English nationalism is a nationalism that asserts that the English are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of English people. In a general sense, it comprises political and social movements and sentiment inspired by a love for English culture, language and history, and a sense of pride in England and the English people. English nationalists often see themselves as predominantly English rather than British.
At political level, some English nationalists – such as the English Democrats – have advocated self-government for England. This could take the form of either a devolved English parliament within the United Kingdom or the re-establishment of an independent sovereign state of England outside the United Kingdom.
History
The history of English nationalism is a contested area of scholarship. The historian Adrian Hastings has written that: "One can find historians to date 'the dawn of English national consciousness' (or some such phrase) in almost every century from the eighth to the nineteenth",Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 35 though other historians have disputed this.
Anglo-Saxon
Patrick Wormald has claimed that England was a nation by the time of the Venerable Bede, who wrote the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) around 730.Patrick Wormald, 'The Venerable Bede and the "Church of the English"', Geoffrey Rowell (ed.), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage: Ikon, 1992), p. 26. Wormald attributes Bede with a decisive "role in defining English national identity and English national destiny".Wormald 1992, p. 26. Bede uses the label "English" to describe the Germanic peoples who inhabited Britain: Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and excluding Britons, Scots and Picts.Hastings 1997, p. 37. In the final paragraph to the preface of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede departs from the usual word "gens" and instead uses the word "natio" to describe the "historia nostrae nationis": the history of our own nation. This is the first verbal appearance of the English nation.Hastings 1997, p. 38.
In the 9th century, Alfred the Great switched from labelling his realm 'Saxon' to 'Anglo-Saxon', and among the aristocracy developed a project to educate men in reading and writing the common language now designated as 'English', however the name 'English' disappeared in subsequent centuries.
The Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon described the eponymous battle between the Anglo-Saxon forces of Ethelred the Unready against a Viking invasion in 991. The poem praises the Anglo-Saxons' defence of "their land, the land of Ethelred the King, the place and the people" and Byrhtnoth, Earl of Essex, is attributed as saying: "Shall our people, our nation, bear you to go hence with our gold?"Hastings 1997, p. 42.
Both Hastings and James Campbell believe England was a nation-state during late Anglo-Saxon times. Campbell writes that by the Norman Conquest of 1066, "England was by then a nation-state".James Campbell, 'The United Kingdom of England: The Anglo-Saxon Achievement', Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 31.
Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People as evidence of a medieval English nationalism, observing that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves. He points out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor". Likewise, Krishan Kumar also points out that Bede's 'English' did not refer to a unified people, but rather "still diverse groups of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others with distinct ethnicities".
Medieval
The Norman Conquest introduced a ruling class over England who displaced English land owners and clergy, and who spoke only Anglo-Norman; however, it is likely many (if not most) were conversant in English from the second generation onwards. William of Malmesbury, a chronicler of mixed Anglo-Norman descent writing in the twelfth century, described the Battle of Hastings as: "That fatal day for England, the sad destruction of our dear country [dulcis patrie]".M. T. Clanchy, England and Its Rulers: 1066–1272 (Blackwell, 1998), p. 24. He also lamented: "England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbot, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery".Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 56. Another chronicler, Robert of Gloucester, speaking in part of earlier centuries, in the mid to late thirteenth century:
...the Norman could not speak anything then except their own speech, and they spoke French as they had done at home, and had their children taught it, too, so that important men in this country who come from their stock all keep to that same speech that they derived from them; because, unless a man knows French, he is thought little of. But humble men keep to English and their own speech still. I reckon there are no countries in the whole world that do not keep to their own speech, except England only.Basil Cottle, The Triumph of English 1350–1400 (London: Blandford Press, 1969), p. 16.
John Breuilly states the Normans had "no interest at all in sustaining the name of the English" and that later indications of apparent continuity among the Norman elite were actually assertions against other Norman magnates who retained ties in Normandy rather than manifestations of a continuous national identity. King Edward I, himself a Norman-French speaker, when issuing writs for summoning Parliament in 1295, claimed that the King of France planned to invade England and extinguish Old English, "a truly detestable plan which may God avert".Hastings 1997, p. 45."[Rex Franciae] linguam anglicam, si conceptae iniquitatis proposito detestabili potestas correspondeat, quod Deus avertat, omnino de terra delere proponit." William Stubbs, Select Charters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 480.
