The very first Britons were hunters and gatherers who left no written records. We know of the earliest Celtic inhabitants through archeology and the written records of the first literate people to settle in Britain, the Romans. Britain was a Roman province for several hundred years, until 401 AD. By the 6th century England's present territory was divided into a patchwork of small kingdoms with a Celtic rim to the west and north, and the time that came after this was affected by, among other things, Vikings that invaded the coast. The turning point came in 866, when the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred of Wessex defeated a great Viking army. The Anglo-Saxon kings managed to unite all of England by 905. Between the 9th century and the 1500 a lot of historical things happened, but I will short it down to two paragraphs, and jump straight to the time when Elisabeth 1 came to the throne. She was the daughter of king Edward V1, who died only fifteen years old, after two years at the throne. Her reign, the Elizabethan age, became flowering of arts and literature, this was the era of for example William Shakespeare. She was a very intelligent women, she maintained peace at home and strength abroad, but one fight she could not avoid was with Spain. The king of Spain found he could neither marry her, as she declined that, nor change her policies, as she ignored his threats. In 1588 he sent a fleet of 130 ships to invade England, but England defeated the Spanish Armanda. The win over Spain marked the beginning of England's great power and was the start of what would eventually become the British Empire.
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