the
last
quarter
of
this adventurous and
opümistic
Century that Shakespeare
began
writing
his
famous
plays.

It
was
therefore patriotism as much
as
religious conviction
that had caused
Protestantism
to
become
the majority
religion
in England by the
end
of
the
Century. It
took
a
form
known
as
Anglicanism,
which
was not so very different from
Catholicism
in its Organization
and ritual.
But in
the
lowlands of
Scotland it took
a
more idealistic
form. Calvinism, with its strict insistence on simplicity
and its dislike of
ritual
and
celebration,
became the
dominant
religion.
It is from
this
date
that
the
stereotype of the dour,
thrifty
Scot
developed.
However,
the
Scottish
highlands
remained Catholic
and
so
further
widened the gulf
between
the
two
parts of the nation.
Ireland
also remained
Catholic. There, Protestantism was
identified with
the
English,
who at
that time
were making further attempts to
control
the whole
of
the
country.

►
Elizabeth
I

Elizabeth
I, daughter of Henry VIII,

(t>
Henry VW) was the first of three long-reigning queens in British
history (the other two are Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II). During
her löng rejgn she established, by skilful diplömacy, a reasonable
degree of internal stability in a firmly Protestant England,
allowing the growth of a spirit of patriotism and general
confidence. She never married, but used its possibility as a
diplomadc tool. She became known as ‘the virgin qneen’. The area
which later became the state of Vir­ginia in the USA was named
after her by one of the many English explorers of the time (Sir
Walter

^RaleiS^h)- Elizabeth!

Henry
VIII

Henry
VIII is one of the most well- known monarchs in English history,
chiefly because he took six wives during his life. It was during his
reign that the Reformation took place. In the [330s, Henry used
Parliament to pass laws which swepL away the power of the Roman
Church in England. His quarrel with Rome was nothing to do with doc-
trine (it was because he wanted to be free to marry again and 10
appoint who he wished as leaders of the Church in England). In the
same decade, he had a law passed which demanded complete adherence
to Catholic belief and practice. He had also previously wri.tten a
polemic against Protestantism, for which the pope gave him the title
Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith). The imtials FD still appear
011 British, coins today.

1538

An
English language Version of the Bible replaces Latin bibles in every
church in the land.

1360

The
Scottish Parliament abolishes the authorily of die Pope and forbids
the Latin mass.

1380

Sir
Francis Drake completes the first voyage round the world by an
Englishman.

1388

The
Spanish Armada, a fleet of ships sent by the Catholic King Philip of
Spain to help invade England, is defeated by the English navy (with
the help of a violent storm!).

1603

James
VI of Scotland becomes James I of England.

1603

The
Gunpowder Plot: a group of Cath- olics fail in their attempl to blow
up the king in Parliament (see chapter 23).

►
The
Civil War

This
is popularly remembered as a contest between fun-loving, aristo-
cratic, royalist ‘Cavaliers’, who nevertheless were ¹
wrong ’ in their beliefs, and over-serious, puritan
parliamentarian ‘Roundheads’ (because of the style of their
hair- cuts), who nevertheless had right on their side. The
Roundheads were victorious by r 645, although the war periodically
started up again until [649.

When
James I
became
the first
English king
of the Stuart dynasty, he
was
already
king of
Scotland, so the crowns of
these two
countries
were
united. Although their parliaments
and
administrative and judi- cial systems
continued
to
be
separate,
their
linguistic
differences were lessened in this
Century. The kind of Middle
English spoken in lowland Scotland
had developed into
a
written
language known
as
‘Scots’. However,
the Scottish Protestant church adopted
English rather
than Scots bibles.
This, and the glamour
of
the English court where
the king now sat, caused modern English
to
become
the written Standard irr
Scotland
as well.

In
the
sixteenth Century religion and politics
became inextricably linked.
This
link
became
even more intense in the seventeenth Century.
At the beginning of
the
Century,
some
people tried
to kill the king
because
he wasn’t
Catholic
enough (see
chapter
23). By
the
end of the Century,
another king
had
been
killed, partly because
he seemed too Catholic,
and yet
another had been
forced into exile for the same
reason.

This
was the
context
in which,
during
the Century,
Parliament established
its supremacy over the
monarchy in
Britain.
Anger grew
in
the
country at the
way
that
the Stuart monarchs raised
money,
especially
because they did not get the agreement
of
the House of Commons to do so first. This was against
ancient tradition. In addi­tion,
ideological Protestantism, especially
Puritanism, had
grown in England. Puritans regarded many
of
the
practices of
the Anglican Church,
and
also its hierarchical structure,
as immoral. Some
of them though t the luxurious
lifestyle
of
the king
and his
followers was
immoral too. They were
also fiercely
anti-Catholic
and
suspicious
of the apparent
sympathy towards Catholicism of the
Stuart monarchs.

This
conflict
led to the Civil War ([>
The Civil
War),
which ended
with complele victory for
the parliamentary forces. The king
(Charles I)
was
captured and became the first monarch
in
Europe
to be
executed after a formal
trial
for
crimes
against liis people.
The
leader of
the parliamentary
army,
Oliver
Cromwell,
became ‘Lord Protector’
of a republic with a military
government which, after he had brutally
crushed resistance in Ireland,
effectively encompassed
the whole of the British
Isles.

But
when Cromwell
died, he, his system of
governmenL,
and the puritan ethics
that went
with
it (theatres
and other forms of
amuse-
ment
had been banned)
had
become so
unpopulär that the son
of the
executed
king was asked to return and
take
the
throne. The
Anglican

1642

The
Civil War begins ([> The CiviJ VVar).

1649 1660

Charles
I is executed. For the first and The monarchy and the Anglican

only
time, Britain briefiy becomes a religion are restored.

republic
and is called ‘the Common­wealth’.

A
nineteenth-Century
painting
of victorious Roundheads with two captured Cavaliers after the
battle of Naseby in 1645

Church
was restored.
However,
the confhct between monarch and Parliament
soon re-emerged.
The
monarch,
James II,
tried
to give full
rights to
Catholics, and to
promote
them 111
his
government.

The
‘Glorious
Revolution’
(‘glorious’
because it was bloodless) followed,
in
which
Prince
William of
Orange,
ruler of
the
Netherlands,
and his
Stuart
wife Mary, accepted Parliament’s invita­tion
to become king and queen. In
this
way it
was established
that
a monarch
could
rule
only
with the support of Parliament. Parliament immediately
drew up
a Bill
of
Rights,
which limited some of tlie powers of
the monarch (notably, the
power to dismiss jüdges).
It
also
allowed
Dissenters (those who did not agree with the
practices
of Anglicanism) to
practise
their religion freely. This meant that the Presbyterian Church, to
which
the
majority of the lowland Scottish belonged, was guaranteed its
legality. However, Dissenters were
not
allowed
to
hold government posts or be Members of Parliament.

