What is The General Makeup of England's People?
By Sr. Tanya Johnson OCD

At the time of the Norman Conquest, there were perhaps four million people in what is now England -- or somewhat less. Most of them were of largely Teutonic-Scandinavian stock, but the mixtures were any. The Angles and Saxons and Jutes were Germanic tribes who came over in many waves between the fourth and sixth centuries. We sort of know their ancestry from their naming and burial practices, but that permits all sorts of details we don't know. Their language was most closely related to Frisian, which was spoken (and still is, sort of) from Zeeland to Niedersachsen.

From the end of the eighth century on, there was a huge influx of "Danes," Norse folk from what are now Denmark and Norway. They drove the Anglo-Saxons out of vast tracts of northern and central England. Meanwhile, the western coast of northern England, Cumberland, was part of the Celtic kingdom of Strathclyde, and in the south, in Cornwall, the local Celtic princes had only recently been conquered by the West Saxons, who did not drive the Celts out. The border with Wales itself was less porous (there was a lot of cultural snobbery), but there was a lot of mixing as well. The eleventh century saw as many "Danish" kings as "Saxon" ones, and intermarriage was perhaps common. (Godwin's wife was Norse; Edward the Confessor's mother was Norman.)

Then came the Conquest. But who was in the Norman army? William called for volunteers from all over western Europe. It was a papally-approved invasion. Landless younger sons, who would later fill the armies of the Crusades, came running. It was a motley crew. William tried to provide Saxon heiresses for close friends and valued feuds. Who did his common soldiers marry? And in the succeeding generations, who were the merchants of London who traded also in Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Paris, Bruges? Saxon or Norman? Or Angevin or Blois? Probably all of the above.

When the Kings lost their French possessions, and their feuds lost their French possessions, French gradually ceased to be the spoken tongue of the court and the law courts and commerce, though a lot of Norman French lingered as legal terminology. As for Celts -- well, a lot of Anglo-Normans went to Wales and Ireland and Scotland, and interbred there. Also, there had been Viking settlements in Ireland and in the Isles -- were there any Celts at all on the Hebrides or the Orkneys? -- and English Northumbria had sometimes ruled as far north as Edinburgh -- the border wasn't really settled where it is now till the 12th century. (Which side of it the city of Berwick is on has STILL not been settled.)

So the question, "what is the general makeup of the English people," is very interesting, but it isn't possible to answer it with any degree of certainty. None of the constituent races were very "pure" and none of them tried to stay "pure". Percentages are indecipherable.