England

Lore & Background

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic. It takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had extensive cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The Kingdom of England, which included Wales after 1535, ceased to be a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union brought into effect a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain. England is the origin of the English language, the English legal system (which served as the basis for the common law systems of many other countries), association football, and the Anglican branch of Christianity; its parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England is home to the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world: the University of Oxford, founded in 1096, and the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209.

In Their Own Story

The autumn gale slams against the hull of a third-rate frigate as it rounds the Needles. Below, the grey waters of the Channel churn white, and the distant lights of a merchant convoy flicker like earthbound stars. In the captain's cabin, a sealed letter from the Admiralty still bears the royal cipher. Somewhere behind him, in a London office that smells of tallow and ink, a clerk is already tallying the tonnage of sugar coming in from Barbados. The Crown's ledger does not care about weather. It cares about tonnage, about the node, about the next quarter's revenue. And it cares, in a way the captain does not yet understand, about a parliament that has begun to argue about the very right to collect that revenue. The frigate turns north into the dark. The empire, as ever, runs on salt water and arithmetic.

Reader's Guide

England's terrain chiefly consists of low hills and plains, especially in the centre and south. Upland and mountainous terrain is mostly found in the north and west, including Dartmoor, the Lake District, the Pennines, and the Shropshire Hills. The London metropolitan area has a population of over 15 million as of 2025, representing the United Kingdom's largest metropolitan area. England's population of 56.3 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom, largely concentrated around London, the South East, and conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, and Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century.

Did You Know?

• The name 'England' is derived from the Old English name meaning 'land of the Angles', a Germanic tribe from the Angeln region of what is now the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
• The earliest recorded use of the term 'England' is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
• The earliest known evidence of human presence in what is now England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to about 780,000 years ago.
• The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD during the reign of Emperor Claudius, incorporating the area into the Roman Empire as Britannia province.