James
II, meanwhile, had fLed to Ireland. But the Catholic Irish army
he gathered
there was defeated. Laws were then passed forbid- ding Catholics to
vote or even own land.
In
Ulster, in
the
north of the
country,
large numbers of fiercely anti-Catholic Scottish Presbyterians
settled (in possession of
all the land).
The descendants of these people are
still
known today as Orangemen (after their patron William of Orange).
They form
one half
of
the tragic split in society in modern Northern Ireland,
the
other half being the ‘native’
Irish Catholics (see chapter 13).

►
Ring-a-ring-a-roses

Ring
a ring a-roses A
poeket. full of posies Atishoo! Atishoo!

We
all fali down,

This
is a well-known children’s nursery rhyme today. It comes from the
time of the Great Plague of 166s, which was the last outbreak of
bubonic plague in Britain. The ring of roses refers. to the pattern
of red spots on a sufferer’s body. The posies (bags of herbs) were
thought to give protection from the disease. ‘Atishoo”
represents the sound of sneezing, one of the signs of the disease,
after which a person could sometimes ‘fall down’ dead in a few
hours.

1666

The
Great Fire of London destroys most of the city’s old wooden
buildings. It also destroys bubonic plague, which never reappears.
Most of the city’s finest churches, induding St Pauls Cathedral,
date from the period of rebuilding which follows.

1688

The
Glorious Revolution

1690

Tlie
Presbyterian Church becomes the official ‘Church of Scotland’.

The
Battle of the Boyne, in which William III and the Ulster Protestants
defeat James II and the Irish Catholics.

Politically,
this
Century
was stable. Monarch
and
Parliament
got
on quite well
together.
One reason for this
was that
the monarchs
favourite
politicians, tlirough the
royal power
of
patronage (the ability
to give
people
jobs),
were
able
to
control
the election
and voting habits
of
a large
number of Members
of Parliament
(MPs)
in
the
House of Commons.

Within
Parliament
the
divisions
of
the previous Century, though
far
less
bitter than before, were echoed
in
the
formation
of two
vaguely
opposed
loose collections of allies.
One
group, the
Whigs,
were the
political ‘descendants’ of the parliamentarians.
They sup­ported
the Protestant
values
of hard work and
thrift,
were sympathetic to Dissenters
and
believed in
government
by monarch and
aristo-
cracy
together.
The other group, the Tories, had
a
greater
respect for the
idea of
the monarchy
and the
importance of the
Anglican
Church
(and sometimes even a
little sympathy for Catholics and
the
Stuarts).
The
two terms, Whig and Tory, had
in
fact
first
been
used in
the
late 1670s
and allegiance to
one
side or
the
other
was more often the result of family
or regional
loyalty than
of political
beliefs. This
could
be said, however,
to
be
the beginning
of
the party System
in
Britain
(see
chapter 6).

The
modern system
of
an annual budget
drawn up
by the
mon-
arch’s
Treasury officials for
the approval
of Parliament was established during this
Century. So,
too, was the
habit
of
the monarcli appointing
one principal, or ‘Prime’, Minister
from the
ranks
of
Parliament to head his
government.

At
the
beginning
of
the Century,
by
agreement, the Scottish Parlia­ment
joined with the English
and Welsh
Parliament
at
Westminster in London. However, Scotland
retained
its
own system
of
law,
more similar
to Continental European Systems than
to
that of England.

It
does so to this day.

1746

At
die Batde of Culloden, a government army of English and lowland
Scots defeats tlie highland army of Charles Edward, who, as grandson
of the last Stuart king, clainied die British throne. Although he
made no attempt to protect his supporters from revenge afcerwards,
he is still a populär roman­tic figure in tlie highlands, and
is known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’.

The
only part of Britain
to change
radically as
a
result
of
political forces in this Century was the highlands area
of Scotland.
This
area
twice supported failed
attempts
to
put
a
(Catholic) Stuart
monarch
back on the
throne by force. After the second
attempt,
many

177′

For
the first time, Parliament allows written records of its debates to
be pub lished freely.

1
782

James
Watt invents the first steam engine.

<783

After
a war, Britain recognizes the inde- pendence of the American
colonies.

1707

The
Act of Union joins the Parliament of Scotland with that of England
and Wales.

[
708

The
last occasion on which a British monarch refuses to accept a bill
which has been passed by Parliament.

inhabitants
of
the highlands were
killed
or
sent
away
from Britain and
the
wearing
of
highland
dress
(the
tartan kilt)
was
banned.
The
Celtic way oflife
was
effectively
destroyed.

It
was
cultural change
that
was
most
marked
in
this
Century. Britain
gradually
expanded
its
empire in
the
Americas,
along the west
African
coast
and in India. The increased trade
which resulted from the
links
with
these
new markets was
one factor which led
to
the
Industrial
Revolution. The many
technical
innovaLions
in
the
areas
of
manufac­turing and transport
during
this period
were also
important
contributing
factors.

In
England,
the growth of the industrial
mode of production, together
with advances in
agriculLure,
caused
the greatest upheaval
in
the pattern of
everyday life
since
die
Anglo-Saxon invasions.
Areas
of common
land, which had been
available
for
use
by
everybody
in
a
village
for
the
grazing of
animals
since
Anglo-Saxon
times,
disap- peared
as
landowners
incorporated them into their increasingly
large
and
more efficient
farms.
(Some pieces of common
land
remain in
Britain
today, used
mainly
as
public
parks.
They
are
often called
‘the common’.)
Hundreds of thousands of
people
moved from rural
areas into
new
towns
and
eitles.
Most of
these new
towns
and
cities
were in
the
north
of
England, where the
raw
materials for
industry
were
available. In
this
way, the north, which had
previously been econom- ically backward
compared
to the
south,
became the industrial heartland of the country. The
right
conditions for
industrialisalion
also
existed in
lowland
Scotland
and
south
Wales,
which accentuated
the
differences
between those
parts
of these countries
and
their non-
industrialised
areas.

In
the
south of
England, London
came
to
dominate,
not
as
an
industrial
centre
but
as
a business and
trading
centre. By
the
end of
the
Century, it had
a
population
close to
a million.

