Kingdom of England

State · 936–1708 CE · at its largest around 1429 CE

The English kingdom unified by the House of Wessex under Æthelstan, which conquered Wales and later merged with Scotland under the Acts of Union 1707.

Its battles, in Battle View

On its lands while it lasted

William the Conqueror (c. 1028 CE – 1087 CE): Duke of Normandy who conquered England in 1066 and became its first Norman king.
Battle of Hastings (1066 CE): William, Duke of Normandy, defeated and killed King Harold II, beginning the Norman conquest of England.
Council of Clermont (1095 CE): Pope Urban II called on Western Christians to aid Byzantium and take Jerusalem, launching the First Crusade.
University of Oxford (c. 1096 CE): Teaching existed at Oxford by 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It grew rapidly after Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris in 1167.
University of Paris (c. 1150 CE): Emerging around 1150 from the schools of Notre-Dame, the University of Paris became a leading centre of theology and philosophy in medieval Europe. Its college of the Sorbonne, founded in 1257, gave the university its popular name.
Notre-Dame de Paris (1163 CE): Gothic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, begun in 1163, famous for its flying buttresses, rose windows and sculpture.
Magna Carta (1215 CE): Charter agreed by King John at Runnymede that limited royal power and became a foundation of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.
Hundred Years' War (1337–1453 CE): Series of wars between England and France over the French throne, ending with England losing all its French lands except Calais.
Joan of Arc (c. 1412 CE – 1431 CE): French peasant girl who led French forces to lift the siege of Orléans; she was captured, tried for heresy and burned at Rouen.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500 CE – 1558 CE): Habsburg ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, much of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He opposed the Reformation and abdicated his titles in Brussels in 1555–1556.
Elizabeth I (1533 CE – 1603 CE): Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603. Her reign saw the Protestant religious settlement, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and a flowering of English drama.
English Reformation (1534 CE): With the Act of Supremacy of 1534, Henry VIII broke with the papacy and made himself head of the Church of England. The monasteries were dissolved in the following years.
William Shakespeare (1564 CE – 1616 CE): English playwright and poet from Stratford-upon-Avon whose plays, performed in London, include Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in English.
Spanish Armada (1588 CE): Philip II sent a great fleet to escort an invasion army from Flanders to England. Harried in the Channel and scattered by English fireships off Gravelines, the Armada sailed home around Scotland and Ireland, losing many ships to storms.
Isaac Newton (1643 CE – 1727 CE): English mathematician and physicist at Cambridge who formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, co-invented calculus and advanced optics.