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My Burwell and Bingham Family came from England in 1700’sBurwell Family The Burwell family can trace their ancestors
back to the ancient territories of England between the 11th and 12th
centuries. The Burwell family traces their ancestral
roots back to Anglo Saxon origin, and first appeared in ancient medieval
records in Suffolk . That from very early on the Burwell family not only held
lands and estates in England but were also actively allied with other
influential families. They also branched out into other territories and
holdings, before taking the long voyage to the new world. BURWELL Shield: Gold with an ermine chevron
between three burr leaves. BURWELL Crest: A lion's paw holding three
burr leaves. Bingham Family The Bingham family can trace their ancestors back to the ancient territories of England between the 11th and 12th centuries. The Bingham family traces their ancestral roots back to Anglo Saxon origin, and first appeared in ancient medieval records in Somerset . Find a more In depth account on the Bingham Family History Scroll. That from very early on the Bingham family not only held lands and estates in England but were also actively allied with other influential families. They also branched out into other territories and holdings, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The
word "England" is often used colloquially—and incorrectly—to refer
to Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole.[14]
There are many instances of this usage in history, where references to
England are actually intended to include Scotland and Wales as well.[15] The term is used throughout the world and even by
English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of
Britain.
England (pronounced /ˈɪŋglənd/) (Old English: Englaland,
Middle
English: Engelond) is the largest and most populous constituent country[1][2] of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its inhabitants account
for more than 83% of the total population of the United Kingdom,[3]
while the mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds
of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to
the north and Wales
to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the North Sea,
Irish Sea,
Celtic
Sea, Bristol Channel and English
Channel. England
became a unified state during the 10th century and takes its name from the Angles, one of
the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th
and 6th centuries. The capital of England is London, the
largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European
Union by most, but not all, measures.[4] England
ranks amongst the world's most influential and far-reaching centres of
cultural development.[5] It is the
place of origin of the English language and the Church of England, and English
law forms the basis of the legal
systems of many countries; in addition, London was the centre of the British
Empire, and the country was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.[6] England
was the first country in the world to become industrialised.[citation needed]
England is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern
experimental science.
England was the world's first parliamentary democracy[7] and
consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had
their origin in England have been widely
adopted by other nations. The Kingdom of England was a separate state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a political
union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain,[8] with the Principality of Wales already in the
English state. Etymology and usage
See
also: British Isles (terminology) England
is named after the Angles, the
largest of the Germanic tribes who settled in England in the 5th
and 6th centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula
of Angeln, in
what is now Denmark
and northern Germany.[9]
(The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a
popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and
refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.[10] The
Angles' name has had various spellings. The earliest known reference to these
people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in
chapter 40 of his Germania,[11]
written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical
position within Germania, but states that, with six other tribes, they
worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in
the Ocean". The
early 8th century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to
the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or
Angli (in Latin).[12] According
to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first
known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the
island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in
1538.[13] The word
"England" is often used colloquially—and incorrectly—to refer to
Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole.[14]
There are many instances of this usage in history, where references to
England are actually intended to include Scotland and Wales as well.[15] The term is used throughout the world and even by
English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of
Britain. [edit] History
Main article: History of England [edit] Prehistory
Main article: Prehistoric Britain
Stonehenge,
a Neolithic
and Bronze
Age megalithic monument in Wiltshire,
thought to have been erected c. 2000–2500 BC Bones
and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that Homo
erectus lived in what is now England about 700,000 years ago.[16]
At this time, England was joined to mainland Europe by a large land bridge.
