1580s in England

Events from the 1580s in England.

Incumbents

Monarch – Elizabeth I

Events

1580

* March – Thomas Legge's Richardus Tertius, the first known history play performed in England, is acted at St John's College, Cambridge.
* 6 April – Dover Straits earthquake.
* 9 April – Anglo-Spanish War: English Fury at Mechelen: English and Scottish mercenaries, assisting the Dutch Republic, storm the city of Mechelen in the Spanish Netherlands, killing 60 civilians and plundering houses and churches.
* 21 June – England signs a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire.
* 6 July – new buildings banned within three miles of the City of London.
* 7 July – Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion begin a Jesuit mission in an attempt to restore Roman Catholicism to England, having landed the previous month.
* 26 September – Francis Drake returns to Plymouth from his voyage of circumnavigation on the Golden Hind, the first made by an Englishman.
* First recorded appearance of the ballad Greensleeves.1581
* 18 March – Act against Reconciliation to Rome establishes heavy fines for recusancy or attending Catholic Mass.
* 4 April – Drake knighted by Queen Elizabeth I aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford.
* 14 July – Jesuit priest Edmund Campion is arrested at Lyford, Berkshire.
* 1 December – Edmund Campion is hanged, drawn and quartered for treason with two other priests at Tyburn.1582
* May-August – Robert Browne and his Brownist congregationalist companions are obliged to leave England and go to Middelburg in the Netherlands.
* 26 July – Battle of Ponta Delgada : English mercenary galleons are among the fleet decisively defeated by the Spanish in the Azores.
* 29 November – marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, perhaps at Temple Grafton.
* Publication of Richard Hakluyt's Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America.
* Publication of the first part of Richard Mulcaster's textbook on the teaching of English, the Elementarie.1583
* 10 March – Queen Elizabeth's Men acting company founded.
* 19 April – Queen Elizabeth dissolves her 4th Parliament which had been convened in 1572 but last met in 1581.
* 23 April – the Kingdom of England establishes diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire.
* 11 June – Sir Humphrey Gilbert sails from Dartmouth, Devon, to establish a colony in North America.
* 17 June – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Steenbergen in the Netherlands: the Spanish Army of Flanders is victorious over combined French, English and Dutch forces.
* 18 June – the first known life insurance policy is issued in London.
* 5 August – Humphrey Gilbert, in what is to become the city of St. John's, claims the island of Newfoundland on behalf of England. Ships of his fleet are wrecked, and Gilbert drowns, on the return passage of the Atlantic.
* 14 August – John Whitgift nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury.
* 4 November – Francis Throckmorton's plot to invade England with the assistance of Henry I, Duke of Guise, and replace Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots, is discovered by Francis Walsingham and Throckmorton is arrested for treason.
* 10 December – great fire of Nantwich in Cheshire breaks out.
* Posthumous publication of Thomas Smith's treatise De Republica Anglorum: the Maner of Gouernement or Policie of the Realme of England.
* Publication of Philip Stubbs' tract The Anatomie of Abuses.
* The Bunch of Grapes, Limehouse opens as a public house in London.1584
* 11 January – Sir Walter Mildmay is granted a royal licence to found Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
* 10 July – execution of Francis Throckmorton.
* 19 October – Bond of Association: thousands pledge to defend Queen Elizabeth, and avenge any successful assassination attempt.
* December – Jesuits and seminary priests banned from the country.
* The landmark decision in Heydon's Case introduces the mischief rule into the interpretation of statutes by the courts.
* Publication of the cookbook A Booke of Cookry.1585
* 6 January – Walter Ralegh knighted.
* 21 January – Robert Nutter, Thomas Worthington and 18 other Roman Catholic priests are perpetually banished from England by order of Queen Elizabeth, placed on the ship Mary Martin of Colchester and transported to France.
* 2 March – William Parry executed for plotting Queen Elizabeth's murder.
* 19 May – Spain seizes English ships in Spanish ports.
* 7 July – England establishes the Roanoke Colony in North America.
* 8 August – explorer John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in Baffin Island in his quest for the Northwest Passage.
* 14 August – Queen Elizabeth establishes a protectorate over the Netherlands.
* 20 August – the Treaty of Nonsuch is signed, committing England to support for the Dutch Revolt against Habsburg rule.
* 15 September – John Adams and 72 other Catholic priests are banished from England and transported by ship to Boulogne in France.1586
* 4 February – Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester accepts the title governor of the Netherlands.
* 11 February – Battle of Cartagena de Indias concludes after 2 days with an English assault force led by Francis Drake capturing the port of Cartagena in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru.
* 14 March – Black Assize of Exeter opens: "gaol fever", spreading from Rougemont Castle in Exeter, kills 8 judges, 11 of 12 jurors, and ravages the surrounding population for several months; many prominent members of the Devonshire gentry are among the dead.
* 25 March – Catholic convert Margaret Clitherow of York is tortured and crushed to death by peine forte et dure for refusing to plead to a charge of harbouring priests; in 1970 she will be canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