Despite
all the urban
development,
social power
and
prestige
rested
on
die
possession of
land in the
countryside.
The
outward
sign of this
prestige
was the
ownership
of
a country
seat — a
gracious
country mansion with
land
attached.
More
than
a
thousand
such mansions were
built in the
eighteenth Century.

1788

The
first British settlers (convicts and soldiers) arrive in Australia.

1800

The
separate Irish Parliament is closed and the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland is formed.

1829

Robert
Peel, a government minister, organizes the first modern police
force. The police are still sometimes known today as ’bobbies“.
(‘Bobby“ is a short form of the name ‘Robert’.)

Catholics
and non-Anglican Protest — ants are given the right to hold
government posts and become MPs.

Not
long before this Century began, Britain had lost
its
most
important
American colonies in a war of independence. When the
Century
began,
the
country was locked in a war with France, during which an invasion by
a
French army
was a real possibility, Soon after
the
end of the Century, Britain
controlled
the
biggest
empire the
world
had
ever
seen (see chapter 12).

One
section of this empire was Ireland. During this Century it was, in
fact,
part of the UK itself, and it was during this Century
that
the British culture
and way
oflife came to predominate in Ireland.
In
the
1840s, the potato crop failed two years in
a
row and there
was a
terrible famine. Millions of peasants, those with Irish
Gaelic
language and customs,
either
died or emigrated. By
the end
of the
Century
almost the whole of the remaining population were using
English as
their first
language.

Another
part of
the empire
was made up
of Canada, Australia
and New Zealand, where settlers
from
the British Isles
formed
the
majority
of the population. These countries had complete internal
seif-government
but recognized the overall authority of the British government.
Another was India, an enormous country
with a culture more
ancieni than Britain s. Tens of thousands of British
civil
servants
and
troops were used to govern it.
AL
the head of
this administration was
a viceroy (governor) whose position within the country
was
similar to the
monarch’s
in Britain itself.
Because
India
was so
far
away,
and the journey from Britain took so long, these
British officials
spent most of their working
lives
there and so
developed
a distinctly Anglo-Indian way oflife. They imposed British
institutions
and methods of government on
the
country, and
returned
to Britain when they retired. Large parts
of
Africa also belonged to the empire. Except for
South
Africa, where there was some British settlement,
most
of Britain’s African colonies started as trading
bases
on
the coast,
and were only incorporated into the empire
at the end
of the Century.

As
well as these areas (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India
and
Africa), the empire included
numeröus
smaller
areas and
islands.

1833

The
first law regulating factory working conditions is passed. (It set a
Ihnit on the number of hours that children could work.)

Slavery
is made illegal throughout the British Empire.

1868

The
TUC (Trades Union Congress) is formed.

1886

After
much debate, an atheist is allowed to sit in the House of Commons,

1893

The
first socialist, Keir Hardie, is elected to Parliament. He enters
the House of

Commons
for the first time wearing a

cloth
cap (which remained a symbol of the British working man until tlie

1960s).

^
Queen Victoria

Queen
Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901. During her reign, although the
modern powerlessness of the monarch was confirmed (she was often
forced to accept as Prime Ministers people she personally disliked),
she herseif became an increasingly populär symbol. of Britain’s
success in the world. As a hard-working,. religious moiher of nine
children, devoted to her husband, Prince Albert, she was regarded as
the personification of Contemporary morals. Tlie idea that the
monarch should set an example to the people in such matters was
unknown before this time and created problems for the monarchy in
the twentieth Century (see chapter 7),

Queen
Victoria, Prince Albert, and their nine children, photographed in
18^7

Some,
such
as those
in
the
Caribbean,
were
the result of
earlier
British settlement, but most were acquired
because
of
their Strategie
posi­tion
along
trading routes.

A
change in
attitude
in
Britain
towards colonization during
the
nineteenth
Century
gave
new
encouragement
to the empire
builders.
Previously,
colonization had been seen
as
a
matter of settlement,
of
commerce,
or
of
military
strategy. The
aim was simply to possess
territory, but not necessarily to
govern it.
By
the
end
of
the
Century, colonization
was
seen
as
a matter
of
destiny. There
was an
enormous increase in wealth
during the Century, so
that
Britain
became the
world’s foremost economic
power.
This,
together
with
long years of
political stability unequalled
anywhere eise
in Europe,
gave tlie British
a
sense
of supreme
confidence,
even
arrogance,
about
their
culture
and
civilization.
The
Britisli came
to
see themselves as having
a duty to
spread this culture and civilization
around the world. Being

1916

The
‘Easier Rising’ in Ireland against British rule is suppressed, Its
leaders are executed.

1918

The
right to vote is extended to include women over the age of thirty.

1920

The
British government partitions Ireland.

19SJ

Coronation
of Elizabeth II

1958

The
Clean Air Act is the firs t la w of wide- spread application to
attempt to control pollution (see chapter 3).

19
j9

The
first motorway is opened (see chapter 1 7).

►
The
White Man’s Bürden

Here
are some lines from the poem of this title by Rudyard Kipling
(1863—1936), who is sometimes referred to as ‘the poet of
imperialism’.

Take
up the White Maris bürden —

Send
forth the best ye
breed —

Go,
bind your sons to exile To sare your captives’ need;

To
wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild — Your new-amght,
suilen peoples,

Half-devil
and half child.

Other
races, the poem says, are ‘wild’ and have a ‘need’ to be
civil — ized. The white man’s noble duty is to ‘serve’ in this
role. This is not a quest for mere power. The duty is bestowed by
God, whom Kipling invokes in anorher poem (Recessional) in a
reference 10 the British empire in tropical lands;

God
of our faihers, known of old,

Lord.of
our far-flung baltle- Jine,

Beneath
whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-

r
92 1

Treaty
between Britain and the Irish Parliament in Dublin is signed,

1922

Tlie
Irish Free State is born.

1926

General
Strike

the
rulers of an empire was therefore a matter of moral Obligation, It
was, in fact, known as ‘the white man’s burden’ (> The
White Man’s Bürden).

There
were great
changes in
social
structure. Most people now lived in
towns
and
cities.
They
no
longer depended on country landowners for their living but rather on
the
owners of industries. These
factory
owners held the real power in the country, along with the
new and growing
middle dass
of
tradespeople. As they estab- lished their
power, so they
established a set of values which emphasized hard work,
thrift, religious
observance, family life, an awareness of
one’s
duty, absolute
honesty
in
public
life
and
extreme respectability in sexual matters. This is the set of values
which we now
call
Victorian.

