English People
English
Traditionally Anglicanism, but also non-conformists (see History of the Church of England) and also Roman Catholics (see Catholic Emancipation); as well as other faiths (see Religion in England).
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is a country of the United Kingdom, and English people in England are British Citizens. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain after the fifth century AD.
Historically, the English population is descended from several genetically similar peoples—the earlier Britons (or Brythons), the Germanic tribes that settled in the area, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, who founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland), and the later Danes, Normans and other groups. Following the Act of Union in 1707, in which the Kingdom of England became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain, English customs and identity became closely aligned with British customs and identity.
Today, some English people have recent forbears from other parts of the United Kingdom, while some are also descended from more recent immigrants from other European countries and from the Commonwealth.
The English people are the source of the English language, the parliamentary system, the common law system and numerous major sports. These and other English cultural characteristics have spread worldwide, in part as a result of the former British Empire.
Read more about English People: English Nationality, English Diaspora, Culture
Famous quotes containing the words english people, english and/or people:
“The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
“... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)