* 7 May – John Davis sets out from Dartmouth, Devon, for a second attempt to find the Northwest Passage.
* 1 July – Treaty of Berwick agreed between Queen Elizabeth I of England and King James VI of Scotland.
* 17 July – Walsingham uncovers the Babington Plot to murder Elizabeth.
* 21 July – Thomas Cavendish sets out from Plymouth in the Desire on the first deliberately planned circumnavigation of the globe.
* 28 July – Thomas Harriot returns from a voyage to Colombia with the first potatoes seen in England.
* 20-21 September – execution of Anthony Babington, John Ballard, Chidiock Tichborne, Thomas Salisbury and the other 10 conspirators in the Babington Plot, who are hanged, drawn and quartered in St Giles Field, London.
* 22 September – Battle of Zutphen: Spanish troops defeat Dutch rebels and their English allies. Poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney is mortally wounded and dies on 17 October.
* 15-25 October – Mary, Queen of Scots, placed on treason trial at Fotheringhay Castle for complicity in the Babington Plot and sentenced to death.
* 19 November – Separatist Puritan Henry Barrowe is imprisoned.
* Great fire of Beccles.
* Vanguard, the first Royal Navy ship to bear this name, is launched at Woolwich Dockyard.
* Topographer William Harrison becomes canon of Windsor.
* William Camden publishes his pioneering antiquarian study Britannia.
* William Warner first publishes his long historical poem Albion's England.
* Oxford University Press is recognised by decree of the Star Chamber.
* From about this date an informal College or Society of Antiquaries begins to meet.1587
* 8 February – Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.
* 1 March – Sir Anthony Cope and Sir Peter Wentworth are imprisoned for attempting to bring forward Parliamentary legislation interfering with the Queen's ecclesiastical prerogative.
* 15 March – Sir Francis Drake accepts a privateering commission from Queen Elizabeth to disrupt shipping routes in order to slow supplies from Italy and Andalucia to Lisbon, to trouble enemy fleets in their home ports, to capture Spanish treasure ships and to attack the Spanish Armada if it were to sail for England. On 12 April, his fleet sails from Plymouth.
* 19 April – "Singeing the King of Spain's Beard": On an expedition against Spain, Sir Francis Drake leads a raid in the Bay of Cádiz, sinking or capturing at least 30 ships of the Spanish fleet, delaying by a year the sailing of the Spanish Armada for England.
* 19 May – John Davis sets out from Dartmouth, Devon, for a third attempt to find the Northwest Passage.
* 8 June – Sir Francis Drake captures Portuguese carrack the São Filipe, laden with treasure from the Indies, off the Azores. Its cargo is valued at £108,000, of which 50% goes to Queen Elizabeth and 10% to Drake; it also includes valuable documents relating to the Indies trade.
* 22 July – Roanoke Colony: A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
* 21 December – Lord Howard of Effingham given command of both army and navy in the war against Spain.
* Late – the first part of Christopher Marlowe's drama Tamburlaine the Great is performed in London by the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn playing the lead.
* The Rose (theatre), the first on Bankside in London, is built by Philip Henslowe and functioning by the year's end.
* Everard Digby's De Arte Natandi, the first treatise on swimming in England, is published.
* The doctrine Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos is established in common law by Edward Coke.1588
* 1 January – the Children of Paul's act at the court of Queen Elizabeth, probably performing John Lyly's Gallathea.
* 18–20 May – the Spanish Armada sets sail from the Tagus estuary for an attempted invasion of England.
* 19 July – the Armada is sighted off The Lizard in Cornwall; the news is relayed to London via a series of beacons built along the south coast.
* 21 July – the first engagement between the English and Spanish fleets, off Plymouth, results in an English victory. The English fleet is under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham with Sir Francis Drake as Vice Admiral.
* 23 July – the English and Spanish fleets meet again, off Portland; the English again have the better of it.
* 28 July – the English send fire ships into the French fleet, now anchored off Calais, breaking their formation.
* 29 July – the English fleet defeats the Armada at the Battle of Gravelines.
* 2 August – the fleeing Spanish fleet sails past the Firth of Forth and the English call off their pursuit. Much of the Spanish fleet will be destroyed by storms as it sails for home around Scotland and the west coast of Ireland.
* 9 August – Queen Elizabeth makes her speech to the Troops at Tilbury.
* 1 October – Oaten Hill Martyrs: four Catholics are hanged, drawn and quartered at Canterbury.
* October-November – the Marprelate Controversy, a war of pamphlets between Presbyterians and supporters of the established church, breaks out with publication of the Epistle by "Martin Marprelate" on Robert Waldegrave's secret press at Molesey and Fawsley.
*George Gower paints the Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth.
* Nicholas Hilliard paints the portrait miniature Young Man Among Roses.
* First record of marbles being played at Tinsley Green, West Sussex.
*1588-1589 – earliest probable date for the composition and first performance of Christopher Marlowe's The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus in London.1589
* 13 April – an English Armada led by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys and largely financed by private investors sets sail to attack the Iberian Peninsula's Atlantic coast but fails to achieve any naval advantage.
* Publication of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation begins.