Middle-class
religious
conviction, together with a conscious belief that
reform was better
than revolution, allowed reforms in political axrd
public
life to take place. Britain
was
gradually turning into some- thing
resembling
a
modern
state. There were not only political reforms,
but also
reforms which recognized some human rights (as we now
call
them). Slavery and the laws against people on the basis of
religion
were abolished, and laws were made to protect workers from some of
the worst
forms of
exploitation
resulting from the industrial
mode of production. Public
Services such as the police force were set
up.

Despite
reform, the nature of the new industrial society forced many people
to
live
and
work
in very unpleasant conditions. Writers and
intellectuals
of
this period
either protested against the horrors of this. new
style
of
life
(as
Dickens
did) or simply ignored it.
Many,
especially the Romantic
poets, praised
the beauties of the countryside and
the
simplicity of country life.
This was
a new development. In
previous
centuries the countryside
had
just existed,
and
it wasn’t something
to be discussed
or admired. But from this time on,
most
British
people developed a
sentimental attachment to the idea of the countryside
(see chapter

1939 1949

Britain
declares war on Germany. Ireland becomes a republic.

¹944

Free
compulsory secondary education (up to the age of fifteen) is
established and secondary modern schools are set up (see chapter
14).

1946

The
National Health Service is estab­lished (see chapter 1.8).

Coal
rnines and raihvays are national- ized. Other industries follow (see
chapter 1 5).

By
the beginning of this Century,
Britain
was no longer the
world’s
richest country.
Perhaps
this caused
Victorian
confidence in gradual reform
to
weaken. Whatever the reason, the
first
twenty years of
the Century were
a period of extremism in Britain. The Suffragettes, women demanding
the right
to vote, were
prepared
both to damage
property and
to
die
for
their
beliefs;
the
problem
of
Ulster in the
north of Ireland led to
a
Situation
in which some sections of the army appeared
ready to disobey the government;
and the government’s intröduction
of
new types and
levels of taxation
was opp.osed so absolutely by the House of Lords that even
Parliament, the founda- Lion of
the political
system,
seemed
to have an uncertain
future in its traditional
form.
But by
the end of the FirsL World War,
two
of these issues
had
been resolved to most people’s
satisfaction (the
Irish
problem remained)
and
the
rather
un-British climate
of
extremism died
out.

The
significant changes that took place in the twentieth
Century
are dealt
with
elsewhere
in
this book. Just one
thing
should be noted here.
It
was
from
the
beginning
of this
Century
that
the urban
working
dass
(the
majority of the
population) finally began
to
raake its voice heard. In Parliament, the Labour party gradually
replaced
the Liberais
(the
‘descendants’
of
the Whigs) as the main Opposition to the Conservatives (the
‘descendants’
of
the Tories). In addition, trade
unions
manag ed to organize
themselves.
In
1926,
they
Were
powerful
enough
to
hold
a General
Strike, and
from the
1930s
until
the
1980s
the
Trades Union
Congress
(see chapter 14)
was probably the single most powerful political force outside the
institutions of government and Parliament.

196
3

The
school-leaving age is raised to sixteen.

1968

The
‘age of majority’ (the age at which somebody iegaily becomes an
adult) is reduced from twenty-one to eighteen.

I97¹

Decimal
currency is introduced (see chapter 1 3).

¹973

Britain
joins the European Economic Community.

1981

Marriage
of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

1982

Falklands
War (see chapter 1 2)

1984

Privatization
of British Telecom. This is the first time that shares in a national
— ized Company are sold direct to the public (see chapter 13),

‘990

Gulf
War (see chapter 1 2) 1994

Channel
tunnel opens.

QUESTIONS

io66
And All That is
the title of
a
well-known
joke
history
book
published
before
the
Second
World
War which satirizes the way that history
was
taught
in British schools at the
time.
This
typic-
ally involved memorizing lots
of
dates.
Why, do you
think,
did
the
writers choose this title?

In
1986,
the BBC
released
a
computer-video package of detailed
Information
about every
place
in
Britain.
It
took
a
long time to
prepare
this package but the
decision
to
publish it in
1986
(and
not,
for example,
1985
or 1987)
was
deliberate.
What is significant about the date?
Whicli
of the
famous
names in
populär British
history
could be described
as ‘resistance fighters’?

4
Around
the year
1
yoo,
about
£
million
people used
the
English language
— less
than
the
popu­lation of
Britain at the
time.
Today, it
is estimated
that at least 600 million people use English
regu- larly in
everyday
life
—
at
least
ten times the
present population of
Britain.
Why
has
the
use of
English expanded so much in
the last £00
years?

£
How would you describe the changing
relation­ship between
religion and politics in British history? Are the changes that
have
taken
place
similar
to
those that have
occurred
in
your
country?

6
Britain is unusual
among
European countries in that, for more than 300 years
now,
there
has
not been a single revolution or civil war.
What reasons
can
you find
in this
chapter which
might help to explain ihis
stability?

SUGGESTIONS

Understanding
Britain by John
Rändle
(Basil Blackwell, Oxford) is
a
very
readable history
of Britain,
written with the
Student
in
mind.

The
Story of English is
a BBC series
of
nine programmes
which is
available 011
video. Episodes
2—4 are
largely historical in
conlent
and
very
interesting.

There
is a
strong
tradition of
historical novels
in
English (set at various times
in
Britain’s history). The writings
of Georgette
Hey er, Norah
Lofts,Jean Plaidy,
Rosemary
Sutcliffe
and Henry and
Geoffrey
Treece
are
good
examples.

It
has been
claimed
that the
British
love of compromise is the result
of
the
country’s
physical
geography.
This may or may not be
true,
but it
is certainly true that the
land
and
climate in
Britain
have
a notable lack
of extremes. Britain has mountains, but none of
them
are very high; it also
has
flat land,
but
you cannot travel far without encoun-
tering
hills;
it has
no
really big
rivers; it doesn’t usually get very cold in the
winter or very hot in
the
summer;
it has no active volcanoes, and an earth
tremor
which does
no
more than rattle teacups in
a
few houses
is
reported in the national news media.

