ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a fuller picture of the Bretons who migrated to England in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries by drawing on data in the groundbreaking England's Immigrants project initiated and overseen by W. Mark Ormrod. After offering an overview of Breton immigration to England from the fourteenth century onwards in the England's Immigrants database, this study concentrates on Devon and especially Cornwall, where the majority of Bretons migrated. Bretons were a small but distinctive ethnic group in late medieval England. Indeed, Breton immigration to Cornwall actually appears to have expanded, as suggested by a comparison between the numbers of Bretons in the 1440 alien subsidy and those taxed in the Tudor tax rolls of the 1520. Breton neighbours were also nothing new in Devon and especially in Cornwall, where a common language and culture may have smoothed over some of the more difficult situations.
