Family History Journey in England

Some 12,000 years or so ago, all but the southern-most coast of Britain was covered in ice. After the thaw, sea levels rose and the land link with continental Europe was broken: Britain was an island.

England, Scotland and Wales did not exist; the people who occupied the new island were hunter-gatherers who moved around with the seasons for sources of food and shelter. Their descendents have been transforming themselves, their culture and the land ever since - leaving their footprints, some more visible than others, some more enduring than others, all over the island.

Family history is often discovered by going backwards through the ages - if you want to follow the genealogy path, do start at the bottom of the page if you wish to.

The woodland that grew in place of the tundra was cleared for the first time some 6,000 years ago to grow crops and graze animals. Farming was a communal activity: houses were built in close proximity to one another, while animals were kept in pens around. People continued to move every few years and clear more land. Communication and transportation was far easier by water (river and sea) than overground. Wooden trackways are the earliest signs of roadways being engineered.

Flint and chert were used to make sharp tools such as axes; animal bones and antler horns were used to make utensils for cooking and digging, and carved to make ornaments and jewellrey. Fossilized resin, such as amber, was also used. There was also a rudimentary knowledge of shaping pots from clay and firing them in kilns.

Social division between leaders, farmers and artisans began and their moral or religious outlook is evident from their reverential treatment of the dead, who, depending on the resouces available locally, were buried communally in wooden or stone long-barrows or tombs.

Large henges and stone circles were also built. Henges were large circular or oval ditches surrounded by a bank of earth. Within, timber or stone posts were arranged, and sometimes pits and mounds. Stonehenge is the most famous, but there are henges and circles of standing stones throughout southern Britain.

Tin in the southwest, with copper, could make Bronze tools, weapons and jewellrey. Tin was also exported. It was still an agricultural society, but fields were marked out and larger farms were possible. Most people lived in clusters of houses - rectangular stone houses or round houses of wattle (hazel) and daub (a mud-based plaster), some with sophisticated partitioning inside and elaborate entrances. Small, individual round barrows were used to bury the dead, often following cremation, and may include worldly goods - spears, daggers and axes. Burial sites were also places for gatherings, perhaps for trade.

With iron-working technology, from about 800 BCE, stronger, mechanical devices for spinning wool, making pots and grinding flour were possible, as well as grooming products - razors and tweezers. Iron-tipped ploughs meant more land could be cultivated, and a wider range of crops were grown. Stronger weaponry, as well as armour and chariots, were now made.

People lived in small, localized communities enclosed by earth banks and ditches and connected by networks of cobbled tracks. Distinct peoples, or tribes, were emerging covering an ever-wider territory, and they had surplus produce and goods to trade. Hill forts, centres for trade and communal gathering, were built on higher ground to be visible to surrounding farmsteads. Some were more complex than others with enclosures for food storage and processing or for civic and religious ritual.

In the century before the Romans invaded, their influence was felt. Trade with continental Europe was growing. Some hill forts were replaced by larger semi-urbanized settlements with mints to produce coins, and temples. They were centres for tribal identity, and some tribal leaders were calling themselves kings and queens.

The Romans invaded in 43 CE. Some of the tribes or kingdoms welcomed them: Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes became a loyal client monarch straightaway. Queen Boudicca fought fiercely, though, and Caratacus went west to lead the resistance there. Both ultimately failed, but the northern British tribes (Scotland) were never defeated; a wall, Hardrian's Wall, along which forts and trading centres developed, was the extent of Roman control over the island.

Some hill forts and trading centres were abandonned, others became civitates - centres for Roman government and administration, such as tax collection. Day to day responsibility was delegated to their new client-kings and queens for whom town houses, temples, amphitheatres, baths and gymnasiums were built. Temporary or permanent forts were built every 15 miles or so (a day's march) around which new villages and towns grew. British and Roman religious icons stood side by side in many important places.

Some client-monarchs became Roman citizens, even patricians: they learned to speak Latin, some even learned to write, and they built villas (farmsteads) for themselves as country retreats. There were new opportunities for Britons to trade - within Britain and within the Roman Empire. The Romans brought advances in engineering: hydraulic mining to plunder Britain's mineral reserves; straight roads and acqueducts to transport goods; sanitation and sewage systems - and under-floor heating. For very many Britons, however, their way of life remained agricultural.

The early Christian 'cult' reached Britain - small timber churches, baptismal fonts and Christian iconography have been found. When the Roman Empire officially accepted Christianity, it was accepted in southern Britain too. The Roman Empire began to crumble in the 4th century, however, and Roman legions in Britain were required elsewhere. The British were left to defend themselves from 'barbarian' raiders.