The

British
iandscape

1. 100 200 300 km

1 I _l f

Land
height in metres above sea level More than 500 200 — 500 Less than
200

©
Oxford University
Press

-5-9
° N ~

Climate

The
climate
of
Britain is more or less
ihe same
as
that
of
the north- western
part
of
the
European
mainland. The populär belief
that it rains
all
the
time in Britain is simply not true. The
image
of
a wet,
foggy land
was created
two thousand years ago
by the
invading
Romans and
has been
perpetuated in modern
times by Hollywood. In
fact,
London
gets
no more rain
in
a year than most
other major European cities, and
less than
some (:>
How
wet
is
Britain?).

The
amount of rain
that
falls on a
town
in
Britain
depends on
where
it is. Generally speaking, the
further west
you
go, the
more
rain
you get. The mild winters mean
that
snow is a regulär
feature of
the higher areas only.
Occasionally, a
whole
winter
goes
by in lower- lying parts
without
any
snow
at all.
The winters
are in
general
a bit
colder in the
east of the country
than they
are in
the
west,
while in
summer, the
south
is slightly warmer and
sunnier than
the
north.

Why
has Britain’s
climate got such
a bad
reputation?
Perhaps
it
is
for the same reason
that
British people always
seem to be talking
about
the
weatlier. This
is
its
changeability. There
is
a
saying that Britain
doesn
t
have
a
climate,
it only has weathcr. It
may
not
rain very much altogether,
but you
can
never be
sure
of a dry day;
there can
be
cool
(even cold) days in
July
and
some quite
warm days
in
January.

The
lack
of extremes is the reason why,
on
the
few
occasions
when it gets genuinely hot
or freezing cold,
the
country
seems to be totaliy unprepared
for it. A bit
of
snow and a
few
days of
frost and
the trains
stop working and
the
roads
are
blocked; if
the
thermometer goes above
8o°F (27°C) (t>
How
hot or cold
is Britain?), people behave as
if
they were in the Sahara and the
temperature
makes
front-page
head­lines.
These things
happen so rarely that
it
is not
worth organizing life to
be ready
for
them.

►
How
wet is Britain?

west east

Annual
total rainfall (approximate) in some European cities

1000
mm 900 mm 800 mm 700 mm 600 mm 500 mm 400 mm 300 mm 200 mm 100 mm

Land
and setdement

Land
and settlement

► The
vanrshing coastline

Annual
temperacure ränge (from hottest month to coldest month) in some
European cities

30

25

68
20
59 15

10

5

0

-5

14 -10 —

The
Holbeck Hotel faliing into the sea

86

77

50

41

32

23

ьььььь
ьOььььь

Britain
has neither towering mounlain ranges, nor impressively large
rivers, plains or forests. But this does not mean that its
landscape is boring. What it lacks in grandeur it makes up for in
variety. The scenery changes noticeably over quite short distances.
It has often been remarked that a journey of i oo miles (i 60
kilometres) can, as a result, seem twice as far. Overall, the south
and east of the country is comparatively low-lying, consisting of
either flat plains or gently rolling liills. Mountainous areas are
found only in the north and west, although these regions also have
flat areas (>_;
The British landscape).

Human
influence has been extensive, The forests that once covered the
land have largely disappeared. Britain has a greater proportion of
grassland than any other country in Europe except the Republic of
Ireland. One distinctive human influence, especially common in
Southern England, is the enclosure of fields with hcdgerows. This
feature increases the impression of variety. Although many
hedgerows have disappeared in the second half of tlie twentieth
Century (farmers have dug them up to increase the size of their
fields and become more efficient), there are still enough of them
to support a great variety of bird-life.

How
hot or cold is Britain?

Most
people in Britain are happier using the Fahrenheit scale of
measurement (F). To them, a temperature ‘in the upper twenties’
means that it is freezing and one ‘in the low seventies’ will
not kill you — it is just pleasantly warm.

j’SS//
* **

^
cf

Britain
is an island under conslant attack from the surrounding sea. Every
year, little bits of the easi coast vanish into the North Sea.
Some­times the land slips away slowly. But at other times it
slips away very sud- denly. In i 99.3 a dramatic example of this
process oeenrred near die town of Scarborough in Yorkshirc.

The
Holbeck Hotel, built on a clifftop overlooking the sea, had been
the best hotel in town for 1 1 o years. But on the morning of 4
June, guests awoke to find cracks in tlie wails and tlie doors
stuck. When they looked out of the window, instead of seeing
fifteen metres of hotel garden, they saw nothing — except the sea.
There was no time to collect their belongings. They had to leave
the hotel immediately. During the day various rooms of the hotel
started leaning at odd angles and then slipped down tlie ciiff. The
Holbeck Hotels role in the tourism industry was over. However, by
‘dying’ so dramatically, it provided one last great sight for
tourists. Hun- dreds of them watched die action throughout the day.

Much
of the land is used
for human habitation. This
is
not
just
because
Britain is
densely
populated
(>
The
British Isles: where people live). Partly
because
of
their
desire for privacy and
their
love of
the
country­side (see chapter 5),
the
English
and
the
Welsh
don’t like living
in
blocks of flats in city
cenlres
and the
proportion of
people
who
do
so
is
lower than in
other
European
countries. As a
result,
cities in
England
and
Wales
have,
wherever possible, been built
outwards rather
than upwards (although this
is
not so
much the case
in
Scottish cities).
For example,
Greater London
has
about three times
the
popu­lation
of greater Athens
but
it
occupies
ten
times the
area
of land.

However,
because most people
(about
75%)
live
in
towns
or cities rather than in
villages
or
in the
countryside,
this
habit
of
building
outwards
does not mean that you
see
buildings wherever you
go in Britain.
There
are areas
of
completely open
countryside
everywhere and
some
of
the
mountainous areas
remain virtually untouched.

The
environment and pollution

It
was in
Britain
that the word ’smog’ was first
used
(to describe
a
mixture
of smoke and fog).
As the
world’s
first
industrialized country, its
cities
were
the
first
to suffer this
atmospheric
condition.
In
the
nineteenth Century
London’s
‘pea-soupers’
(thick
smogs)
became
farnous
through descriptions of
them in
the
works
of
Charles Dickens
and in the
Sherlock
Holmes stories. The
Situation
in
London reached
its worst point
in
195-2.
At the end
of
that year
a particularly
bad
smog,
which
lasted
for several
days,
was estimated to have
caused
between 4,000
and 8,000 deaths.

Water
pollution was
also
a
problem.
In the
nineteenth
Century
it
was
once suggested
that
the
Houses
of Parliament
should
be
wrapped in
enormous
wet
sheets
to
protect
those inside from the
awful
smell
of
the River
Thames. Until the
1360s, the
first
thing
that
happened to people
who
feil
into
theThames
was
that
they were
rushed
to
hospital
to
have their
stomachs pumped out!

