c. 500 A.D. -- The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes begin their invasion of the British Isles (note: "British," at this period, refers to the Welsh, who called their kingdom Brythwnn -- "Britain").
c. 600 -- The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon Britain is begun by St. Augustine. Monasteries are endowed by the early Saxon kings, and the monks there develop a manuscript form for writing Saxon dialects.
664 -- King Egbert of Kent, a new Christian convert, requests that a Saxon-speaking bishop be appointed in his diocese, ' so that the king and his subjects might be more perfectly instructed in the mysteries of the faith."
c. 700 -- Likely date of the first copying-down of Beowulf, a poem which predates the Christian era.
c. 700 -- Likely date of the inscription on the Ruthwell Cross of a few lines from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Dream of the Rood."
787 -- First incursions from the Danes in the North of England.
c. 890 -- Efflorescence of Anglo-Saxon writing under King Alfred and his heirs.
991 -- The Battle of Maldon fought, subject of one of the last great Saxon alliterative poems.
1066 -- The Saxon King Harold is defeated at the Battle of Hastings by William of Normandy. The government, including nobles and bishops, is quickly replaced by Norman aristocrats.
1154 -- The last entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
1177 Richard Fitz Neal observes that "the English and Normans having dwelt together, marrying and being given in marriage, for many years, the two nations have become so mixed that it is scarcely possible to tell who is of English, and who of Norman blood."
c. 1200 Composition of "The Owl and the Nightingale," one of the first poems that shows a distinct shift towards the usages of "Middle English."
1325 -- William of Nassyngton writes that:
... Somme can Frensche and no Latyn / That used han cowrt and dwellen therein / And somme can of Latyn a party / That can of Frensche but febly / And somme vnderstonde wel Englysch / That can nother Latyn nor Frankys / Bothe lered and lewed, olde and yonge / Alle vnderstonden english tonge
1337 - 1453 The "Hundred Years War" pits Norman England against various French powers on the continent.
1340 Birth of Geoffrey Chaucer
1360 The first bill in Parliament making English the official language of the Law Courts is introduced at the urging of John of Gaunt, who later becomes the patron of Geoffrey Chaucer.
c. 1350-1400 -- An increasing number of trade guilds and civic organizations begin conducting their business in English rather than in Norman French.
c. 1380 Chaucer begins to compose the Canterbury Tales.
c. 1380-1430 -- Thousands of words are borrowed from French and adopted for use in English -- Chaucer personally is responsible for upwards of 5,000 of them.
1381 - Condemnation of John Wyclif, an Oxford theologian, for his beliefs, including his insistence than the Bible be translated into English.
c. 1384 - The first "Wycliffite" translation of the Bible into English is completed'; death of Wyclif (his bones are later exhumed and publicly burned).
c. 1391 - Chaucer, in his "Treatise on the Astrolabe," first makes reference to the "King's English."
1399 Deposition of Richard II and accession of Henry IV, son of John of Gaunt and the first King of England to use English rather than Norman French in his daily written and spoken communications.
1407 - Archbishop Arundel promulgates Articles against the Wycliffites, among which is one forbidding the translations of the Bible into English "because in such translations the same meaning is not easily retained in all particulars."
c. 1420-1470 - The "Great Vowel Shift" affects the pronunciation of English vowels.
1464 - A certain John Baron confesses to heresy before the Bishop of Lincoln; among the "heretical" books he admits owning is a copy of the Canterbury Tales.
c. 1474 - Caxton begins making the first printed books in English; in 1478 he prints the editio princeps of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
1529 - Thomas More writes a powerful attack on English heretical books, and the idea of an English Bible, for Henry VIII.
1536 John Tyndale is burned at the stake for translating the New Testament into English, among other heresies.
1539 - In consequence of the "Reformation" he has instigated, Henry VIII proclaims that the new "Great" Bible in English shall be placed in every parish church; its text of the New Testament is directly based on Tyndale's.
1542 - An Act of Parliament condemns the misunderstandings caused by the English bible, and forbid common workers and women from reading it; all books in English published before 1540 are condemned, excepting only the authorized Bible, the King's proclamations, and the works of Chaucer and Gower.
c. 1540-1600 - A large number of Tudor translations of classical Greek and Roman texts appear, giving English readers without knowledge of these languages access to such texts for the first time. Numerous words and phrases are adopted from Latin and Greek at this time.
c. 1540-1640 - The "Inkhorn controversy" arises between those who feel that old, "native" Saxon words ought to be preferred to "foreign" borrowings, chiefly from Latin and Greek.
1590-1620 - William Shakespeare's career as a playwright exerts a tremendous influence on the lexicon of English.
1598 - Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer is the first to include a glossary of hard or obscure words.
1611 - Publication of the Authorized or 'King James' Bible, which becomes the most influential English text of all time in terms of vocabulary and usage; like the "Great Bible," it retains much of Tyndale's language.
1653 -- John Wallis's Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae is the first English grammar -- it is written entirely in Latin.
1755 -- Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language.
1794 - Lindley Murray's Grammar of the English Language becomes established in the by-then crowded field of such books.
1828 -- Noah Webster's American Dictionary gives the first definitive lexicon of American English.
1864 -- F.J. Furnivall and others found the Early English Text Society
1879 - The Philological Society, the Oxford University Press, and editor James A.H. Murray sign the agreements that will lead to the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
1993 -- The Internet goes commercial