With Roman withdrawal, re-established British Kingdoms were vulnerable to raiders from the Picts, the Irish, and various Germanic/Danish peoples. Germanic mercenaries and raiders settled in the east and south-east. As the British ruling elites fled westward, these Anglo-Saxons established kingdoms as far as the modern English/Welsh border according to their own pagan way of life, often enslaving Britons who remained. They ignored Roman fortifications - they were farmers, who built timber houses, and timber halls for communal storage and meeting together.

Land was in the gift of the various Kings, who preferred famiy, loyal subjects and, after their conversion, the church. These same people were usually members of a kingdom's Witan - council. The land was divided into hides - one hide was sufficient to support one household, which may include servants and slaves. In time, ten hides formed a parish, and one hundred hides a Hundred under an eorlderman. Several Hundreds made a shire under the leadership of an eorl (Earl) and administered by shire-reeves (sherrifs). This was an early form of feudalism.

Christianity was brought by Irish missionaires via monasteries established in the north (Scotland) and by a north African papal emissary, Augustine. Ruling Anglo-Saxons established ministers - small monasteries-cum-collegiate churches. Different Germanic dialects were spoken in each kingdom, but it is the Wessex kingdom's dialect that would dominate - especially after Vikings invaded.

Under Danish rule, in the east and north, hides were carucates and Hundreds became Wapentakes. Anglo-Saxon legal customs prevailed however: the oath of allegiance meant more than loyalty, it was a commitment to obey the King's laws. By breaking this oath, ie by committing a crime, it was not just the criminals who were punished, but their families. Trial by Ordeal was another feature of Anglo-Saxon justice: guilt was decided by how long the suspect could endure some hardship. The Normans would introduce Trial by Battle (jousting).

William of Normandy claimed that the English throne was promised him by the last Anglo-Saxon King, Edward the Confessor - his third cousin. The Witan, however, chose Harold Godwinson, Edward's brother-in-law, a Viking. The Norman conquest began in 1066 with the defeat of Harold. William's many descendents fought about who should rule: the "War of the Roses" was a ferocious family squabble. Wars with France, Wales and Scotland demanded soldiers, but there was little fighting on English soil.

The Manorial feudal system was introduced. Very large tracts were leased by the king to trustworthy barons. The barons leased smaller parcels of land - manors - to loyal followers. These Lords of the Manor leased land and amenities (strips of the surrounding fields, corn mills, bake houses, grazing rights, fuel etc) to rent-paying freemen and unfree serfs in return for their labour. The lease bond bound the heirs of serfs too. And while land owners/lords could sell or will away their leaseholds, serfs could not. A detailed survey of England in 1086 resulted in the very comprehensive Domesday book which refers to many towns and villages still in existance today.

Some 500 Norman castles were built - often using stone from Roman ruins. Manor houses were at first fortified, but most people continued to live in timber cottages. Great stone monasteries were built for Franciscan, Dominican and other new religious orders from Europe - often the only source of health care and education for serfs. Periodic famines held population growth in check, but in 1348 the "Black Death", the Bubonic Plague, arrived. The population dropped by a third and villages disappeared. Labour shortages lead to serf poaching, but enabled people to move more freely and demand wages. When the King could not raise enough money for war through land taxes, a poll-tax was imposed on every adult. Around London the peasants revolted. The rebellion was quelled with a promise to abolish serfdom, but was retracted.

English replaced French as the official language of the courts around this time, and other writings, such as poems, were being written in English. When the printing press was introduced, these works could be more widely disseminated. Support for an English-vernacular Bible had also begun.

The break from the Roman Church, and the abolition of monasteries, abbeys, priories and friaries in 1536, provided Henry VIII not only with a divorce, but money and largess. Not just the buildings, but ecclesiastical farming land (granges), were sold. People lost their source of care in ill-health, old-age or famine. Protestant parishes became responsible for poor relief. New arrivals had to apply to settle and baptisms, marriages and burials had to be recorded.

The new Church of England retained much of the structure, ritual and beliefs of Rome. Lutherans and Calvinists established minority congregations. Along with Catholics, they were persecuted. Some Catholics tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, others fled to Europe, and many non-conformists left for the new world. When Charles I asserted the "Divine Right of Kings" to rule, civil war divided land lords/owners into Royalists and Parliamentarians. The short-lived Puritan Commonwealth was unpopular (for example, they banned productions of Shakespeare). The monarchy was restored, but a parliament of the landed elite was in control.

