A Long and Illustrious HistoryChapter 3

In which year did Julius Caesar first lead a Roman invasion of Britain?

What happened at the Battle of Hastings in 1066?

How many times did King Henry VIII marry?

Is this statement true or false? In 1588 the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Which king was executed in 1649 after the English Civil War?

In which year did the Act of Union join England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain?

Who was the British Prime Minister for most of the Second World War?

Is this statement true or false? The National Health Service (NHS) was founded in 1948.

تريد بنك الأسئلة الكامل والتقدم والخطة؟ ابدأ مجاناً — لا حاجة لبطاقة.

ما يغطيه هذا الفصل

The first people in Britain were Stone Age hunter-gatherers.
Britain was connected to the European continent by a land bridge; it became permanently separated by the Channel about 10,000 years ago.
The first farmers arrived in Britain around 6,000 years ago; their ancestors probably came from south-east Europe.

The Middle Ages (medieval period) runs from the Norman Conquest (1066) to about 1485 — a period of near-constant war.
English kings fought wars at home against the Welsh, Scottish and Irish, and abroad against France.
In 1284 King Edward I of England annexed Wales to the Crown of England by the Statute of Rhuddlan.

Henry VII (first Tudor king) strengthened central government and royal finances and reduced the power of the nobles after the Wars of the Roses.
Henry VIII, son of Henry VII, is famous for breaking away from the Church of Rome and for marrying six times.
Henry VIII's six wives in order: (1) Catherine of Aragon, (2) Anne Boleyn, (3) Jane Seymour, (4) Anne of Cleves, (5) Catherine Howard, (6) Catherine Parr — mnemonic for fates: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603 with no children, her cousin James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, Wales and Ireland — uniting the crowns (but not yet the parliaments).
During James I's reign a new English translation of the Bible was produced — the King James Bible (Authorised Version), still used in many Protestant churches; not the first English Bible but the first authorised for the Church of England.
In Ireland, English governments encouraged Protestant settlers from England and (mainly) Scotland to take over land from Catholic landholders in Ulster — settlements known as plantations; these had lasting consequences for Irish history.

After the Glorious Revolution the monarch's power shrank; Parliament's importance grew, though voting rights were limited and "pocket" and "rotten" boroughs were controlled by wealthy patrons.
The Act of Union (known in Scotland as the Treaty of Union) in 1707 united England and Scotland, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain with one Parliament.
After 1707 Scotland was no longer an independent country, but it kept its own legal system, its own Presbyterian national church (Church of Scotland), and its own education system.

The early 20th century (before WWI) was a time of optimism and social progress: the government introduced financial help for the unemployed, old-age pensions and free school meals.
The First World War began when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 — the event that triggered the war (though it had many causes, including imperial and military rivalry).
Britain fought as part of the Allied Powers — with (among others) France, Russia, Japan, Belgium and Serbia, later joined by Greece, Italy, Romania and the United States — against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and later Bulgaria.

In the 1945 general election, Labour won and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister, defeating Churchill's Conservatives.
The post-war Labour government created the welfare state, following the 1942 Beveridge Report (Social Insurance and Allied Services) by William Beveridge.
The National Health Service (NHS) was established in 1948, giving free healthcare to all citizens; the Minister of Health who led its creation was Aneurin (Nye) Bevan.