1631 in England

Events from the year 1631 in England.

Incumbents

Events

5 February – Puritan minister and theologian Roger Williams emigrates to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
20 February – A fire breaks out in Westminster Hall, but is put out before it can cause serious destruction.
14 May – Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, and attainted for sodomy and for assisting in the rape of his wife following a leading case which admits the right of a spouse claiming to be injured to testify against her husband.
28 May – William Claiborne sails from England to establish a trading post on Kent Island, the first English settlement in Maryland.
December – The Holland's Leguer, a notorious brothel in Southwark, is ordered closed and besieged for a month before this can be carried out.
Poor harvest for second year in a row causes widespread social unrest.
Worshipful Company of Clockmakers established in London.
Publication of the "Wicked Bible" by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, an edition of the King James Version of the Bible in which a typesetting erratum leaves the seventh of the Ten Commandments with the word not omitted from the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery". Copies are withdrawn and about a year later the publishers are called to the Star Chamber, fined £300 and have their licence to print revoked.
William Oughtred publishes Clavis Mathematicae, introducing the multiplication sign and proportion sign.
Thomas Hobbes is employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family, to teach the future Earl of Devonshire.

Arts and literature

9 January – The masque Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, written by Ben Jonson with music by Nicholas Lanier and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace.
11 January – The Master of the Revels refuses to license Philip Massinger's new play, Believe as You List, because of its seditious content; it is first performed in a revised version on 7 May.

Births

1 January – Katherine Philips, poet
6 February – Edward Abney, politician
20 February – Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, statesman
15 April – Walter Vincent, English politician
29 April – Joseph Bridger, Colonial Governor of Virginia
4 May – William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton, politician
29 May – Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth, politician
4 July – John Roettiers, engraver
15 July – Richard Cumberland, philosopher
7 August – Nicholas Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet,
19 August – John Dryden, writer
24 August – Philip Henry, nonconformist minister
6 September – Charles Porter, Lord Chancellor of Ireland
29 September – Richard Edlin, astrologer
12 October – George Saunderson, 5th Viscount Castleton, politician
13 October – Richard Hampden, politician
18 October – Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan minister, doctor and poet in New England
4 November – Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange
10 November – Daniel Harvey, merchant, diplomat and politician
14 December – Lady Anne Finch Conway, philosopher
John Barret, Presbyterian minister and religious controversialist
Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, statesman, implicated in Rye House Plot
Joan Dant, Quaker merchant and philanthropist
Richard Lower, physician who performs the first direct blood transfusion
John Phillips, satirist approx. date – William Ball, astronomer

Deaths

1 January – Thomas Hobson, carrier and origin of the phrase "Hobson's choice"
7 February – Gabriel Harvey, writer
31 March – John Donne, poet and Dean of St Paul's
6 May – Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington, politician and antiquarian
25 May – Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York and religious writer
18 June – Sir Robert Payne, politician
21 June – John Smith, soldier and colonist
28 October – Sir Richard Beaumont, 1st Baronet, politician
23 December – Michael Drayton, poet