This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Which period of history interests you today? House of Windsor February 6, Read More. Victorian Period February 3, Roman Period November 23, The Roman Period. There is overlap between the various invaders, and through it all, the Celtic British population remained largely in place. In some areas, such as Wales and Cornwall, the invaders hardly changed the language or way of life of the people.
In others, the British Celts learnt the language of the invaders, and adapted to their way of life. After years of Roman rule, Romanised Britons tried to defend the religion and civilisation of Roman Britain against the Anglo-Saxon invaders. During this year period there was constant shifting of boundaries, boundaries both on the map and in the minds of the people living then. Different cultures met and clashed time after time. Spiritually, the British moved from a people worshipping Celtic pagan gods at the start of the period to a nation of Christians at its end.
At the start of the period, Britain was inhabited by Celtic peoples. The Romans called them Brittones, so they named the areas they conquered Britannia. The army of the Picts under King Bruide Ecgfrith's cousin met him at a place identified as Dunnichen Moss in Forfarshire and inflicted a devastating defeat on Ecgfrith's army.
As a result, Anglo-Saxon dominance in Scotland came to an abrupt end. Willibrord, from Yorkshire, was inspired to do missionary work by St Egbert, an English priest living in Ireland.
In he began working among the pagan Frisians in the modern Netherlands. Pope Sergius made him bishop of the new see of Utrecht, and he worked as a missionary for 49 years. Loingsech's forces were routed and he was killed during an invasion of Connacht. He began work in Frisia, assisting the elderly Bishop Willibrord, an English missionary from Yorkshire. His felling of the pagan shrine 'Thor's Oak' in northern Hesse is often regarded as the start of German Christianisation.
Ine was one of the most powerful of the early kings of Wessex, and is best known for his surviving law-code. He too resigned in order to travel to Rome to die. Egbert was a Northumbrian who became a monk at Lindisfarne. He went to study in Ireland in the early s AD, and stayed there for almost his entire life. He never himself went to preach to the Germanic cousins of the English on the continent, as he had hoped, but he inspired many other missionaries to do so.
Egbert died on Iona in Scotland. The Venerable Bede, who studied and taught for most of his life as a monk in Jarrow and Monkwearmouth Tyne and Wear , was the author of books that were copied and studied all over Europe. His greatest book was the 'Ecclesiastical History of the English', a major source for the history of Britain in the immediate post-Roman period. Boniface, an English missionary, taught and preached in Germany for many years.
He was made Archbishop of Mainz in AD and was able to reorganise the whole German church, including founding many bishoprics. The support of the Frankish rulers in modern day France was vital to his work. He many even have crowned Pippin the first Carolingian king in AD.
He resumed missionary work among the Frisians in AD, but was murdered by them shortly afterwards. The ensuing civil war saw Offa emerge as his successor and become the most powerful of the English kings of the later 8th century.
His name survives to this day in 'Offa's Dyke', the mile-long earthwork which marked his border with the Welsh kingdoms. After ruling the West Saxons for 31 years, Cynewulf was attacked by Cyneheard, the brother of a man Cynewulf had exiled.
Both men were killed in the battle and the heroism of their bodyguards caused the event to be recorded in the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', the oldest surviving piece of narrative prose in English. Between them they visited all the kingdoms and held reforming councils. Offa, king of Mercia, was given an archbishopric for his lands in the short-lived metropolitan see of Lichfield.
Later generations of Scottish monarchs claimed Constantine as a king of the Scots, but he seems to have been king of the Picts, a tribe that inhabited much of northern Scotland. The St Andrew's sarcophagus, one of the finest pieces of sculpture from Europe at this time, may belong to his reign.
The reeve of Dorchester a local high-ranking official went to greet them after they landed, perhaps accustomed to welcoming Scandinavian merchants. He was killed. Viking attacks increased in intensity over the coming decades, until the Vikings assembled a 'Great Army' equipped for conquest in about AD.
He heard about the attack on the monastery in his native Northumbria and wrote: 'Never before has such an atrocity been seen.
Iona was attacked in AD and again in AD. In the third attack, in AD, 68 monks were killed and most of the rest fled to safety in the monastery of Kells County Meath, Ireland.
They took with them the gospel book now known as the 'Book of Kells', a lavishly illuminated manuscript, which is one of the greatest treasures of Celtic art. Egbert, king of the West Saxons, had already established himself as the most powerful ruler in southern England. But in AD he not only conquered Mercia, but forced the Northumbrians to submit as well. From then on, Wessex retained its dominance in England. Egbert's grandson, Alfred, initiated the creation of the single kingdom of England.
