55 BC

Roman invasion of Britain under Julius Caesar

43 AD

Roman invasion and occupation under Emperor Claudius. Beginning of Roman rule of Britain

436

Roman withdrawal from Britain complete

449

First settlement of Anglo-Saxons in Britain

450-480

Earliest Old English inscriptions date from this period

597

St. Augustine arrives in Britain. Beginning of Christian conversion

731

The Venerable Bede publishes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin

792

Viking raids and settlements begin

865

The Danes occupy Northumbria

871

Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin works translated into English and begins practice of English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun

911

Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of Norman French

c. 1000

The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period

1066

The Norman conquest

c. 1150

The oldest surviving manuscripts of Middle English date from this period

1171

Henry II conquers Ireland

1204

King John loses the province of Normandy to France

1348

English replaces Latin as the medium of instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge which retain Latin

1349-50

The Black Death kills one third of the British population

1362

The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law. Records continue to be kept in Latin. English is used in Parliament for the first time

1384

Wyclif publishes his English translation of the Bible

c. 1388

Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales

c. 1400

The Great Vowel Shift begins

1476

William Caxton establishes the first English printing press

1485

Caxton publishes Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur

1492

Columbus discovers the New World

1525

William Tyndale translates the New Testament

1536

The first Act of Union unites England and Wales

1549

First version of The Book of Common Prayer

1564

Shakespeare born

1603

Union of the English and Scottish crowns under James the I (VI of Scotland)

1604

Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, Table Alphabetical

1607

Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, established

1611

The Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is published

1616

Death of Shakespeare

1623

Shakespeare's First Folio is published

1666

The Great Fire of London. End of The Great Plague

1702

Publication of the first daily, English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London

1755

Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary

1770

Cook discovers Australia

1776

Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence

1782

Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown. Britain abandons the American colonies

1786

Sir William Jones announced to the Asiatick Society of

Calcutta that Sanskrit had to be related to Greek and Latin

1788

British penal colony established in Australia

1803

Act of Union unites Britain and Ireland

1828

Noah Webster publishes his dictionary

1851

Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick

1922

British Broadcasting Company founded

1928

The Oxford English Dictionary is published