1600s in England

Events from the 1600s in England. This decade marks the end of the Elizabethan era with the beginning of the Jacobean era and the Stuart period.

Incumbents

Monarch – Elizabeth I, then James I
Events
1600
* January – In Ireland, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, renews the Nine Years' War against England with an invasion of Munster.
* 11 February-March – Clown William Kempe morris dances from London to Norwich.
* c. April – Publication of Ben Jonson's play Every Man out of His Humour in London; it goes through three editions this year.
* 26 July – The original Banbury Cross is demolished on the orders of a Puritan local corporation.
* 31 December – East India Company granted a Royal Charter.
* William Shakespeare's plays Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing are published in London.
* William Gilbert publishes De Magnete in London, discussing Earth's magnetic field, one of the first important scientific works to be published in England.
* Caister Castle falls into ruin.
1601
* 7-8 January – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, stages a short-lived rebellion against Elizabeth I.
* 25 February – Essex is executed for treason, becoming the last person beheaded on Tower Green in the Tower of London, the sword being wielded by Thomas Derrick.
* 22 April – The first expedition of the East India Company, having set out from Woolwich on 13 February, sets sail from Torbay for the Spice Islands with John Davis as pilot-major.
* Spring – Possible first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet in London.
* September 19 - 4th Spanish Armada makes landfall in Southern Ireland - Spanish troops take and hold Kinsale.
* 2 October–3 January 1602 – Siege of Kinsale.
* November – Elizabeth I addresses her final parliament with the Golden Speech.
* An Act for the Relief of the Poor codifies the English Poor Laws.
1602
* 2 February – First recorded performance of Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night, in Middle Temple Hall, London.
* 3–4 October – Battle of the Narrow Seas: an English fleet pursues six Spanish galleys through the Strait of Dover.
* 8 November – The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened.
* November – Final judgement in Slade's Case, allowing an effective modernisation of English contract law.
* Publication of Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, in London.
* Richard Carew publishes The Survey of Cornwall.
1603
* 24 March – Queen Elizabeth I dies at Richmond Palace aged 69, after 45 years on the throne, and is succeeded by her first cousin twice removed King James VI of Scotland, hence the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England. Elizabeth was never married and had no children, neither did her only legitimate siblings, the late Mary and Edward VI.
* 31 March – The Nine Years' War is ended by the submission of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, to the English Crown and the signing of the Treaty of Mellifont.
* 5 April – James VI and I sets out from Edinburgh for London.
* April – Thomas Cartwright delivers his Millenary Petition, demanding an end to ritualistic practices, allegedly signed by 1,000 Puritan ministers, to the King, who is en route to London.
* c. April – 1603 London plague: Outbreak of bubonic plague epidemic in London in which between 29,000 and 40,000 die. The theatres are closed.
* 28 April – Funeral of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey.
* 7 May – King James arrives in London, where he is enthusiastically received.
* 19 May – The London acting company previously known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men comes under the patronage of the new monarch and is chartered as the King's Men. William Shakespeare is among them.
* 24 June – Planned date for "Bye Plot", a conspiracy to kidnap King James in the interest of tolerance for Roman Catholic priests and Puritans.
* July – "Main Plot", an alleged conspiracy by English courtiers to remove James from the English throne and to replace him with his cousin Lady Arbella Stuart.
* 17 July – Sir Walter Raleigh is arrested for treason in connection with the "Main Plot".
* 21 July – Thomas Howard is created the 1st Earl of Suffolk.
* 25 July – Coronation of James I as King of England in Westminster Abbey.
* November–December – The court is in residence at Wilton House in Wiltshire due to plague in London.
* 17 November – Raleigh goes on trial for treason in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle. He is found guilty but his life is spared by the King at this time and he is returned to imprisonment in the Tower of London.
* 2 December – The King's Men perform a play for the court at Wilton House, perhaps As You Like It.
1604
* 14–16 January – Hampton Court Conference with James I, the Anglican bishops and representatives of Puritans. Work begins on the Authorized King James Version of the Bible and revision of the Book of Common Prayer.
* 17 February – James I issues an order for all Jesuits and Roman Catholic priests to leave his kingdom by March 19.
* 19 March – The "Blessed Parliament" assembles at Westminster and debates Robert Cecil's proposal, brought forward according to the King's desire, for union with Scotland.
* 1 May - James I and Anne of Denmark are treated to A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen on May-Day at Highgate.
* 2 April – Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Edward Phelips rules that members of the House may not bring forward an identical motion to one that has already been decided in that same session.
* 20 May – Gunpowder Plot: Five Catholic conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, who has invited Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes, meet at the Duck and Drake Inn in London to make a plan for the assassination of King James.
* 20 May–16 July – 18 sessions of discussion between England and Spain at Somerset House in London agree a peace treaty to end the Anglo-Spanish War.
* 20 June – The Form of Apology and Satisfaction is read out in the House of Commons to justify the conduct of Parliament following a dispute between King and Parliament over a contested election in Buckinghamshire.
* 18 August – The Treaty of London brings an end to the Anglo–Spanish War.
* 4 July – The Jesuits etc. Act 1603 is given royal assent, creating penalties against Jesuits and Catholics who send their children abroad to Catholic colleges.
* 7 July – Parliament prorogued.
* Before 1 October – Huntingdon Beaumont completes the Wollaton Wagonway, built to transport coal from the mines at Strelley to Wollaton just west of Nottingham, the world's oldest wagonway with provenance.
* 20 October – King James assumes the style king of Great Britain.
* 1 November – First recorded performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, at Whitehall Palace in London.
* 10 December – Richard Bancroft is installed as Archbishop of Canterbury.
* Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragicall History of D. Faustus is published in London.