The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing
westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and the Seine. This area was
greatly depopulated during the period of the last major ice age, as were
other regions of the British Isles. In the subsequent recolonisation, after
the thawing of the ice, genetic research shows that present-day England was
the last area of the British Isles to be repopulated,[17] about
13,000 years ago. The migrants arriving during this period contrast with the other
of the inhabitants of the British Isles, coming across lands from the south
east of Europe, whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a
coastal route from Iberia. These migrants would later adopt the Celtic culture that
came to dominate much of western Europe. [edit] Roman conquest
of Britain
Main article: Roman conquest of Britain By
AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion,
Britain had already been the target of frequent invasions, planned and
actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman
Empire. It was first invaded by the Roman dictator Julius
Caesar in 55 BC, but it was conquered more fully by the Emperor
Claudius in 43 AD. Like other regions on the edge of the empire,
Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans, and their economic
and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age,
especially in the south. With the fall of the Roman Empire 400 years later,
the Romans left England. [edit] Anglo-Saxons
Main article: History of Anglo-Saxon England Further information: Anglo-Saxon conquest of England
An Anglo-Saxon helmet found at Sutton Hoo The History of Anglo-Saxon England
covers the history of early mediaeval England from the end of Roman Britain
and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the
Conquest by the Normans in 1066.[18] Fragmentary
knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the 5th and 6th centuries comes from the
British writer Gildas
(6th century) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the
English people begun in the 9th century), saints' lives, poetry,
archaeological findings, and place-name studies. The
dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity
and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have
come from three directions—from Rome to the south, and Scotland and Ireland to the
north and west. From
about 500, England was divided (it is believed) into seven petty
kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: Northumbria,
Mercia, East
Anglia, Essex, Kent,
Sussex, and Wessex. The
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the
time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised
as Bretwalda
("Lord of Britain"). Generally speaking, the title fell in the 7th
century to the kings of Northumbria, in the 8th to those of Mercia, and in
the 9th, to Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the
Mercians at the Battle of Ellendun. In the next century his family
came to rule all England. [edit] Kingdom
Statue of Alfred the Great at Winchester Originally,
England (or Englaland) was a geographical term to describe the part of
Britain occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation-state.
It became politically united through the expansion of the kingdom of Wessex,
whose king Athelstan brought the whole of England under
one ruler for the first time in 927, although unification did not become
permanent until 954, when Edred
defeated Eric Bloodaxe and became King of England. In
1016 England was conquered by the Danish king Canute
the Great, and became the centre of government for his short-lived empire
which included Denmark
and Norway. In
1042 England became a separate kingdom again with the accession of Edward the Confessor, heir of the native
English dynasty. The
Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an independent
nation-state right through to the Acts of Union and the Union
of Crowns. However the political ties and direction of England were
changed forever by the Norman Conquest in 1066. [edit] Middle Ages
Main articles: Britain in the Middle Ages and Medieval demography
The signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. It was one of the first steps
towards the idea of modern democracy.
Fifteenth-century miniature depicting the English victory over France at
the Battle of Agincourt. The
next few hundred years saw England as a major part of expanding and dwindling
empires based in France,
with the "Kings of England" using England as a source of troops to
enlarge their personal holdings in France for many years (Hundred Years' War) ; in fact the English
crown did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was lost
during the reign of Mary Tudor (the Channel
Islands are still crown dependencies, though not part of the UK). In
the 13th Century, through conquest Wales (the remaining Romano-Celts) were
brought under the control of English monarchs.
