1600s in England

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth I, James I
• Parliament – 10th of Queen Elizabeth I, Blessed

  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; 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, 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 executed for treason, becoming the last person beheaded on Tower Green in the Tower of London, the sword being wielded by Thomas Derrick.
• * Spring – possible first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.
• * 2 October-3 January 1602 – the Siege of Kinsale ends the Nine Years' War.
• * 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.
• * 8 November – the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened.
• * Publication of Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor.
• * 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 distant cousin King James VI of Scotland, thus uniting 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.
• * April – Thomas Cartwright delivers his Millenary Petition, demanding an end to ritualistic practices, and signed by 1,000 Puritan ministers, to the King.
• * 28 April – funeral of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey.
• * 17 July – Sir Walter Ralegh arrested for treason.
• * 21 July – Thomas Howard created the 1st Earl of Suffolk.
• * 25 July – coronation of James I as King of England in Westminster Abbey.
• * 17 November – Ralegh 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.
• 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.
• * 19 March – Parliament assembles and debates Robert Cecil's proposal for union with Scotland.
• * 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 conspirators first meet, in London.
• * 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, an intermittent conflict which has been going on since 1585.
• * 7 July – Parliament prorogued.
• * 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.
• * 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: was 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
• * 31 January – Fawkes and his co-plotters are executed by hanging, drawing and quartering.
• * 10 April – Charter of 1606: The First 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.
• * May – severe penalties are imposed for Catholic recusancy, and for refusal to take an Oath of Allegiance to James to serve in public office, by An Act for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants.
• * 27 May – second session of Parliament under King James prorogued.
• * 7 August – possible first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth.
• * 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 – Bristol Channel floods result in the drowning of 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.
• * c. October – Thomas Middleton's city comedy A Mad World, My Masters published.
• * Muster rolls are compiled in the counties.
• 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 finds Delaware Bay.
• * 11-12 September – explorer Henry Hudson's ship Halve Maen 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 the first lighthouses at Lowestoft.
• * Publication of Pericles, Prince of Tyre with attribution to Shakespeare.

  Births

• 1600
• * February – Edmund Calamy the Elder, presbyterian
• * November John Ogilby, writer and cartographer
• * 19 November – King Charles I of England
• * Sir Richard Grenville, 1st Baronet, Royalist leader
• * William Prynne, puritan politician
• * Brian Walton, divine and scholar
• * probable date – Dud Dudley, ironmaster
• 1601
• * May – Spencer Compton, 2nd Earl of Northampton
• * Adrian Scrope, regicide
• 1602
• * 29 March – John Lightfoot, churchman and rabbinical scholar
• * April – William Lawes, composer and musician
• * 1 May – William Lilly, astrologer
• * 12 October – William Chillingworth, churchman
• * 13 October – Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, military leader
• * 18 December – Simonds d'Ewes, antiquarian and politician
• * John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton
• * John Bradshaw, English judge and regicide
• * John Greaves, mathematician and antiquary
• * Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester
• * Henry Marten, regicide
• * Dudley North, 4th Baron North
• * Owen Feltham, religious writer
• 1602 or 1603
• * Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester
• 1603
• * 21 January – Shackerley Marmion, dramatist
• * 27 January – Harbottle Grimston, politician
• * 18 March – Simon Bradstreet, colonial magistrate
• * 11 July – Kenelm Digby, privateer and alchemist
• * 20 November ' – Daniel Blagrave, Member of Parliament
• * 21 December – Roger Williams, theologian and colonist
• * John Ashburnham, Royalist Member of Parliament
• 1604
• * 29 May ' – Isaac Ambrose, Puritan divine
• * 3 August – John Eliot, puritan missionary
• * 13 September – William Brereton, soldier and politician
• * 8 November ' – Edward Pococke, Orientalist and biblical scholar
• * 23 November ' – Jasper Mayne, dramatist
• 1605
• * June – Thomas Randolph, poet and dramatist
• * August – Bulstrode Whitelocke, lawyer and parliamentarian
• * 8 August – Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, colonial Governor of Maryland
• * 18 August – Henry Hammond, churchman
• * 12 September – William Dugdale, antiquary
• * 19 October – Thomas Browne, physician and philosopher
• * 4 November – William Habington, poet
• * William Berkeley, governor of Virginia
• * Approximate date
• ** John Gauden, bishop and writer
• ** William Goffe, parliamentarian and regicide
• ** Thomas Nabbes, dramatist
• ** Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham
• 1606
• * 4 January ' – Edmund Castell, orientalist
• * 28 February – William Davenant, poet and playwright
• * March – Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester
• * 3 March – Edmund Waller, poet
• * 27 September – Richard Busby, clergyman
• * 4 November ' – Thomas Herbert, traveller and historian
• * John Robartes, 1st Earl of Radnor, politician
• * Approximate date
• ** Leonard Calvert, governor of Baltimore
• ** Thomas Washbourne, clergyman and poet
• 1607
• * 5 April – John Boys, Royalist soldier, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
• * 10 March – Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, statesman
• * 26 November – John Harvard, clergyman and colonist
• * John Dixwell, judge and regicide
• 1608
• * 15 April – John Huddleston, Catholic clergyman
• * 20 April – Edward Rainbowe, clergyman and preacher
• * June – Richard Fanshawe, diplomat
• * 19 June – Thomas Fuller, churchman and historian
• * 14 July – George Goring, Lord Goring, Royalist soldier
• * 4 August – John Tradescant the Younger, botanist and gardener
• * 13 November – John Desborough, soldier and politician
• * 6 December – George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, soldier
• * 9 December – John Milton, poet
• * Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln
• 1609
• * 10 February – John Suckling, poet
• * 18 February – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, historian and statesman
• * 29 March – Sarah Boyle, noblewoman
• * 8 October – John Clarke, physician
• * 19 October – Gerrard Winstanley, Protestant religious reformer
• * 26 October – William Sprague, co-founder of Charlestown, Massachusetts
• * 1 November – Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice
• * 24 December – Philip Warwick, writer and politician
• * Samuel Cooper, miniature painter

