ENGLAND, JOHN

born Sept. 23, 1786, Cork, County Cork, Ire. died April 11, 1842, Charleston, S.C., U.S. Irish-born American Roman Catholic prelate who became the first bishop of Charleston and who founded the first Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States. Ordained in 1808, England became an instructor at St. Patrick's Seminary, Cork, where in 1812 he was made president. His outspoken opposition to governmental intervention in the selection of Irish and English bishops displeased some of his superiors, and he was transferred in 1817 to the nearby village of Bandon as parish priest. While serving there, he was named bishop of the new diocese of Charlestoncomprising the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgiaand was consecrated in Ireland (Sept. 21, 1820). Seeing that the first need of his diocese was education, he prepared and printed a catechism and a missal for Americans. He founded the United States Catholic Miscellany, the first Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States, which continued publication until 1861. He began two schools: the Philosophical and Classical Seminary for boys and an academy, conducted by the Ursulines, for girls. For the care of the sick and orphans he founded a religious community, the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. To assist immigrants and workingmen he organized the Brotherhood of San Marino. His attempt to found a school for free blacks was blocked by public opposition. In 1833 England was appointed apostolic delegate to Haiti, the first important diplomatic mission given to a prelate in the United States. His efforts to secure a concordat were, however, unsuccessful. An eloquent orator, he was the first Roman Catholic clergyman invited to speak before the U.S. Congress (1826), where for two hours he described the doctrines of his church. He became a U.S. citizen in the same year. The economy The economy of England was mainly agricultural until the 18th century, but the Industrial Revolution caused it to evolve gradually into a highly urbanized and industrial region during the 18th and 19th centuries. Heavy industries (iron and steel, textiles, and shipbuilding) proliferated in the northeastern counties because of the proximity of coal and iron ore deposits. During the 1930s the Great Depression and foreign competition contributed to a decrease in the production of manufactured goods and an increase in unemployment in the industrial north. The unemployed from these northern counties moved south to London and the surrounding counties. The southeast became urbanized and industrialized, with automotive, chemical, electrical, and machine tool manufactures as the leading industries. An increase in population and urban growth during the 20th century caused a significant drop in the acreage of farms in England, but the geographic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Kent, Lincolnshire, Somerset, and North Yorkshire have remained largely agricultural. Another period of industrial decline during the late 20th century brought the virtual collapse of coal mining and dramatic job losses in iron and steel production, shipbuilding, and textile manufacturing. The decline of these industries particularly hurt the economies of Yorkshire, the North East, the North West, and the West Midlands, while the South East, the South West, and East Anglia remained relatively prosperous. By the beginning of the 21st century, England's economy was firmly dominated by the service sector, notably banking and other financial services, retail, distribution, media and entertainment, education, health care, hotels, and restaurants. Resources For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, coal was England's richest natural resource, meeting most of the nation's requirement for energy. However, international competition, rising domestic costs, the growth of cheaper domestic alternatives (such as natural gas), and mounting environmental concerns combined to cripple the coal industry in the 1980s and '90s. Coal production is now only one-fifth of its level in the mid-20th century. New technologies and the discovery of huge reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the North Sea have further transformed the pattern of energy production. Natural gas supplies the largest proportion of England's energy needs, followed by oil, coal, and nuclear power. Only a small part of the English countryside is woodland. Broad-leaved (oak, beech, ash, birch, and elm) and conifer (pine, fir, spruce, and larch) trees dominate the landscapes of Kent, Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Suffolk, and Hampshire. Important forests include Ashdown in East Sussex, Epping and Hatfield in Essex, Dean in Gloucestershire, Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, Grizedale in Cumbria, and Redesdale, Kielder, and Wark in Northumberland. A substantial amount of forestland is privately owned. England has various freshwater sources, both underground (wells, adits, and boreholes) and surface (lakes and rivers). In southeastern England the Downs, the Chiltern Hills, and the major part of the Isle of Wight have chalk soil, underneath which lie the sands and clays that seal the huge water reservoir of the London Basin. The land Relief England's topography is low in elevation but, except in the east, rarely flat. Much of it consists of rolling hillsides, with the highest elevations found in the north, northwest, and southwest. This landscape is based on complex underlying structures that form intricate patterns on England's geologic map. The oldest sedimentary rocks and some igneous rocks (in isolated hills of granite) are in Cornwall and Devon on the southwestern peninsula, ancient volcanic rocks underlie parts of the Cumbrian Mountains, and the most recent alluvial soils cover the Fens of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk. Between these regions lie bands of sandstones and limestones of different geologic periods, many of them relicts of primeval times when large parts of central and southern England were submerged below warm seas. Geologic forces lifted and folded some of these rocks to form the spine of northern Englandthe Pennines, which rise to 2,930 feet (893 metres) at Cross Fell. The Cumbrian Mountains, which include the famous Lake District, reach 3,210 feet (978 metres) at Scafell Pike, the highest point in England. Slate covers most of the northern portion of the mountains, and thick beds of lava are found in the southern part. Other sedimentary layers have yielded chains of hills ranging from 965 feet (294 metres) in the North Downs to 1,083 feet (330 metres) in the Cotswolds. The hills known as the