England and the English: National Identity

The Battle of Bosworth did not put an end to medieval England any more than the Battle of Hastings brought the Middle Ages into existence. Traditions and institutions survived. Some, such as the Exchequer, are with us still. Others, such as the chronic willingness of the barons to resort to war, and the crown’s inability to live off its own resources, were still determining factors behind the historical events for centuries still to come: the dissolution of the monasteries and the Protestant Reformation of the 1530s, for example, or the English Civil War a century later. History itself, by contrast to history books, does not divide easily into periods or clear-cut ‘befores’ and ‘afters’. Like the shades of William of Normandy or Harold Godwinson hovering over the events at Bosworth Field, it tends to cast a shadow long after its actors have gone to their graves.

Nonetheless, if we cannot end here with a high note and a declaration that, in August 1485, on Bosworth Field, the modern or the early modern era was born, we can at least declare that by the time that Henry Tudor placed a crown upon his head, England had acquired both a history and a national identity. Wealth and the bounty of nature were England’s birthrights, a consequence of geography, of the constant presence of the sea, and of the toil of those who first cleared the land, dug the mines and tilled the soil. From at least the age of Bede, as far back as the eighth century, came an idea of Englishness and of national destiny united under Christian kingship. For all of the shattering uncertainties and usurpations of the fifteenth century, the kingdom of England, unlike the kingdom of France or the empire of Germany, remained a united and indivisible whole.

From at least the eleventh century, and William of Normandy’s victory at Hastings, a willingness to resort to violence and a determination to prove a God-given destiny through battle, had become defining characteristics of Englishness. From this emerged a state and an aristocracy themselves derived from warfare and the needs of organizing society for war. From the twelfth century, if not before, came a sense both of history and of irony. Nostalgia for past glories and a determination, at some future point, to rebuild a golden age, were combined with an ability to subvert the magniloquence of kings and to laugh at the very pomp that such nostalgia might otherwise encourage. The English, from their lands in France and later in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, had come to think of themselves as an imperial people, heirs to Arthur and to the Roman glories of the past. Deeply mistrustful of foreigners, they were themselves a nation of mongrels, half-breeds and polyglots, ruled after 1485 by Welshmen, dependent upon European trade and closely tied to the fortunes of France. The English were neither polite nor obedient. For all their claim to be doing God’s work, they were as often engaged in spying or rebellion as in administering justice or in protecting their own much boasted liberties. They were a paradox awaiting description. Above all they were a people secure in their knowledge, even in their mythologizing of the past. They had come into possession of a history, and their past was never far distant from their present thoughts.