Some facts:
c500BC - AD 43
Brythonic Celtic civilization brings the Iron Age and an early form of Cymraeg (the Welsh language) to Britain; it also gives the island its name, ‘Prydain’
43 - c400 The Romans arrive and lowland Britain becomes bilingual and Romano-Cymric. The west and the north see limited latinization. North of the Antonine Wall the Picts almost certainly spoke a dialect of Cymraeg
c400 - c600 Cymric identity reasserted across the whole island. Germanic encroachments checked by Arthur. Expulsion of the invaders thwarted by the arrival of ‘Yellow Plague’ from the Mediterranean in 547 which seriously weakens the Cymry, who are still trading with the empire, but spares the segregated Germans who trade with their continental homelands. This prompts the Second Saxon Revolt out of the ‘reservations’ of eastern Britain into which Arthur had penned them.
c600 - c800 What is today England largely German, with Irish expansion from Dal Riada (Argyll). But concentrations of Cymry remain in Strathclyde (independent until the death of Owain Foel, ‘the Bald’, in 1018[?]), Cumbria (the domain of Coel Hen, ‘the Old’, ‘Old King Cole’) and Cornwall. Plus, of course, Brittany, by now home to many tens of thousands of Cymric settlers. With smaller pockets of Cymry throughout England. The Cymry may have constituted a majority of Britain’s population
c800 -1066 England contested between earlier Germanic settlers and new Germanic arrivals from Scandinavia
1066 - c1350 Invasion and takeover by Norman-French and Cymric-descended Bretons. Germanic population reduced to serfdom under French-speaking kings and aristocrats often more interested in their French territories. Leading to wars which were not England vs France, but England-based French fighting their compatriots over contested territory in France. For much of this time ‘English’ kings, through their holdings in France, were subjects and vassals of the French king in Paris
1350 –1485 Turbulent period of rule by English-speaking, but largely French-descended, kings.
1485 -1603 Henry Tudor lands in Cymru from France in 1485. Grandson of Owain ap Maredudd and kinsman to the Tudurs of Penmynydd on Anglesey, who had fought with Glyndwr in the War of Liberation (1400 -1415), he raises a Cymric army under the flag of Cymru, then invades England to defeat the English army of Richard III at Bosworth in Leicestershire. England ruled by Tudor dynasty until the death of Elizabeth I.
1603 -1649 James VI of Scotland accedes to the English throne as James I and gives England a (Breton-descended) Scottish dynasty containing the Norman line of Bruce
1649 -1660 Rule and Commonwealth of Cromwell (original family name said to be Williams).
1660 -1689 Stuarts back on the throne under Charles II and James II.
1689 -1702 Following the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, William of Orange, ‘King Billy’, is invited to take the English throne as William III. After German, Norse, Norman-French, French, Anglo-French, Welsh and Scottish monarchs, England now has a Dutch king
1702 -1714 Reign of Anne. Daughter of James II and the last of the Stuarts. Back to the Germans.
1714 - ? Georg, Elector of Hanover, ‘German George’, a great-grandson of James VI/1, takes the English throne. Since when England has been ruled by German lines and monarchs. Currently by the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which deemed it politic – in view of hostilities with the old country – to become the House of Windsor. A move emulated by other branches of the extended family, e.g. changing the rather too-German-sounding Battenberg to Mountbatten...
