The historiography of the United Kingdom includes the historical and archival research and writing on the history of the United Kingdom, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For studies of the overseas empire see historiography of the British Empire.
Medieval
Gildas, a fifth-century Romano-British monk, was the first major historian of Wales and England. His De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (in Latin, "On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain") records the downfall of the Britons at the hands of Saxon invaders, emphasizing God's anger and providential punishment of an entire nation, in an echo of Old Testament themes. His work has often been used by later historians, starting with Bede.Molly Miller, "Bede's use of Gildas", English Historical Review (1975): 241–261.
Bede (673–735), an English monk, was the most influential historian of the Anglo-Saxon era both in his time and in contemporary England. He borrowed from Gildas and others in writing The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Latin: "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum"). He viewed English history as a unity, based around the Christian church. N.J. Higham argues that he designed his work to promote his reform agenda to Ceolwulf, the Northumbrian king. Bede painted a highly optimistic picture of the current situation in the Church.N.J. Higham, "Bede's Agenda in Book IV of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Tricky Matter of Advising the King", Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2013) 64.3, pp. 476–493.
Numerous chroniclers prepared detailed accounts of recent history.Charles F. Briggs, "History, Story, and Community: Representing the Past", in Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson, eds., The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400–1400 (2012) 2: 391. King Alfred the Great commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 893, and similar chronicles were prepared throughout the Middle Ages.Michael Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1998). The most famous production is by a transplanted Frenchman, Jean Froissart (–1410). His Froissart's Chronicles, written in French, remains an important source for the first half of the Hundred Years' War.John Jolliffe, Froissart's Chronicles (Faber & Faber, 2012).
Tudor–Stuart Sir Walter Raleigh (1554–1618), educated at Oxford, was a soldier, courtier, and humanist during the late Renaissance in England. Convicted of intrigues against the king, he was imprisoned in the Tower and wrote his incomplete History of the World. Using a wide array of sources in six languages, Raleigh was fully abreast of the latest continental scholarship. He wrote not about England, but of the ancient world with a heavy emphasis on geography. Despite his intention of providing current advice to the King of England, King James I complained that it was "too sawcie in censuring Princes".Nicholas Popper, Walter Ralegh's "History of the World" and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance (2012) p 18. Raleigh was freed, but later beheaded for offences not related to his historiography.J. Racin, Sir Walter Raleigh as Historian (1974).
English Reformation
The historiography of the English Reformation has seen vigorous clashes among dedicated protagonists and scholars for five centuries. The main factual details at the national level have been clear since 1900, as laid out, for example, by James Anthony FroudeFroude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada (12 volumes, 1893) "Wolsey" online free and Albert Pollard.R. A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII (1905) online free; Pollard, The History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth, 1547–1603 (1910) online free.
Reformation historiography has seen many schools of interpretation with Protestant, Catholic, and Anglican historians using their own religious perspectives.John Vidmar, English Catholic Historians and the English Reformation: 1585–1954 (2005). In addition there has been a highly influential Whig interpretation, based on liberal secularised Protestantism, that depicted the Reformation in England, in the words of Ian Hazlitt, as "the midwife delivering England from the Dark Ages to the threshold of modernity, and so a turning point of progress". Finally, among the older schools was a neo-Marxist interpretation that stressed the economic decline of the old elites in the rise of the landed gentry and middle classes. All these approaches still have representatives, but the main thrust of scholarly historiography since the 1970s falls into four groupings or schools, according to Hazlett.W. Ian Hazlett, "Settlements: The British Isles" in Thomas A. Brady, Jr. et al. eds. Handbook of European History 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation (volume 2 1995) pp. 2:455–90.
Geoffrey Elton lead the first faction with an agenda rooted in political historiography. It concentrates on the top of the early modern church-state, looking at the mechanics of policy-making and the organs of its implementation and enforcement. The key player for Elton was not Henry VIII, but rather his principal Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell. Elton downplayed the prophetic spirit of the religious reformers in the theology of keen conviction, dismissing them as the meddlesome intrusions from fanatics and bigots. deals with Elton.
Secondly, a primarily religious perspective has motivated Geoffrey Dickens and others. They prioritise the religious and subjective side of the movement. While recognising the Reformation was imposed from the top, just as it was everywhere else in Europe, it also responded to aspirations from below. He has been criticised by for underestimating the strength of residual and revived Roman Catholicism. He has been praised for his demonstration of the close ties to European influences. In the Dickens school, David Loades has stressed the theological importance of the Reformation for Anglo-British development.A.G. Dickens, John Tonkin, and Kenneth Powell, eds., The Reformation in historical thought (1985).