* King James publishes A Counterblaste to Tobacco.
* Table Alphabeticall, the first known English dictionary to be organised by alphabetical ordering, is published.
* Blundell's School is founded in Tiverton, Devon, under the will of merchant Peter Blundell.
1605
* 10 April – Spanish Catholic missionary Luisa Carvajal y Mendoza arrives in England.
* October – Publication of Francis Bacon's treatise The Advancement of Learning.
* 5 November – Gunpowder Plot: a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament is foiled when, following an anonymous tip-off, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building and orders a search of the area, finding 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes is arrested for trying to kill King James I and the members who were scheduled to sit together in Parliament the next day. Fawkes speaks the legendary words: "Remember, remember, the Fifth of November".
* 8 November – Gunpowder Plot conspirator Robert Catesby is among those shot while plotters are being arrested at Holbeche House in the west midlands.
1606
* 27 January – Catholic priest Henry Garnet is arrested at Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire.
* 31 January – Fawkes and three of his co-plotters are executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in London, four having been executed the previous day.
* 24 February – Commercial treaty between England and France signed in Paris.
* 28 March – Catholic priest Henry Garnet is tried for misprision of treason at Guildhall, London, in connection with the Gunpowder Plot, and found guilty. Discussion of equivocation plays a significant part in his questioning and trial. On 3 May he is hanged at St Paul's Churchyard in London.
* 10 April – Charter of 1606: The First Charter of Virginia is adopted, by which King James I of England grants rights to the Virginia Company to settle parts of the east coast of North America.
* 12 April – First version of the Union Flag created, designed by Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, to be worn at the maintopmast of English and Scots ships.
* Spring – Ben Jonson's satiric play Volpone first performed, in London.
* 27 May – Severe penalties are imposed for Catholic recusancy, and for refusal to take an Oath of Allegiance to James to serve in public office, under terms of the Popish Recusants Act 1605.
* 27 May – Second session of Parliament under King James prorogued.
* 10 July – 47 Roman Catholic priests, including Thomas Garnet, are deported to Flanders on pain of death if they return to England.
* 24 July – King Christian IV of Denmark, as the guest of his brother-in-law James I, is welcomed to London and the two monarchs are driven by coaches to a banquet at Theobalds House at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. They are entertained by Ben Jonson's play, The Entertainment of the Kings of Great Britain and Denmark. On 31 July they see a play by John Marston.
* 7 August – Possible first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, in London.
* 18 November – Third session of Parliament begins.
* 19 December – The Susan Constant sets out from the River Thames leading the Virginia Company's fleet for the foundation of Jamestown, Virginia.
* 26 December – One of the first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, before the King at Whitehall.
* Paston School founded in Norfolk.
1607
* 30 January – Coastal flooding around Britain, probably a storm surge, including Bristol Channel floods in which a massive wave sweeps along the Bristol Channel, killing an estimated 2,000 people, with of farmland inundated.
* late April – Start of Midland Revolt against land enclosures. The rebels are referred to as "Levellers".
* 14 May – Jamestown, Virginia, is established as the first permanent English settlement in North America.
* 8 June – Midland Revolt suppressed at Newton, Northamptonshire, by local gentry.
* 4 July – Third session of Parliament ends, having refused a proposed union with the Parliament of Scotland. It does not assemble again until 1610.
* September – The Scrooby Congregation of Protestant Separatists from Nottinghamshire attempt to flee to the Dutch Republic from The Haven, Boston, but are betrayed, arrested and imprisoned for a time.
* 14 September – Flight of the Earls from Ireland: Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, flee to Spain to avoid capture by the English crown, thus facilitating the Plantation of Ulster with English and Scots settlers.
* November – Case of Prohibitions: Sir Edward Coke determines that legal cases should not be tried by the monarch.
* 5 December-14 February 1608 – severe frost. Many rivers, including the Thames, freeze.
* First performance of the first wholly parodic play in English, Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, unsuccessfully, probably by the Children of the Chapel at the Blackfriars Theatre in London.
1608
* Spring – The Scrooby Congregation successfully flees to the Dutch Republic from the Humber, origin of the Pilgrim Fathers who in 1620 move on to North America.
* April – Performances of George Chapman's new play The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron by the Children of the Chapel at the Blackfriars Theatre in London are suppressed after the French Ambassador complains to King James. After June the play is published with the offensive passages suppressed.
* July–December – Plague in London.
* c. October – Thomas Middleton's city comedy A Mad World, My Masters published in London.
* Muster rolls are compiled in the counties.
* Traditional date – Golf first played in England, at Blackheath, London.
1609
* 20 May – London publisher Thomas Thorpe issues Shake-speares Sonnets, with a dedication to "Mr. W.H.", and the poem A Lover's Complaint appended; it is uncertain whether this publication has Shakespeare's authority.
* 25 July – The London Company's ship Sea Venture, en route to relieve the Jamestown settlement, is driven ashore in Bermuda, thus effectively first settling the colony.
* 26 July – English scientist Thomas Harriot becomes the first to draw an astronomical object after viewing it through a telescope: he draws a map of the Moon, preceding Galileo by several months.
* 28 August – English explorer Henry Hudson sailing the Halve Maen in the service of the Dutch East India Company finds Delaware Bay.
* 11–12 September – Hudson sails into Upper New York Bay and begins a journey up the Hudson River.
* 12 October – A version of the rhyme "Three Blind Mice" is published in Deuteromelia or The Seconde part of Musicks melodie. The editor, and possible author of the verse, is the teenage Thomas Ravenscroft. This collection follows his publication of the first rounds in English, Pammelia.
* Plantation of Ulster proceeds: Protestant English and Scots settlers take over forfeited estates of rebel leaders.
* Trinity House establishes its first lighthouses, at Lowestoft.
* Publication of Pericles, Prince of Tyre in London with attribution to Shakespeare.