Hmm, a tricky question, WAV. Do you think it's:

a) because they fell out of use hundreds of years ago, have played next to no role in the evolution of English traditional music as we know it, their stringing/ tuning system is quite restrictive, and nowadays we have a choice of much better and more suitable instruments.

or

b) because they were forcibly suppressed by PC multi-culturalist England-haters who wanted to stamp on our native culture by replacing all instruments with "English" in their names with foreign ones.

I know which answer I'd choose, and I suspect everyone with perhaps one exception would. People will carry on playing guitars, mandolins, citterns, ouds, bouzoukis and banjos, regardless of what they're called or what historical links to certain nations they might have.