Some sources suggest that around AD the kingdom of the Scots and the Picts was amalgamated, and that from this date historians can speak of a 'kingdom of Scotland'. Egbert, king of Wessex, had made his second son Athelstan king of Kent. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Athelstan fought a sea battle against the Vikings off Sandwich, capturing nine ships and putting the rest to flight.
British Broadcasting Corporation Home. Victoria became queen at the age of 18 after the death of her uncle, William IV. She reigned for more than 60 years, longer than any other British monarch. Her reign was a period of significant social, economic and technological change, which saw the expansion of Britain's industrial power and of the British empire. Charles Dickens was one of the greatest Victorian novelists.
The People's Charter advocated democratic reform on the basis of six points: one man, one vote; equal electoral districts; payment of members of parliament; elections by secret ballot; removal of property qualifications for MPs; and parliaments elected every year. It was the most significant radical pressure group of the 19th century. In , slaves in the British empire started a period of 'apprenticeship', during which they were obliged to work without pay for their former owners. Abolitionists campaigned against the system and in the Caribbean there were widespread protests.
When the apprenticeship period ended in , over , slaves were freed in the British Caribbean. The former slaves received nothing. This line, which connected London to the Midlands for the first time, had been planned since , with sections opened in The completion of the Kilsby Tunnel enabled the full mile line, designed by the engineer Robert Stephenson, to be opened.
London-Birmingham was the first railway line into the capital city, with passengers disembarking in the newly-designed Euston station. The line precipitated the first of the great railway booms. When the Whig prime minister, Viscount Melbourne, resigned over a constitutional matter concerning government in Jamaica, Victoria asked Sir Robert Peel, as leader of the Tory opposition, to form a government.
Peel refused to do so, apparently because the queen refused to dismiss her pro-Whig ladies of the bedchamber. Melbourne resumed office. Peel was probably waiting for an opportunity to take office in more favourable circumstances, as he did in Britain's postal system was expensive, complex and open to abuse.
As a response to widespread discontent, a committee of enquiry was set up in In , Rowland Hill proposed a uniform post rate of one penny, irrespective of distance. His proposals were implemented three years later. In the decade after the implementation of the 'penny post', the volume of letters sent in Britain increased five-fold to almost million a year. Parliament enabled local poor law authorities to provide vaccination at the expense of ratepayers. Battles over the ethical and practical issues involved lasted for the remainder of Victoria's reign.
Some authorities were reluctant to pay, even after infant vaccination was made compulsory in Further tightening of the regulations in and saw a number of anti-vaccination campaigns. In , parents were allowed a certificate of exemption for their children on grounds of conscience. The Whig government under Viscount Melbourne faced increasing financial and public order difficulties, and Sir Robert Peel forced a general election after defeating the Whigs on a no-confidence motion in the House of Commons.
The Conservatives won a Commons majority of more than This was the first election in modern times when one political party with a parliamentary majority was defeated by another which gained a workable majority of its own. Income tax was levied for the first time during peace by Sir Robert Peel's Conservative government at a rate of 7d three pence in the pound. The tax was not extended to famine-torn Ireland until Direct taxation was unpopular in Victorian Britain.
Many 19th-century finance ministers toyed with the idea of abolishing income tax, but it proved too convenient and too lucrative to lose.
More than ministers of the Church of Scotland walked out of the church's general assembly in Edinburgh to form the new Free Church of Scotland. Sometimes known as 'the disruption', the split concerned the relationship between church and state in Scotland. Those leaving the church, led by the evangelical Thomas Chalmers, believed that a religious organisation should have a clearly religious head and should reject lay patronage.
The potato blight struck again the following year. What began as a natural catastrophe was exacerbated by the actions and inactions of the British government. It is estimated that about a million people died during the four-year famine, and that between and another million emigrated, most to Britain and North America.
Sir Robert Peel's famous reforming Conservative government came to an end shortly after legislation to repeal the Corn Laws was passed. This measure removed protective duties which had helped to keep the price of bread high.
He championed it despite opposition from most of his own party, and the motion was carried by Whig votes. Peel never took office again and was remembered as the prime minister who gave the working classes cheaper bread. Birkenhead, on the opposite bank of the Mersey Estuary from Liverpool, was the venue for the world's first man-made park, complete with lakes, hillocks and meadows.
Many such parks followed as Victorians sought to provide open spaces in or near the centre of urban areas. John Mitchel came to prominence during the Irish potato famine.
In March he founded a journal, 'United Irishman', which called for Irish independence and gave practical tips on how to attack British troops.
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