1630s in England - Events

Events

• 1630
  • The Winthrop Fleet takes 700 immigrants from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and founds Boston.
  • Thomas Middleton's satirical comedy A Chaste Maid in Cheapside published posthumously.
• 1631
  • Poor harvest for second year in a row causes widespread social unrest.
  • Philip Massinger's play Believe as You List first performed.
  • Inigo Jones designs a church overlooking his piazza at Covent Garden in London.
• 1632
  • 15 June - Sir Francis Windebank is made chief Secretary of State.
  • 20 June - Royal charter issued for the foundation of Maryland colony; Lord Baltimore appointed as the first governor.
  • July - Portraitist Anthony van Dyck, newly returned to London, is knighted and granted a pension as principalle Paynter in ordinary to their majesties.
  • The Second Folio of William Shakespeare's plays published.
  • Publication of William Prynne's Histriomastix, an attack on the English Renaissance theatre.
• 1633
  • May - King Charles revives medieval forest laws to raise funds from fines.
  • 6 August - William Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • John Ford's play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore published.
  • Earliest surviving edition of the Christopher Marlowe play The Jew of Malta published.
  • John Donne's Collected Poems published posthumously.
• 1634
  • after 19 January - William Davenant's comedy The Wits first performed by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre, London.
  • 7 May - William Prynne sentenced by the Star Chamber to a £5,000 fine, life imprisonment, pillorying and the loss of part of his ears when his Histriomastix is viewed as an attack on King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria.
  • 20 October - King Charles I issues writs to raise ship money from coastal ports to finance the Royal Navy.
  • First Newmarket Gold Cup horse race.
  • Cornelius Vermuyden begins the draining of The Fens to reclaim farmland.
  • John Ford's history play Perkin Warbeck published.
  • Thomas Johnson begins publishing Mercurius Botanicus, including a list of indigenous British plants.
• 1635
  • 4 August - Second writ for ship money is issued, extending the payments to inland towns.
  • Peter Paul Rubens paints the ceiling of the Banqueting House, Whitehall.
  • First secondary school established in the North American colonies, the English High and Latin School at Boston.
  • First General Post Office opens to the public, at Bishopsgate, London.
  • The Queen's House, Greenwich, is completed to the designs of Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria.
  • English settlers begin the colonisation of Connecticut.
• 1636
  • 8 September (OS) - New College founded at the English colony of Massachusetts; later renamed 'Harvard'.
  • 9 October - John Hampden refuses to pay ship money after a third writ is issued.
  • Completion of excavation of Old Bedford River (begun in 1630).
• 1637
  • 18 February - Eighty Years' War: Battle off Lizard Point: Off the coast of Cornwall, a Spanish fleet intercepts an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
  • 30 April - King Charles issues a proclamation attempting to stem emigration to the North American colonies.
  • 30 June - William Prynne is branded as a seditious libeller, and sentenced to pillorying and mutilation.
  • 13 October - First-rate ship of the line HMS Sovereign of the Seas is launched at Woolwich Dockyard at a cost of £65,586.
  • Member of Parliament John Hampden continues to refuse to pay ship money although a 7-5 majority verdict among a group of judges supports its legality.
  • English merchants establish the first trading settlement at Canton.
• 1638
  • 18 April - Flogging of John Lilburne for distributing Puritan publications.
  • 12 June - Trial of John Hampden for non-payment of ship money concludes.
  • 21 October - Great thunderstorm at Widecombe-in-the-Moor.
  • John Milton's Lycidas published.
• 1639
  • 26 January - King Charles I tries to raise an army to fight the Scottish Covenanters.
  • 27 February - Charles denounces the Covenanters.
  • 21 April - William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke imprisoned for refusing to fight against the Covenanters.
  • 25 April - Charles issues a proclamation promising to pardon rebels.
  • 14 May - Charles issues a further proclamation promising to settle the Covenanters' grievances and not to invade Scotland.
  • 19 June - Treaty of Berwick signed between the King and the Covenanters.
  • 15 September - Battle of the Downs between the Dutch and Spanish in English waters.
  • 4 December - Astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks makes the first observation of a transit of Venus.