Then,
during the
1960s
and
1970s,
laws
were
passed which
forbade
the heating
of homes
with
open coal fires
in
city areas and
which stopped
much of
the pollution from factories.
At
one
time,
a
scene of
fog
in a
Hollywood
him
was
all
that
was necessary to symbolize London.
This
image
is now
out of date,
and by
the
end of the 1970s
it was said
to
be
possible
to
catch
fish
in
the
Thames
outside
Parliament.

However,
as in
the rest
of
western
Europe,
the
great
increase in
the use
of the
motor car
in
the last
quarter of
the
twenti eth
Century
caused an
increase
in
a
new kind
of
air
pollution. This
problem
has
become so
serious that
the television
wealher
forecast now regularly
issues
warnings of‘poor air
quality’.
On
some
occasions it is
bad
enough
to prompt official advice
that certain
people (such
as
asthma
sufferers) should not
even leave their
houses,
and that
nobody
should
Lake
any
vigorous
exercise,
such
as
jogging,
out
of doors.

London

London
(the largest
city in
Europe) dominates
Britain.
It
is
home
for
the
headquarters
of
all government
departments, Parliament, the major
legal
institutions
and
the
monarch.
It
is
the country’s
business and
banking
centre
and the
centre
of its
transport network. It
contains
the
headquarters
of the national television networks
and of
all
the
national newspapers. It is about
seven times larger than any
other
city in
the
country. About
a
fifth
of the total
population
of the
UK
lives
in the
Greater
London
area.

The
original
walled
city of London was quite
small.
(It is
known colloquially
today
as
‘the square
mileV)
It did
not contain
Parliament or the
royal
court,
since
this
would
have interfered
with the
auto- nomy
of
the merchants and traders
who lived and worked there.
It
was
in
Westminster,
another
‘city’
outside London’s
walls,
that these national
institutions
met.
Today,
both
‘cities’ are just
two areas
of central London.
Tlie square
mile is
home
to the country’s
main
finan­cial
organizations,
the
territory
of
the
stereotypical English
‘city gent’.
During
the daytime,
nearly a million people
work
there,
but less
than
8,000 people
actually
live
there.

Two
other well-known
areas
of London
are
the
West
End and
the
East
End. The
former is known
for its
many
theatres,
cinemas
and
expensive shops.
The latter is known
as
the poorer
residential area
of
central London. It
is the home
of
the
Cockney
(see chapter 4)
and in
the
twentieth
Century
large
numbers
of immigrants settled there.

There
are
many
other parts
of
central
London which
have their
own distinctive characters, and
central
London itself
makes
up only a very
small part of
Greater London. In
common
with
many
other European
cities, the population
im
the
central area
has decreased
in the second half
of
the
twentieth Century. The majority
of ‘Londoners’
live
in its suburbs, millions
of them
travelling
into the centre each day
to work.
These
suburbs
cover
a vast area
of
land.

Like
many
large
cities,
London
is
in
some
ways untypical
of
the rest of the country
in that
it
is so
cosmopolilan. Although all
of Britain’s
cities
have
some
degree of
cultural
and
racial variety,
the
variety
is
by
far
the
greatest
in
London.
A survey
carried
out in
the
1980s
found
that
1
37
different
languages were spoken in
the
homes
of just one district.

In
recent
years it
has
been claimed
that
London is
in
decline.
It is
losing its
place as one
of
the world’s
biggest
financial
centres
and, in
comparison with many
other Western European cities, it looks rather dirty
and neglected. Nevertheless,
its
popularity
as
a
tourist destina­tion
is still growing. And it
is
not
only
tourists
who
like
visiting
London
— the readers
of
Business
Traveller magazine often vote
it
their favourite
city
in
the world
in which
to do business. This popularity is
probably
the result
of
its
combination of
apparently
infinite
cul­tural
variety and a
long history
which
has
left
many visible
signs
of its richness and
drama.

Farmland
in southeast England

Southern
England

The
area
surrounding the
outer
suburbs
of
London has the
reputation
of
being
‘commuter
land’.
This
is
the most
densely
populated
area in the UK
which does
not
include
a
large
city,
and Inillions of its
inhabitants travel into London to work
every day.

Further
out
from
London the region
has
more
of
its own
distinctive
character. The
county
of Kent, which you pass
through when travel-
ling from Dover or
the
Channel tunnel
to London, is
known
as
‘the garden of
England¹
because of the many kinds
of fruit and
vegetables grown there. The Downs, a
series of
hills in a
horseshoe sliape to the south of London,
are
used for
sheep
farming
(though not
as intens- ively as
they used to
be).
The
Southern side
of
the Downs reaches the sea
in
many places
and
forms
the white cliffs of the
south
coast. Many
retired people live along
this coast.
Employment
in the south-east
of England
is mainly in trade, the provision of Services andlight
manufac­turing.
There is
little
heavy
industry. It
has therefore not
suffered
the
slow
economic
decline
of
many
other parts of England.

The
region known as The West
Country’ has an attractive image of
rural
beauty in British people’s
minds
— notice
the use of
the
word
‘country’ in its name. There
is some industry
and
one large city (Bristol was once
Britain’s
most important port after
London),
but farming is more
widespread
than it is in
most
other regions. Some parts
of the west
country are well-known for
their dairy produce,
such as Devonshire cream,
and fruit. The
south-west peninsula, with
its
rocky coast, numerous
small
bays
(once
noted for
smuggling activities)
and wild
moorlands such
as
Exmoor
and Dartmoor, Is the most
populär holiday area
in Britain. The winters are so mild in
some
low-lying
parts that
it is
even
possible to
grow
palm trees, and the töurist
industry
has coined the phrase ‘the English Riviera’.

East
Anglia, to
the
north-east of
London,
is also
comparatively
rural. It is the only
region
in
Britain
where there are large
expanses of
uniformly flat
land.
This flatness, together with the
comparatively
dry climate, has made it
the
main area
in
the country for the
growing
of wheat
and
other arable crops. Part of this
region,
the area known as
the Fens, has been
reclaimed
from
the sea, and much of it still
has
a
very
watery, misty feel to it. The Norfolk Broads, for example, are
criss-crossed by
hundreds of waterways
but
there
are no towns here,
so
this is a
populär
area for
boating
holidays.