Revisionists comprise a third school, led by Christopher Haigh, Jack Scarisbrick and numerous other scholars. Their main achievement was the discovery of an entirely new corpus of primary sources at the local level, leading them to the emphasis on the Reformation as it played out on a daily and local basis, with much less emphasis on the control from the top. They emphasise turning away from elite sources and instead focus on local parish records, diocesan files, guild records, data from boroughs, the courts, and especially telltale individual wills.Eamon Duffy, "The English reformation after revisionism", Renaissance Quarterly 59.3 (2006): 720–731.
Finally, Patrick Collinson and others brought more precision to the theological landscape, with Calvinist Puritans who were impatient with the cautious Anglican approach of compromises. Indeed, the Puritans were a distinct subgroup who did not comprise all of Calvinism. The Church of England thus emerged as a coalition of factions, all of them of Protestant inspiration.Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Conflict in early Stuart England: studies in religion and politics 1603–1642 (Routledge, 2014).
All the recent schools have lowered the relevance of Henry VIII and minimised hagiography. They have paid more attention to localities, Catholicism, radicals, and theological niceties. On Catholicism, the older schools overemphasised Thomas More (1478–1535), to the neglect of other bishops and factors inside Catholicism. The older schools too often concentrated on elite London, the newer ones look to the English villages.
Puritanism and the Civil War The rise of Puritanism and the English Civil War are central themes of 17th century English history.* R.C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution Revisited (London, 1988)
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674), the conservative top aide of the King, wrote the most influential contemporary history of the Civil War, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1702). When he wrote about the distant past, Clarendon used a modern level of scepticism about historical sources, motivations and authority. In his history of the Civil War, however, he relapses to a premodern view that attributes critical events to the intervention of Providence.Michael G. Finlayson, "Clarendon, Providence, and the Historical Revolution", Albion (1990) 22.4, pp. 607–632 Charles H. Firth, "Clarendon's 'History of the Rebellion'", Parts 1, II, III, English Historical Review vol 19, nos. 73–75 (1904) Martine Watson Brownley, Clarendon & the Rhetoric of Historical Form (1985)Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Clarendon's 'History of the Rebellion'", History Today (1979) 29.2, pp. 73–79.B. H. G.Wormald, Clarendon: Politics, History and Religion 1640–1660 (1951)
The foremost modern historian of the Puritan movement and Civil War is Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1820–1902). His series include History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642 (1883–4); History of the Great Civil War, 1642–1649 (1893); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1660 (1903). Gardiner's treatment is exhaustive and philosophical, taking in political and constitutional history, the changes in religion, thought and sentiment, their causes and their tendencies. Gardiner did not form a school, although his work was completed in two volumes by Charles Harding Firth as The Last Years of the Protectorate (1909).F. York Powell, "Samuel Rawson Gardiner", English Historical Review 17.66 (1902): 276–279. J. S. A. Adamson, "Eminent Victorians: S.R. Gardiner and the Liberal as Hero", Historical Journal (1990) 33.3: 641–657.
18th century The Enlightenment in both Scotland and England gave strong support to the writing of innovative histories.Karen O'Brien, "English Enlightenment Histories, 1750–c.1815", in .
Opposition histories of the 1740s Alongside ministerial projects such as Nicholas Tindal's continuation of Rapin, the 1740s saw opposition, Country-Whig histories conceived as paired works: William Guthrie's General History of England (1744–51) carried the narrative to 1688, while James Ralph's The History of England, During the Reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and King George I (1744–46) treated the post-Revolution decades. Ralph’s history combined constitutional narrative with quantitative materials (customs and excise series, national-debt tables, army returns) and offered a document-driven reassessment of earlier Whig and Tory accounts, including Gilbert Burnet's work.
William Robertson William Robertson, a Scottish historian and the Historiographer Royal, published a History of Scotland 1542–1603 in 1759, and his most famous work, The History of the Reign of Charles V, in 1769. His scholarship was painstaking for the time and he was able to access a large number of documentary sources that had previously been unstudied. He was also one of the first historians who understood the importance of general and universally applicable ideas in the shaping of historical events.
David Hume Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume in 1754 published the History of England, a six-volume work which extended "From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688". Hume adopted a similar scope to Voltaire in his history; as well as the history of Kings, Parliaments, and armies, he examined the history of culture, including literature and science. His short biographies of leading scientists explored the process of scientific change and he developed new ways of seeing scientists in the context of their times by looking at how they interacted with society and each other – he paid special attention to Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton and William Harvey.S. K. Wertz, "Hume and the Historiography of Science", Journal of the History of Ideas (1993) 54.3, pp. 411–436