In the Cursor Mundi, an anonymous religious poem in northern Middle English dating from approximately 1300, appears the words: "Of Ingland the nacion".Hastings, p. 15. The Prologue starts:
Efter haly kyrces state Þis ilke bok it es translate, Into Inglis tong to rede, For þe love of Inglis lede, Inglis lede of Ingeland, For þe commun at understand. Frankis rimes here I redd Comunlik in ilk a sted; Mast es it wroght for Frankis man — Quat is for him na Frankis can? Of Ingeland þe nacioun, Es Inglis man þar in commun. Þe speche þat man with mast may spede, Mast þarwith to speke war nede. Selden was for ani chance Praised Inglis tong in France; Give we ilk an þar langage, Me think we do þam non outrage. To lauid Inglis man I spell...
This can be translated into modern English as: This same book is translated, in accordance with the dignity of Holy Church, into the English tongue to be read, for love of the English people, the English people of England, for the common people to understand. I have normally read French verses everywhere here; it is mostly done for the Frenchman – what is there for him who knows no French? As for the nation of England, it is an Englishman who is usually there. It ought to be necessary to speak mostly the speech that one can best get on with. Seldom has the English tongue by any chance been praised in France; if we give everyone their own language, it seems to me we are doing them no injury. I am speaking to the English layman...Cottle 1969, p. 17.
In 1323, Henry Lambard, a cleric, was brought before a court and asked how he wished to clear himself of charges of theft. Lambard said in English that he was a cleric and was then asked if he knew Latin or French. He replied that he was English, and English-born, and that to speak in his mother tongue was proper. He refused to speak any other language except English. Refusing to give any other answer to the court, he was committed to another court to suffer peine forte et dure.Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England. 1225–1360 (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 556.
English as a written vernacular prose form only starts to become important in the fourteenth century. The Pleading in English Act 1362 sought to replace French with English for all pleas in courts. The Mercers' Petition to Parliament of 1386 is the oldest piece of parliamentary English; the earliest English wills at the London Court of Probate date from 1387; the earliest English returns of the ordinances, usages, holdings of the gilds are from 1389 and come from London, Norwich and King's Lynn.Cottle 1969, pp. 17–18. John Trevisa, writing in 1385, noted that: "...in all the grammar schools of England children are dropping French and construing and learning in English...Also gentlemen have now largely stopped teaching their children French".Cottle 1969, pp. 20–21.
During the Hundred Years' War with France (1337–1453), royal propaganda appealed to the national idea, which Hastings argues aroused English nationalist feeling.Hastings 1997, p. 47. Like Hastings, May McKisack has claimed that "The most lasting and significant consequences of the war should be sought, perhaps, in the sphere of national psychology...For the victories were the victories, not only of the king and of the aristocracy, but of the nation".May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307–1399 (Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 150. In 1346, was exhibited in Parliament for propaganda purposes a forged ordinance (in which the French King would have called for the elimination of the English nation) while Parliament was summoned to vote supplies to the king, who was engaged in the Siege of Calais. After the Siege of Calais of 1346, King Edward III expelled the inhabitants of that city because, in his words, "I wolde repeople agayne the towne with pure Englysshmen".William Paton Ker (ed.), The Chronicle of Froissart. Translated out of French by Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners. Volume I (London: David Nutt, 1901), p. 332. When King Henry V conquered Harfleur in 1415, he ordered the inhabitants to leave and imported English immigrants to replace them.W. G. Boswell, Shakespeare's Holinshed. The Chronicle and the Historical Plays Compared (Chatto and Windus, 1907), p. 181, n. 1. Breuilly contests, however, that the national idea remained largely monarchical and that "to interpret these appeals as evidence of nationalism or widespread national identity, or as a project to construct a favourable 'public opinion', goes further than the evidence allow and there was no ethnic component to these appeals". Rather, the "nation" simply meant subjects of the realm.