This was formalised in the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, by which became
part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales
shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity
originally called England and later England and Wales. An epidemic of
catastrophic proportions, the Black
Death first reached England in the summer of 1348. The Black Death is estimated
to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population. England
alone lost as much as 70% of its population, which passed from seven million
to two million in 1400. The plague
repeatedly returned to haunt England throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[19]
The Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 was
the last plague outbreak.[20] [edit] Reformation
Main article: English Reformation
Portrait of Elizabeth made to commemorate the English victory over the Spanish
Armada (1588) During
the English Reformation in the 16th century, the
external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was
abolished and replaced with Royal Supremacy and ultimately describes the
establishment of a Church of England, outside the Roman Catholic Church,
under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation
differed from its European counterparts in that it was a political,
rather than purely theological, dispute at root.[21] The
break with Rome
started in the reign of Henry VIII. The
English Reformation paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism
in the church and other institutions. [edit] Civil War
Main article: English Civil War
Cromwell at Dunbar. Oliver
Cromwell united the whole of the British
Isles by force and created the Commonwealth of England. The English Civil War was a series of armed
conflicts and political machinations that took place between Parliamentarians
and Royalists
from 1642 until 1651. The first (1642–1645) and second (1648–1649) civil wars
pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the
Long
Parliament, while the third war (1649–1651) saw fighting
between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump
Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3
September 1651. The
Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son
Charles II and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and
then with a Protectorate (1653–1659) : the personal
rule of Oliver Cromwell. After a brief return to
Commonwealth rule, in 1660 The Crown was restored and Charles II accepted Convention Parliament's invitation
to return to England. During the interregnum the monopoly of the Church of
England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors
consolidated the already-established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.
Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs
could not govern without the consent of Parliament although this would not be
cemented until the Glorious Revolution later in the century. [edit] Great Britain
and the United Kingdom
The Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland remained separate until
1707, when under the Acts of Union both England and Scotland lost
their individual political – although not legal – identities. The union has
subsequently changed its name twice; firstly on the merger with the Kingdom of Ireland following the Act of Union in 1800 creating the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland in 1801. Then following the secession from the union
of the Irish Free State under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, it
became the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Throughout
these changes, England (including Wales) retained a separate legal identity
from its partners, with a separate legal
system (English law) from those in Northern
Ireland (Northern Ireland law) and Scotland (Scots law).
(See subdivisions of the United Kingdom) Wales
was made part of the Kingdom of England by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, and it was
legally incorporated into England by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746, making
laws passed in England automatically applicable to Wales. This was reversed
by the Welsh Language Act 1967, which gave Wales
a separate identity from England. Since then, legal and political terminology
refers to "England and Wales". The county of Monmouthshire has long been an ambiguous
area, its legal identity passing between England and Wales at various
periods. In the Local Government Act 1972 it was made
part of Wales. The
Wales and Berwick Act 1746 also refers to the formerly Scottish burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The border town changed
hands several times and was last conquered by England in 1482, but was not
officially incorporated into England. Berwick is regarded today as part of
England. The Isle of
Man and the Channel Islands are Crown dependencies and are not part of England
or of the United Kingdom. [edit] Politics
A Mediaeval
manuscript, showing the Parliament of England in front of the king
c. 1300 Main articles: Politics of England, Politics of the United Kingdom,
and Government of England There
has not been a Government of England since 1707, when the
Kingdom of England merged with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of
Great Britain, although both kingdoms have been ruled by a single monarch
since 1603. Before the Acts of Union of 1707, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England. The
Scottish and Welsh governing institutions were created by the UK parliament
with support from the majority of people of Scotland and Wales in referenda
in 1997 and are not independent of the rest of the United Kingdom. However,
this gave each country a separate political entity that left England as the
only part of Britain directly ruled in nearly all matters by the British
government in London. In Cornwall, a region of England claiming a distinct
national identity, there has been a campaign for a Cornish
assembly along Welsh lines by nationalist parties such as Mebyon
Kernow.
The Palace of Westminster, Parliament of the
United Kingdom Because
Westminster is the UK parliament but also votes on local English matters
devolution of national matters to parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland has refocused attention on a long-standing anomaly
called the West Lothian question. The
"Question" is that there is no convention or rule whereby Scottish
MPs are barred from voting on issues relating only to England and Wales in
the post devolution era. Welsh
devolution has removed the anomaly for Wales, but highlighted the anomaly for
England: Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English issues, but purely
Scottish and Welsh issues are debated in Scotland and Wales, not at
Westminster; in fact Scottish MPs are even unable to vote on such issues
affecting their own constituencies. This problem is exacerbated by an
over-representation of Scottish MPs in the government, sometimes referred to
as the Scottish mafia; as of September 2006, seven of the
twenty-three Cabinet members are Scottish,
including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Defence
Secretary. In addition, Scotland traditionally benefited from moderate malapportionment
in its favour, increasing its representation to a degree disproportionate to
its population. In 2004 the Scottish Parliament
(Constituencies) Act 2004 was passed which rectified this to a degree,
reducing the number of MPs representing Scottish constituencies from 73 to 59
and brought the number of voters per constituency closer to that in England.