The
Midlands

Birmingham
is
Britain’s
second largest
city.
During Lhe Industrial
Revolution
(see chapter 2), Birmingham, and the surrounding
area
of
the
West Midlands (sometimes known as the Black Country) developed into
the country’s major engineering centre, Despite the decline of
heavy
industry in
modern
times, factories in this
area
still convert
iron and
Steel
into
a
vast
variety of goods.

Land’s
End, lhe extreme Southwest point of England

An
industriell town in northern England

►
The
north-south divide

There
are many aspects oflife in Britain which illuslrate the so-called
‘north-south divide’, This is a well- known fact of British life,
although there is no actual geographica! boundary. Basically, the
south has almost always been more prosper- ous than the north, with
lower ra.ies of unemployment and more expens- ive houses. This is
especially true of the south-eastern area surrounding London. This
area is often referred to as the ‘Home Counties’. The word ‘home’
in this context highlights the importance attached to London and its
domination of public life.

There
are
other industrial
areas
in
the
Midlands,
notably
the towns
between
the
Black
Country and
Manchester known
as
The
PoLteries
(famous
for
producing
china such
as
that
made at the
factories
of
Wedgewood,
Spode
and Minton),
and
several towns
in
the
East Midlands,
such
as
Derby,
Leicester
and Nottingham.
On the east
coast,
Grimsby,
although a comparatively small
town,
is
one
of
Britain’s
most important fishing
ports,

Although
the
midlands
do
not
have
many positive
associations
in
the
minds of British people, tourism
has
flourished
in
‘Shakespeare
country’
(centred on Stratford-upon-Avon,
Shakespeare’s birthplace),
and Nottingham
has
successfully capitalized on
the
legend of
Robin Hood
(see chapter
2).

Northern
England

The
Pennine
mountains
ran up
the
middle
of
northern England
like
a
spine.
On either side, the large
deposits
of coal
(used
to provide
power)
andiron
ore
(used
to make machinery)
enabled these
areas
to lead the Industrial
Revolution
in
the
eighteenth Century. On the
western
side,
the Manchester area
(connected to
the port of
Liverpool
by
canal)
became, in the nineteenth
Century,
the
world’s
leading
producer
of
cotton
goods;
on
the
eastern side,
towns
such
as
Bradford and
Leeds
became
the world’s
leading
producers
of
woollen
goods. Many other
towns
sprang up
on both sides
of the Pennines
at
this
time,
as a result of the
growth
of
certain
auxiliary industries and of coal
mining. Further
south,
Sheffield became
a centre
for
the produc­tion
of Steel goods.
Further north,
around
Newcastle,
shipbuilding
was
the major industry.

In
the
minds of British people
the
prototype
of the
noisy,
dirty
factory that symbolizes the Industrial
Revolution is
found in the
indus­trial
north. But the achievements of
these
new
industrial towns
also
induced
a
feeling of
civic pride
in
their
inhabitants
and an
energetic realism,
epitomized by the
cliched saying ‘where there’s
muck
there’s
brass’
(wherever there is
dirt,
there is
money to be made).

The
decline in heavy
industry
in
Europe in
the second
half
of the
twentieth
Century hit the industrial
north
of England
hard. For a
long
time, the region
as a
whole
has
had a
level of unemployment significantly above the
national
average.

The
towns
on
either side of the
Pennines
are
flanked
by
steep slopes on which
it is
difficult
to build
and
are
surrounded by
land
most
of
which
is
unsuitable
for
any
agriculture
other
than
sheep
farming. Therefore, the
pattern
of settlement
in
the north
of England
is
often
different
from that
in the south.
Open
and uninhabited
countryside
is never
far
away
from its
cities
and
towns. The
typically
industrial
and
the
very
rural
interlock.
The
wild,
windswept moors which
are Lhe
setting
for Emily Bronte’s famous
novel
Wutlieritig Heights
seem a
world
away
from
the
smoke and
grime
of urban life
—
in
fact, they
are just up
the
road
(about
ty
kilometres) from Bradford!

Further
away from the
main industrial
areas, the north of England is
sparsely
populated. In
the
north-Western corner of
the
country is the
Lake
District.
The
Romantic poets
of
the
nineteenth
Century, Wordsworth, Coleridge
and Southey
(the ‘Lake Poets’), lived
here
and
wrote about
its
beauty,
It is the favourite destination
of people
who enjoy walking
holidays and
the
whole
area is classified
as
a National
Park
(the largesl
in
England).

Scotland

Scotland
has three fairly clearly-marked regions. Just
north of the border
with England
are
the
Southern
uplands, an
area of
small towns,
quite far apart
from
each
other,
whose economy depends to
a
large extent on
sheep
farming,
Further
north, there
is
the central plain.
Finally, there
are the
highlands, consisting
of
mountains
and
deep valleys and
induding
numerous
small islands
off
the west coast. This
area
of
spectacular
natural beauty occupies the same land area as
Southern England
but
fewer
than
a
million people live there.
Tourism is important in
the
local economy,
and so is
the
production
of
whisky.

It
is in the
central plain and
the
strip
of
east coast extending north- wards
from it that
more
than 80%
of
the population
of Scotland lives. In
recent
times, this
region has
had
many
of
the same difficulties as the
industrial
north of
England,
although
the
North Sea oil industry has helped
to
keep
unemployment
down.

Scotland’s
two major cities have
very
different reputations. Glasgow is
the third
largest city in Britain.
It
is
associated
with heavy
industry
and some
of
the worst housing conditions in Britain
(the
district
called
the
Gorbals, although now
rebuilt, was famous in
this
respect). However, this
image
is one-sided.
Glasgow
has a strong artistic heritage.
A
hundred
years
ago the
work
of the
Glasgow
School (led by
Mackintosh)
put
the city at
the forefront of
European
design and architecture. In 1990, it was the European City of
Culture.
Over
the centuries, Glasgow has
received
many immig- rants
from Ireland
and in
some
ways it
reflects the
divisions in the community
that
exist
in Northern
Ireland (see chapter 4). For example, of its two rival football
teams, one is Catholic (Celtic) and the
other
is
Protestant
(Rangers).

Edinburgh,
which is half the size of Glasgow, has a
comparatively
middle-class image (although dass
differences
between the two
cities
are not really very great). It
is the
Capital of Scotland
and
is associated
with scholarship,
the law and
administration.
This reputa­tion, together with
its
many fine historic
buildings, and also perhaps
its topography (there is
a
rock in the middle of the city on which
Stands
the castle)
has led
to its being called ‘the Athens of
the north’.
The
annual
Edinburgh
Festival of
the
arts is internationally
famous (see chapter 22).