  Deaths

• 1600
• * April – Thomas Deloney, writer
• * 3 November – Richard Hooker, Anglican theologian
• 1601
• * 19 January – Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, statesman
• * 25 February – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, politician
• * 27 February – Anne Line, Catholic martyr
• * 7 September – John Shakespeare, glover and farmer, father of William Shakespeare
• 1602
• * 13 February – Alexander Nowell, clergyman
• * October – Thomas Morley, composer
• * 29 November – Anthony Holborne, composer
• 1603
• * 15 January – Catherine Carey, Lady in waiting to Elizabeth I of England
• * 24 March – Queen Elizabeth I
• * 8 September – George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, politician
• * 28 October – Ralph Lane, explorer
• * 9 December – William Watson, conspirator
• * 10 December – William Gilbert, scientist
• * 27 December – Thomas Cartwright, Puritan clergyman
• * Edward Fenton, navigator
• * Probable date – Will Kempe, comic performer
• 1604
• * early – Thomas North, translator of Plutarch
• * 29 February – John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury
• * 1 April – Thomas Churchyard, author
• * 24 June – Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, politician
• * November – Thomas Storer, poet
• * 3 December – George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon
• * late – Richard Topcliffe, Member of Parliament and torturer
• 1605
• * 5 April – Adam Loftus, Catholic archbishop
• * 6 April – John Stow, historian and antiquarian
• * 11 September – Sir Thomas Tresham, politician
• * 8 November – Robert Catesby, conspirator
• * December – Francis Tresham, conspirator
• * 29 December – John Davis, explorer
• 1606
• * 30 January
• ** Everard Digby, conspirator
• ** Robert Wintour, conspirator
• * 31 January
• ** Guy Fawkes, conspirator
• ** Ambrose Rokewood, conspirator
• ** Thomas Wintour, conspirator
• * 3 April – Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devon, politician
• * 3 May – Henry Garnet, Jesuit
• * 20 November – John Lyly, writer
• 1607
• * May – Edward Dyer, courtier and poet
• * 21 May – John Rainolds, scholar and Bible translator
• * 10 June – John Popham, Lord Chief Justice
• * 7 July – Penelope Blount, Countess of Devonshire
• * 20 December – Sir John Bourke of Brittas, Irish recusant
• * Henry Chettle, writer
• 1608
• * 13 February – Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury
• * 26 February – John Still, bishop
• * 29 March – Laurence Tomson, Calvinist theologian
• * 19 April – Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, statesman and poet
• * c. 24 August – Edmund Whitelocke, soldier and courtier
• * 19 October – Geoffrey Fenton, writer and politician
• * December
• ** John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer
• ** William Davison, secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England
• 1609
• * 9 March – William Warner, poet
• * December – Barnabe Barnes, poet