Roots and Development of English Timeline

By PhoebeButler
  • 1500 BCE

    First evidence of Indo-European languages

  • Period: 1000 BCE to 500 BCE

    Emergence of Proto-Germanic

  • Period: 300 BCE to 200 BCE

    Break-up of Proto-Germanic

  • Period: 45 to 410

    Britain becomes part of the Roman Empire

    This forms the Roman colony 'Brittania'
  • 125

    Hadrian's Wall Built

  • Collapse of Roman Empire
    410

    Collapse of Roman Empire

  • 449

    Britain is invaded by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes

  • Period: 450 to 1100

    Old English

  • 597

    Introduction of Christianity

    St. Augustine
  • 601

    Augustine becomes the first Archbishop of Canterbury

  • 700

    First surviving evidence of Old English

  • 731

    Bede writes his Ecclesiastical History of the English People

  • 735

    Death of Bede

  • 1066

    The Norman Invasion

  • Period: 1100 to 1500

    Middle English

  • 1209

    Opening of The University of Cambridge

  • 1215

    Magna Carta

  • 1348

    English Translation of The Bible by John Wycliffe

  • 1348

    Outbreak of Black Death

  • 1440

    Invention of the Printing Press

  • 1489

    French is no longer language of Parliament

  • Period: 1500 to

    Early Modern English

  • 1549

    Book of Common Prayer

  • Shakespeare's First Folio Published

  • Period: to

    Late Modern English

  • Oxford English Dictionary Online

    The Oxford English Dictionary was made available online to the public.