Chilterns, the North York Moors, and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds were rounded into characteristic plateaus with west-facing escarpments during three successive glacial periods of the Pleistocene Epoch (1,800,000 to 10,000 years ago). When the last ice sheet melted, the sea level rose, submerging the land bridge that had connected Great Britain with the European mainland. Deep deposits of sand, gravel, and glacial mud left by the retreating glaciers further altered the landscape. Erosion by rain, river, and tides and subsidence in parts of eastern England subsequently shaped the hills and the coastline. Plateaus of limestone, gritstone, and carboniferous strata are associated with major coalfields, some existing as outcrops on the surface. The geologic complexity of England is strikingly illustrated in the cliff structure of its shoreline. Along the southern coast from the ancient granite cliffs of Land's End in the extreme southwest is a succession of sandstones of different colours and limestones of different ages, culminating in the white chalk from the Isle of Wight to Dover. A varied panorama of cliffs, bays, and river estuaries distinguishes the English coastline, which, with its many indentations, is some 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long. Drainage The Pennines, the Cotswolds, and the moors and chalk downs of southern England serve as watersheds for most of England's rivers. The Eden, Ribble, and Mersey rise in the Pennines, flow westward, and have a short course to the Atlantic Ocean. The Tyne, Tees, Swale, Aire, Don, and Trent rise in the Pennines, flow eastward, and have a long course to the North Sea. The Welland, Nene, and Great Ouse rise in the northeastern edge of the Cotswolds and empty into the Wash estuary, which forms part of the North Sea. The Welland river valley forms part of the rich agricultural land of Lincolnshire. The Thames, the longest river in England, also rises in the Cotswolds and drains a large part of southeastern England. From the moors and chalk downs of southern England rise the Tamar, Exe, Stour, Avon, Test, Arun, and Ouse. All flow into the English Channel and in some instances help to form a pleasing landscape along the coast. England's largest lake is Windermere, with an area of 6 square miles (16 square km), located in the county of Cumbria. The people Ethnic background The English language is polyglot, drawn from a variety of sources, and its vocabulary has been augmented by importations from throughout the world. The English language does not identify the English, for it is the main language of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, many Commonwealth countries, and the United States. The primary source of the language, however, is the main ethnic stem of the English: the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded and colonized England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their language provides the most commonly used words in the modern English vocabulary. In the millennia following the last glacial period, the British Isles were peopled by migrant tribes from the continent of Europe and, later, by traders from the Mediterranean area. During the Roman occupation England was inhabited by Celtic-speaking Brythons (or Britons), but the Brythons yielded to the invading Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (from present northwestern Germany) except in the mountainous areas of western and northern Great Britain. The Anglo-Saxons preserved and absorbed little of the Roman-British culture they found in the 5th century. There are few traces of Celtic or Roman Latin in the early English of the Anglo-Saxons, though some words survive in place-names, such as the Latin castra, for camp, providing the suffix -cester and combe and tor, Celtic words for valley and hill. Old Norse, the language of the Danes and Norsemen, left more extensive traces, partly because it had closer affinities to Anglo-Saxon and because the Danish occupation of large tracts of eastern and northern England was for a time deeply rooted, as some place-names show. The history of England before the Norman Conquest is poorly documented, but what stands out is the tenacity of the Anglo-Saxons in surviving a succession of invasions. They united most of what is now England from the 9th to the mid-11th century, only to be overthrown by the Normans in 1066. For two centuries Norman French became the language of the court and the ruling nobility; yet English prevailed and by 1362 had reestablished itself as an official language. Church Latin, as well as a residue of Norman French, was incorporated into the language during this period. It was subsequently enriched by the Latin and Greek of the educated scholars of the Renaissance. The seafarers, explorers, and empire builders of modern history have imported foreign words, most copiously from Europe but also from Asia. These words have been so completely absorbed into the language that they pass unselfconsciously as English. The English, it might be said, are great Anglicizers. The English have also absorbed and Anglicized non-English peoples, from Scandinavian pillagers and Norman conquerors to Latin church leaders. Among royalty, a Welsh dynasty of monarchs, the Tudors, was succeeded by the Scottish Stuarts, to be followed by the Dutch William of Orange and the German Hanoverians. English became the main language for the Scots, Welsh, and Irish. England provided a haven for refugees from the time of the Huguenots in the 17th century to the totalitarian persecutions of the 20th century. Many Jews have settled in England. Since World War II there has been large-scale immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, posing seemingly more difficult problems of assimilation, and restrictive immigration regulations have been imposed that are out of step with the open-door policy that had been an English tradition for many generations. Traditional regions Though England is a small and homogeneous country bound together by law, administration, and a comprehensive transport system, distinctive regional differences arise from geography and history. It was natural for different groups of the population to establish themselves in recognizable physical areas. In the north, for example, the east and west are separated by the Pennines, and the estuaries of the Humber, Thames, and Severn rivers form natural barriers. The eight geographic regionsthe South West, the South East, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, East Anglia, the North West, Yorkshire, and the North Eastare often referred to as the standard regions of England, but they do not serve administrative functions.