Births

1580
* February – John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol, diplomat
* 8 April – William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, courtier
* 15 April – George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, politician and colonizer
* 18 April – Thomas Middleton, playwright
* 24 August – John Taylor, poet
* 4 December – Samuel Argall, adventurer and naval officer
* Edward Fairfax, translator
1581
* Edmund Gunter, mathematician
* Thomas Overbury, poet and essayist
1582
* 8 April – Phineas Fletcher, poet
* 28 May – William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, statesman
* John Bainbridge, astronomer
* Richard Corbet, poet
* William Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury
* Thomas Moulson, Lord Mayor of London
* Francis Windebank, politician
1583
* 3 March – Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, diplomat, poet and philosopher
* November – Philip Massinger, dramatist
* 17 December – Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey, adventurer and soldier
* 25 December – Orlando Gibbons, composer
* Approximate date
**John Beaumont, poet
** Aurelian Townshend, poet
1584
* 29 March – Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, parliamentary general
* 19 April – John Hales, theologian
* 20 May – John Pym, parliamentarian
* 6 August – Robert Pierrepont, 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull
* 13 August – Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, politician
* 16 December – John Selden, jurist
* 21 December – Thomas Weston, merchant adventurer
* Francis Beaumont, dramatist
* Approximate date
** William Baffin, explorer
** Mary Frith, cutpurse
** Myles Standish, military officer and colonist
1585
* 23 January – Mary Ward, nun
* Early October – John Ball, puritan divine
* 4 December – John Cotton, theologian and minister in the Massachusetts Bay colony
* Ambrose Barlow, Catholic priest
* Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, née Elizabeth Tanfield, poet, translator and dramatist
* John Danvers, politician
1586
* 12 April – John Ford, dramatist and poet
* 7 July – Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, courtier
* 14 August – William Hutchinson, founder of Rhode Island
* 11 December – John Mason, explorer
* Approximate date – Giles Fletcher, poet
1587
* 5 June – Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, colonial administrator and admiral
* July – George Yeardley, colonial administrator in America
* 18 August – Virginia Dare, first child born in the New World to English parents
* 19 September – Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, theologian
* 17 October – Nathan Field, dramatist and actor
* 18 October – Lady Mary Wroth, poet
* William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh
* Francis Kynaston, courtier and poet
1588
* 5 April – Thomas Hobbes, philosopher
* 26 May – Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York
* 11 June – George Wither, poet and satirist
* 10 September – Nicholas Lanier, composer and musician
* Robert Filmer, political writer

Deaths

1580
* 24 February – Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, nobleman
* 3 May – Thomas Tusser, poet and farmer
* 30 November – Richard Farrant, composer
* John Heywood, dramatist
1581
* 22 July – Richard Cox, bishop
* 1 December
**Edmund Campion, Jesuit
** Alexander Briant, Jesuit priest
** Ralph Sherwin, Catholic priest
* Nicholas Sanders, Catholic priest and historian
1583
* 9 June – Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
* 6 July – Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury
* 9 September – Humphrey Gilbert, English explorer
1584
* 12 February – George Haydock, Catholic priest
* 10 March – Thomas Norton, politician and writer
* 10 July – Francis Throckmorton, conspirator against Queen Elizabeth I
* 12 July – Steven Borough, explorer
* 23 July – John Day, Protestant printer
1585
* January – Anthony Gilby, Puritan and Bible translator
* 16 January – Edward Fiennes Clinton, admiral
* 6 February – Edmund Plowden, legal scholar
* 3 April – Thomas Goldwell, ecclesiastic
* 21 June – Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland, nobleman and conspirator
* 6 July – Thomas Aufield, Catholic priest
* 28 July – Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, nobleman, soldier and politician
* 23 November – Thomas Tallis, English composer
1586
* 24 March – Margaret Clitherow, Catholic saint and martyr
* 5 May – Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland
* 12 July – Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley
* 20 September
** Sir Anthony Babington, Catholic conspirator
** Chidiock Tichborne, conspirator and poet
* 17 October – Sir Philip Sidney, poet, courtier and soldier
1587
* January – Thomas Seckford, official
* 30 March – Ralph Sadler, statesman
* 8 April – John Foxe, author
* 14 April – Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland
* 16 April – Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset
* September – George Whetstone, writer
* Dudley Fenner, puritan divine
1588
* 18 June – Robert Crowley, London stationer
* 10 July – Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York
* 30 August – Margaret Ward, Catholic martyr and saint
* 3 September – Richard Tarlton, actor
* 4 September – Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, politician
* 1 October – Edward James, Catholic priest
* Approximate date – Roger Dudley, soldier
1589
* 21 February – Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick
* 2 April – Raleigh, Native American captive in the household of Richard Grenville