1616

January–March

• January 1 – King James I of England attends the masque The Golden Age Restored, a satire by Ben Jonson on fallen court favorite the Earl of Somerset. The king asks for a repeat performance on January 6.
• January 3 – In the court of James I of England, the king's favorite George Villiers becomes Master of the Horse ; on April 24 he receives the Order of the Garter; and on August 27 he is created Viscount Villiers and Baron Waddon, receiving a grant of land valued at £80,000. In 1617, he will be made Earl of Buckingham. After the Earl of Pembroke, he is the second richest nobleman in England.
• January 10 – English diplomat Sir Thomas Roe presents his credentials to the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, in Ajmer Fort, opening the door to the British presence in India. Roe sailed in the Lyon under the command of captain Christopher Newport, best known for his role in the Virginia colonies.
• January 12 – The city of Belém, Brazil is founded on the Amazon River delta, by Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco, who had previously taken the city of São Luís in Maranhão from the French.
• January 15 – After overwintering with the Huron Indians, Samuel de Champlain and Recollect Father Joseph Le Caron visit the Petun and Ottawa Indians of the Great Lakes. This is Champlain's last trip in North America before returning to France. Having secured Canada, he helps create French America, New France, or L'Acadie.
• January 29 – Dutch captain Willem Schouten, in the Eendracht, rounds the southern tip of South America, and names it Kaap Hoorn, after his birthplace in Holland.
• January – 8-year-old António Vieira arrives from Portugal with his parents in Bahia in Colonial Brazil, where he will become a diplomat, noted author, leading figure of the Church, and protector of Brazilian indigenous peoples, in an age of intolerance.
• February 1 – James I of England grants Ben Jonson an annual pension of 100 marks, making him de facto poet laureate.
• February 17 – Manchurian leader Qing Tai Zu, referred to in the west as "Nurhaci", declares himself khan and crowns himself as Emperor of China, founding the Later Jin dynasty.
• February 18 - Preparing the declaration of independence from the colony of the Hashimi Empire, namely the Arya Bayu Kingdom by Khan Nasaruddin II, who was crowned in Mecca,Medina, and Isfahan.
• February 19 – The first recorded eruption of Mayon Volcano, the Philippines' most active volcano, takes place.
• February 24 – A commission of Roman Catholic theologians, the "Qualifiers," reports that the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture...".
• February 26 – Astronomer Galileo Galilei appears before Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino and "warned of the error of the Copernican opinion taught by him", and enjoined by the Catholic Church against any attempt to hold, teach or defend the position of Copernicus that the Sun is stationary rather than revolving around the Earth "in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing."
• February 28 – In the aftermath of the 1613–1614 anti-Jewish pogrom called the Fettmilch uprising in Frankfurt, Germany, mob leader Vincenz Fettmilch is beheaded, but the Jews, who had been expelled from the city on August 23, 1614, following the plundering of the Judengasse, can return only as a result of direct intervention by Holy Roman Emperor Matthias. After long negotiations, the Jews are left without any compensation for their plundered belongings.
• February – English merchants of the East India Company complain that the great troubles and wars in Japan since their arrival have put them to much pains and charges. Two great cities, Osaka and Sakaii, have been burned to the ground, each one almost as big as London, and not one house left standing, and it is reported above 300,000 men have lost their lives, “yet the old Emperor Ogusho Same hath prevailed and Fidaia Same either been slain or fled secretly away, that no news is to be heard of him.” Jesuits, priests, and friars are banished by the emperor and their churches and monasteries pulled down; they put the fault on the arrival of the English; it is said if Fidaia Same had prevailed against the emperor, he promised them entrance again, when without doubt all the English would have been driven out of Japan.
• March 5 – De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, written by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543 is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, by the Congregation of the Index of the Roman Catholic Church "until corrected".
• March 11
• * Galileo Galilei meets Pope Paul V in person, to discuss his position as a defender of Copernicus' heliocentrism. The Pope promises Galileo safety from any enemies, and Galileo complies for the next seven years with the injunction against teaching Copernican doctrines.
• * English Roman Catholic priest, Thomas Atkinson, is hanged, drawn, and quartered at York, at age 70.
• March 19
• *Sir Walter Ralegh, English explorer of the New World, is released from prison in the Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned for treason, in order to conduct a second expedition, in search of El Dorado in South America.
• *The Scornful Lady, a comedy stage play written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, is published.
• March 26–August 30 – English explorer William Baffin, as pilot to Robert Bylot on the Discovery, makes a detailed exploration of Baffin Bay, whilst searching for the Northwest Passage. The expedition also discovers Smith Sound, Lancaster Sound and Devon Island, and reaches latitude 77° 45' North, a record which holds for 236 years.
• March 31 – Mughal Emperor Jahangir confers the title of Nur Jahan on his 20th wife.
• March – Action of 1616, La Goulette, Tunisia: A Spanish squadron under Francisco de Ribera defeats a Tunisian fleet.