England established a ship building industry and a naval fighting force. Sea battles with France and Spain fought on religious/political grounds were soon battles for overseas territory. Despite the loss of the North American colonies, trade elsewhere flourished - supported, until 1807, by West African slaves.

Land lords/owners began to enclose their land, and the common and waste land, so that they could enlarge or rebuild their houses into more splendid palaces, gardens, and parks - and keep sheep. When more money could be made from intensive farming and mining and manufacturies, the pace of enclosure increased. Displaced people were forced into the new industries or into towns and cities where trade and commerce rules were restricting merchants from competing with overseas imports. Artisan Guilds protected specialist skills through apprenticeships, but were being undermined by mass-production.

Only the minority land lords/owners could sit in, or elect one of their own to, Parliament. In the 1820s and 1830s, the franchise was extended slightly - to meet the demands of the recently enriched, property-owning industrialists and merchants - and to avoid violent Napoleonic revolution.

Britain was the wealthiest, most-industrialised nation when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, and ruled an increasing proportion of the world's population. Pioneering mechanical and civil engineering enabled the first long-distance railway line to open a year later, and the rail network grew rapidly. Free trade was dominant, but the uneducated majority lived in insanitary conditions. Sickness, unemployment, low wages and high food prices caused severe impoverishment.

Parishes combined to create Poor Law Unions. These Unions built large workhouses and orphanages, and sponsored apprenticeships and migration projects. Concerned landed and merchant individuals, many Evangelical Christians, wrote reports about urban living, campaigned against child labour and set up housing projects and schools. Unable to keep pace with the problems, they called for state intervention and investment. Only 10% of adults could vote, so charters with millions of signatures were sent to Parliament. Demonstrations were often ruthlessly broken up by the new police force or the army and punishable by transportation to Australia.

The rate of voluntary migration to the new world increased rapidly as new steamship companies flourished. Millions of people left England for north America, Australia and other far off places. The steamships were also bringing in cheaper food and other consumer goods. Tram networks were built in towns and cities, and in London the first underground railway was built. Super-sized steamships were also used to lay telegraph cables across the Atlantic and Indian oceans and linked to overland networks. Protecting trade with India necessitated control of the Middle East, and discoveries of rich mineral deposits in the interior of Africa lead to its colonization.

By the end of the Victorian era, Britain ruled 25% of the world's population, but the USA had replaced Britain as the most powerful industrial and trading nation in the world. At home, more land than ever was used for agriculture, but only 10% of the population earned a living from it. Still only 35% of adults could vote, however.

The war to end all wars, World War I, saw how Government could harness industry and food production and impose conscription and censorship. The war also highlighted the inability of many landed and merchant men to lead on behalf of the majority. Returning soldiers were promised "a land fit for heroes"; they found a flu epidemic and a trade slump.

Loans from the USA helped economic recovery, and by 1927 all adult men and women could vote. Recovery was halted however by the Wall Street Crash. Unemployment rose again. Then, in 1939, Britain and France declared war on expansionist Germany. Britain re-amed and rationed supplies of food, textiles, etc. Within a year France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell, and Britain endured the relentless aerial bombardment of its cities, ports, centres of industry and military establishments. Within the Empire, supply routes were disrupted. When Japan declared war on the USA by bombing Pearl Harbour, it was truly a World War.

Allied victory was secured in 1945 and Britain had to rebuild. The Empire was dismantled, and the welfare state was created, including the National Health Service. Water and sanitation, and electricity and gas, were brought to most British people. When manufacturing collapsed in the 1980s, it was replaced by a robust service industry. The standard of living for most British people has continued to improve.

Successive waves of European settlers, together with soldiers and missionaries from Persia and Africa, have contributed to the heritage of the English. With exploration of the seas and colonization, thousands of people from the Caribbean, Africa and southern Asia came to work and, later, to study in Britain. Famine in Ireland and attacks on Jewish villages in Russia brought many more people. Following World War II, Britain invited people from its former colonies to work and settle. Refugees and economic migrants from all parts of the world have continued to arrive and stay.

The above narrative is provided purely for background information and an aid to contextualizing an English family heritage for clients and customers. Much more information is often provided to these customers through genealogical research into their family history tree or through their ancestral home visit. If you cannot find the service you need on this website (for example, a speaker on English history or research), please send in the details and, if Family History Journey can help, a quotation will be provided.

Whilst comments, opinions and corrections from other interested parties are welcomed, individual answers to general or specific comments and questions cannot be provided.