1

Part
of Snowdonia National Park

Wales

As
in
Scotland,
most people in Wales live
in
one small
part of it.
In
the Welsh
case,
it
is
the
south-east
of
the
country that is
most
heavily
populated. Coal has been
mined
in
many
parts
of
Britain, but just
as British
people would
locate
the
prototype factory of the industrial revolution in
the
north
of England,
so
they would locate
its
prototype
coal
mine
in south Wales. Despite its industry,
no
really large cities have
grown
up
in
this area
(Cardiff,
the
capital
of
Wales, has
a popula­tion
of about a quarter of
a
million).
It
is the only
part
of
Britain with
a
higb
proportion
of industrial
villages.
Coal
mining
in south Wales has now ceased
and,
as
elsewhere, the
transition
to other forms of employment
has been
slow
and painful.

Most
of the rest of Wales is mountainous. Because
of
this,
com-
munication between south and
north
is very
difficult. As
a
result, each
part of
Wales has
closer contact
with
its neighbouring
part of England
than
it
does with
other
parts
of Wales:
the
north with Liverpool, and
mid-Wales,
with
die
English
west
midlands.
The
area
around Mount Snowdon
in the
north-west
of
the country is
very
beautiful and is
the
largesL
National Park in Britain.

Northern
Ireland

With
the
exception
of
Belfast, which
is
famous
for the manufacture of linen
(and
which
is
still a
shipbuilding
city),
this region is, like the rest of Ireland,
largely agricultural.
It
has
several
areas of spectacu-
lar
natural beauty.
One of
these is
the Giant’s
Causeway
on its
north coast,
so-called
because the rocks
in
the
area
form what
look
like
enormous
stepping
stones.

Questions
and suggestions

QUESTIONS

1. Bearing
   in
   niind
   its
   climate
   and
   general
   charac­ter,
   which part of Britain
   would
   you
   choose
   to
   live in?
   Why? Is
   this
   the same part
   that
   you
   would like
   to
   visit for
   a holiday? Why
   (not)?

2. How
   is
   the
   pattern
   of human
   settlement
   in
   your country
   different
   from that in
   Britain?

3. Does
   the capital city
   of
   your
   country
   stand in the
   same
   relation to the
   rest
   of
   the
   country
   as London does to
   Britain?

4. The
   two big television
   news
   organizations in
   Britain,
   the BBC
   and
   ITN,
   both
   have
   ‘North of England’ correspondents.
   But
   neither has
   a
   ‘South
   of
   England’
   correspondent,
   Why do you think
   this
   is? What
   is
   it
   an
   example
   of?

5
In the
short ‘tour’
of
the
regions
of Britain in
this chapter,
some sections are longer than
others.
This
is
pardy
because
some regions have ‘higher
profiles’
than others —
that
is, more
is
known
or
imagined
about
them
than
others.
Which
are
the
regions
in
Britain that
seem to have
the higher
profiles? What
do
their reputa- tions
consist
of?

SUGGESTIONS

Spotlight
on Britain by Sheerin, Seath and
White (Oxford
University Press) is a
book
written for the
non-native
Student
of
Britain
using
a
geographical approach.

If
you
enjoy
travel
writing, there are
several
books
which offer accounts
of
journeys
llirough or
around Britain. The
Kingdom
by
the Sea by
the
respected
novelist Paul
Theroux
(Penguin) is
an
example. There
are
many
nineteenth-century English novels
which
invoke
a
sense
of place.
The action
in
Thomas Hardy’s novels,
such
as
Return
of
the
Native and
Tess of
the D’Urbervilles, usually
takes
place in the
south
west
of England
(mainly
the
county
of
Dorsel),
in
an
area
which
Hardy called
Wessex.
Wuthering
Heights by
Emily
Bronte has the York- shire moors as its
setting.
More
recently, Graham Swift’s
novel Waterland
(Picador), as
its Lide suggests, takes account
of the effect of
the
landscape of the fens
in
East
Anglia
on the
actions
of die people
who live
there.

4

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Викторина по английскому языку

«What have you learned about

the United Kingdom of  Great Britain  and  Northern Ireland?»

                                                                                   Выполнила

                                       ученица 9 класса  

                                                     Мирахмедова Маргарита

                                                          Руководитель Бухгольц В.Э.

2013

The United Kingdom of  Great Britain  and  Northern Ireland

 1. What kind of state is the United Kingdom? (a parliamentary monarchy)

 2. What does the word «Albion», the poetic name of Great Britain, mean?(white)

 3. What is the national emblem of England? (a rose)

 4. What is the national emblem of Scotland? (a thistle)

 5. What is the national emblem of Wales? (a daffodil)

 6. What is the national emblem of Northern Ireland? (a shamrock and a red hand)

 7. What is the capital of England? (London)

 8. What is the capital of Scotland? (Edinburgh)

 9. What is the capital of Northern Ireland? (Belfast)

 10. What is the capital of Wales? (Cardiff)

 11. What is the nickname of the flag of the UK?(Union Jack)

 12. What is the name of the London residence of Queen Elizabeth II?(Buckingham Palace)

 13. What is the official residence of the Prime Minister of the UK? (No.10,Downing St)

 14. Who is the architect of the famous St.Paul’s Cathedral? (Sir Christopher Wren)

 15. What is the nickname of London’s Underground? (the Tube)

 16. Where is the residence of the head of the English Church?(In Canterbury)

 17. What is the seat of the British Government?(the Houses of Parliament)

 18. Where can you see wax figures of many famous people?(in Madame Tussaud’s)

 19. How many bronze lions can you see at the foot of  the  monument to Admiral Nelson?(4)

 20. How many bridges cross the Thames?(14)

 21. What was the first name of London? (Llyn-Dyn)

 22. What is the largest museum in London?(the British Museum)

 23. Who was the first woman Prime Minister in the UK?(Margaret Thatcher)

 24. What is the name of the  first Queen of the United Kingdom?(Victoria)

 25. What is the biggest city in Scotland?(Glasgow)

 26. What is the highest mountain in Scotland? (Ben Nevis)

 27. What is the highest mountain Wales? (Snowdon)

 28. What is the traditional male costume in Scotland? (the kilt)

 29. Where can you see the tombs of many British kings and queens and other famous people, such as Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling? (in Westminster Abbey)

 30. What is another name of the Houses of Parliament? (Palace of Westminster)

 31. How many towers does the Tower of London consist of? (13)

         GOOD LUCK!