  April–June

• April 25 – Sir John Coke, in the Court of King's Bench, holds the King's actions in a case of In commendam to be illegal.
• May 3 – The Treaty of Loudun is signed, ending a series of rebellions in France.
• May 25 – King James I of England's former favourite, the Earl of Somerset, and his wife Frances, are convicted of the murder of Thomas Overbury in 1613. They are spared death, and are sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London. Although the King has ordered the investigation of the poet's murder and allowed his former court favorite to be arrested and tried, his court, now under the influence of George Villiers, gains the reputation of being corrupt and vile. The sale of peerages and the royal visit of James's brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, a notorious drunkard, add further scandal.
• June 12 – Pocahontas arrives in England, with her husband, John Rolfe, their one-year-old son, Thomas Rolfe, her half-sister Matachanna and brother-in-law Tomocomo, the shaman also known as Uttamatomakkin. Ten Powhatan Indians are brought by Sir Thomas Dale, the colonial governor, at the request of the Virginia Company, as a fund-raising device. Dale, having been recalled under criticism, writes A True Relation of the State of Virginia, Left by Sir Thomas Dale, Knight, in May last, 1616, in a successful effort to redeem his leadership. Neither Pocahontas or Dale see Virginia again.

  July–September

• July 6 – First recorded eruption of Manam Volcano, forming a 10-km-wide island in the Bismarck Sea, off coast of Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
• July 20 – The death of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, in exile in Rome, ends the Flight of the Earls from Ireland.
• August 8 – The Tokugawa shogunate in Japan forbids foreigners other than Chinese from traveling freely, or trading outside of the ports of Nagasaki and Hirado.
• September 15 – The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy.

  October–December

• October 10 – Sakazaki Naomori of Iwami Tsuwano han commits suicide after failing to kidnap Princess Sen.
• October 25 – Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at Dirk Hartog Island off the Western Australian coast, and the pewter Hartog Plate is left to mark the landfall of the Dutch ship Eendracht.
• October
• * John Donne is appointed as Reader in Divinity at his old inn of court in London, Lincoln's Inn.
• * King James's School, Knaresborough in Yorkshire is founded by Dr. Robert Chaloner, and the charter is signed by King James I of England.
• October/November – Ben Jonson's satirical five-act comedy, The Devil is an Ass, is produced at the Blackfriars Theatre in London by the King's Men, poking fun at contemporary credence in witchcraft and Middlesex juries.
• November 4 – Prince Charles is invested as Prince of Wales at Whitehall in London, the last such formal investiture until 1911.
• November 5 – Bishop Lancelot Andrewes preaches the annual Gunpowder Treason sermon before King James I of England at Whitehall, both having been intended victims of the plot.
• November 6–25 – Ben Jonson's works are published in a collected folio edition.
• November 6 – Captain William Murray is granted a royal patent, giving him the sole privilege of importing tobacco to Scotland for a period of 21 years. Continuing from the reign of Elizabeth I, the creation of grants and patents reaches a new highwater mark from 1614 to 1621, during the reign of James I of England.
• November 13 – Italian artist Guido Reni's famous Pietà, commissioned by the Senate of Bologna, is placed on the greater altar of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà.
• November 14 – In England, Sir Edward Coke is dismissed as Chief Justice of the King's Bench by royal prerogative.
• November 16
• * The Tepehuán Revolt begins in Nueva Vizcaya with the attack of a Spanish wagon train that is on its way to Mexico City. It tests the limits of Spanish and Jesuit colonialism, in western and northwestern Durango and southern Chihuahua, Mexico.
• * Marco Antonio de Dominis, Roman Catholic Archbishop of the See of Spalato and Primate of Dalmatia, having run afoul of Pope Paul V over secular matters relating to Venice, submits to King James I of England and later becomes Dean of Windsor.
• November 30 – Cardinal Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, is named French Secretary of State by young king Louis XIII. Richelieu will change France into a unified centralised state, able to resist both England and the Habsburg Empire.
• November
• *Peter Paul Rubens begins work on classical tapestries, when a contract is signed in Antwerp with cloth dyers Jan Raes and Frans Sweerts in Brussels, and the Genoese merchant Franco Cattaneo.
• * René Descartes, at age 20, graduates in civil and canon law at the University of Poitiers, where he becomes disillusioned with books, preferring to seek truths from "le grand livre du monde." His thesis defense may be written in December.
• * With small profits to show, the Virginia Company decides to distribute land in Virginia to shareholders according to the number of shares owned. Each stockholder can set up a "particular" plantation and pay associated expenses, receiving of land for each share and for each person transported.
• * Scholar Robert Burton is made vicar of St Thomas the Martyr's Church, Oxford.
• December 10 – An ordinance establishes parish schools in Scotland. The same act of the Privy Council commends the abolition of Gaelic.
• December 18 – A widely reported earthquake occurs in Leipzig, Germany.
• December 22 – An Indian youth is baptized with the name "Peter" in London at the St. Dionis Backchurch, in a ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor, the Privy Council, city aldermen, and officials of the Honourable East India Company. Peter thus becomes the first convert to the Anglican Church in India. He returns to India as a missionary, schooled in English and Latin.
• December 25
• * "Father Christmas" is a main character of Christmas, His Masque, written by Ben Jonson and presented at the court of King James I of England. Father Christmas is considered a papist symbol by Puritans, and later banished from England until the English Restoration. The traditional, comical costume for this jolly figure, as well as regional names, indicate that he is descended from the presenter of the medieval Feast of Fools.
• * Captain Nathaniel Courthope reaches the nutmeg-rich island of Run in the Moluccas, to defend it against the Dutch East India Company. A contract with the inhabitants, accepting James I of England as their sovereign, makes it part of the English colonial empire.
• December – In the Middle East, traveller Pietro Della Valle marries Jowaya, daughter of a Nestorian Christian father and an Armenian mother, in Baghdad. The couple then sets off to find the Shah in Isfahan.