England in the Middle Ages
England during the Middle Ages (from the 5th century withdrawal of Roman forces from the province of Britannia and the Germanic invasions, until the late Anglo-Saxon period) was fragmented into a number of independent kingdoms. By the High Middle Ages, after the end of the Viking Age and the Norman Conquest, the Kingdom of England came to rule much of the area previously ruled by the Romans; the territory of Roman Britain that did not fall under English rule was held by the Kingdoms of Wales and the Kingdom of Scotland.
The medieval period in England can be dated from the arrival in Kent of Anglo-Saxon troops led by the legendary Hengest and Horsa. Subsequently those Brythonic Celtic kingdoms whose territories lay within the area of modern England were conquered by Jutes, Angles and Saxons Germanic tribes, from the contemporary Angeln and Jutland areas of Northern Germany and mainland Denmark. Political takeover of other areas of England proceeded piecemeal and was not completed until the 10th century.
Similarly, the end of the medieval period is usually dated by the rise of what is often referred to as the "English Renaissance" in the reign of Henry VIII, and the Reformation in Scotland, or else to the establishment of a centralised, bureaucratic monarchy by Henry VII. From a political point of view, the Norman Conquest of England divides medieval Britain in two distinct phases of cultural and political history. From a linguistic point of view the Norman Conquest had only a limited effect, Old English evolving into Middle English, although the Anglo Norman language would remain the language of those that ruled for two centuries at least, before mingling with Middle English.
At the height of pre-Norman medieval English power, a single English king ruled from the border with Scotland to the border with Wales]. After the Norman Conquest, English power intruded into Wales with increasing vigour. Southern England, due to its proximity to Normandy, Flanders and Brittany, had closer relations with them than the other regions.
England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the middle ages than many standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The development of French in England, whether known as `Anglo-Norman' or `Anglo-French', is deeply interwoven both with medieval English and with the spectrum of Frenches, insular and continental, used within and outside the realm. As the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations, the French of England needs more attention than it has so far received.

The essays in this volume form a new cultural history focussed round, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of French speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth century. Taking the French of England into account does not simply add new material to our existing narratives of medieval English culture, but changes them, restoring a multi-vocal, multi-cultural medieval England in all its complexity, and opening up fresh agendas for study and exploration.