This change was implemented in the 2005 General Election. In
terms of national administration, England's affairs are managed by a
combination of the UK government, the UK parliament, England-specific quangos such as English
Heritage, and the mostly unelected Regional Assemblies. There
are calls for a devolved English Parliament, and
certain English parties go further by calling for the dissolution of the
Union entirely.[22][23]
However, the approach favoured by the current Labour government was (on the basis that
England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state entity) to propose
the devolution of power to the Regions of England. Lord
Falconer claimed a devolved English parliament would dwarf the rest of
the United Kingdom.[24] Referendums
would decide whether people wanted to vote for directly elected regional assemblies to watch over the work of
the non-elected Regional Development Agencies. During
the campaign, a common criticism of the proposals was that England did not
need "another tier of bureaucracy".[25] On the
other hand, many said that they were not decentralising
enough, and amounted not to devolution, but to little more than local government
reorganisation, with no real power being removed from central government, and
no real power given to the regions, which would not even gain the limited
powers of the Welsh Assembly, much less the tax-varying and
legislative powers of the Scottish Parliament (but Welsh powers are now
being expanded). They said that power was simply re-allocated within the
region, with little new resource allocation and no real prospects of
Assemblies being able to change the pattern of regional aid. Late in the
process, responsibility for regional transport was added to the proposals.
This was perhaps crucial in the North East, where resentment at the Barnett
Formula, which delivers greater public spending per head to adjacent
Scotland, was a significant impetus for the North East devolution campaign.
However, a referendum on this issue in North East England on 4 November
2004 rejected this
proposal, and plans for referendums in other Regions were shelved. [edit] Subdivisions
Main article: Administrative divisions of
England See
also: Counties of England Historically,
the highest level of local government in England was the county. These have their origin in the shires, the
subdivisions of the kingdom of Wessex, which were extended over the rest of England as
Wessex expanded to unite the country in the ninth and tenth centuries. Some
of these new shires, particularly in the south-east of England, retained the
extent and names of the kingdoms or subdivisions of kingdoms that had existed
there before, such as Sussex and Kent,
but most were new creations, named after their principal town with the suffix
"-shire" added, for example Warwickshire
from Warwick.
In the far north of England, the system took longer to become regularised and
County
Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland
and Westmorland
emerged after the Norman Conquest. The counties each had a county
town. Since
these historical county lines were drawn
up before the Industrial Revolution and the mass
urbanisation of England, the changes in the distribution of population and
the demands on local administration resulting from those developments have
led to a series of local government reorganisations since the latter part of
the 19th century. The solution to the emergence of large urban areas was the
creation of large metropolitan counties centred on
cities (an example being Greater Manchester). The creation of unitary authorities, where districts gained the administrative status
of a county, began with the 1990s reform of local
government. Today, some confusion exists between the ceremonial counties (which do not
necessarily form an administrative unit) and the metropolitan and
non-metropolitan counties. Non-metropolitan
counties (or "shire counties") are divided into one or more districts. At the lowest level, England
is divided into parishes, although these are not found everywhere
(many urban areas for example are unparished).
Parishes are prohibited from existing in Greater London. England
is now also divided into nine regions, which do not have an elected
authority and exist to co-ordinate certain local government functions across
a wider area. London is an exception, however, and is the one
region that now has a representative authority as well as a directly elected mayor.
The 32 London boroughs and the Corporation of London remain the local form
of government in the city. |
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