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To the northwest of Europe there is a group of islands known as the Brittanies, Great Britain being the most important due to its size and the one that gives its name to the archipelago. Few details of the language or civilization of the earliest inhabitants survive, other than memorial monuments, such as Stonehenge, dating from the Bronze Age. -
After the Norman Conquest there was replacement of personnel in the Church, but no main change in form of worship. There was, however, a strengthening of the State vis-à-vis the Church.
Thomas à Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury. He was assassinated, in AD 1170, on the orders of King Henry II, who considered him too independent. -
He lived in North East England. He was a Christian Saint, but also a great historian, effectively the father of English History. He wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
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The first foreign explorers who reached the archipelago were Greeks from Massilia (today Marseilles). Before the arrival of the Romans, all the peoples of the British Isles were Celtic-speaking.
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The territory of current-day England was inhabited by the Celtic people from the middle of the 5th century BC.
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The Roman general Julius Caesar made an expedition to the island, which he named Britannia, with an army and subdued England, boosting her to recognize the supremacy of Rome, through the payment of tribute and Roman influence. -
In the Middle Ages, especially in the 5th century, the process of strengthening the English monarchy occurs.
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In the 10th century, the region was heavily attacked by the Vikings, but it resisted and grew stronger. -
The end of the 12th century was marked by great political instability. King Richard I of England, known as Richard the Lionheart, was participating in the third crusade and was captured, becoming a prisoner of the Duke of Austria. During this period, the English aristocracy gained power in the kingdom.
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In the context of religious reforms, the English King Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church and founded the Anglican Church. -
The English Revolution emerged. In this process, the English monarchy lost power to Parliament, taking into account the parliamentary regime.
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England experienced an important transformation process in production methods, with the aim of using technology to speed up the manufacture of products and reduce costs. This process became known as the Industrial Revolution. -
Driven by the Industrial Revolution, England became one of the great powers in the world to carry out the process of neo-colonialism. In this period there was a great improvement of the country by exploiting the regions of Africa and Asia. It was the period of formation of the great British empire -
Great Britain actively participated in the two world wars. In World War II it was the main military force to face the forces of Nazi Germany, being decisive in the resistance and after the victory of the allies.
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The Roman occupation took place. The province of England was managed by the Romans during this period.
The Bretons had been subdued by the Romans, and the whole country had been formed into Roman provinces, except for the north mountains inhabited by savage peoples who tattooed themselves. -
In the 5th century, there was the invasion of the Roman Empire by the barbarians. The region of England was invaded and dominated mainly by Germanic peoples: Angles and Saxons. These Germanic peoples excluded the somewhat Romanized Celts into Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and French Brittany. -
Cerdic of Wessex, who would found the Kingdom of Wessex (or the West Saxons) in the year 519. After the Anglo-Saxon Invasion of Great Britain, expanded his influence and faced the other six kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, finally rising as the most powerful during the reign of Alfred the Great.
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Defeated Mercia and crowned himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". His grandson, Athelstan "the Glorious", would complete the unification of the other kingdoms in 927, thus establishing the Kingdom of England. The monarchs of Wessex (at least from Egbert, 775–839) established a lineage that will continue for more than 1,000 years, still present in the current British royal family. -
In the year 1066, William I of England, better known as William the Conqueror, defeated the Saxon King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, and was crowned king. The process of unification and formation of England began. -
In 1256, the first Parliament was formed with the participation of the citizens.
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Between 1337 and 1453 England face France in the Hundred Years' War and was defeated.
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Between 1455 and 1487, the war of predominance known as the War of the Two Roses took place. It was a civil war between two important English noble families (Lancaster and York) in the dispute for the throne.
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King Henry VIII cut loose from the Papacy. He disbanded most of the Roman Catholic monasteries, priories, abbeys, convents and friaries of England, Wales and Ireland. He appropriated their income, land and assets. The landholdings were enormous. It was a revolutionary change.
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The Roundheads were victorious. They were puritan, anti-ritualist. The King, Charles I, was executed. Under Oliver Cromwell there was an attempt at instituting a theocratic Total State.
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Scotland was added on by England. The Act of Union of 1707 ended the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).
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A religious movement which began as a reform initiative within the Anglican Church. It soon broke away and became independent. The three principal leaders were:
John Wesley (1703-1798), Charles Wesley (1707-1788), George Whitefield (1714-1770).
As the name hints it was a religion suitable for an Industrial Society:
Disciplined, anti-ritualist, technical, emotional, metaphysically primitive. -
Tracts for the Times were published between 1833 and 1841.
Some members of the movement remained within the Anglican Church; they became known as Anglo-Catholics; others joined the Roman Catholic Church. -
In public affairs the Gnostic Ideologists have gained complete control. Christianity is covertly proscribed
