June 25 – In England, a fire destroys much of the town of
North Walsham,
Norfolk, burning down 118 homes, 70 shops, and most of the stalls in the
market square. The fire is traced to the home of one person who tries to flee town after the blaze begins. Many of the persons left homeless are given shelter at the
St Nicholas Church.
September 18 – The
Battle of Mirăslău takes place within Transylvania as Hungarian troops, backed by the Holy Roman Empire, triumph over the Principality of Wallachia, backed by Poland. Hungarian General
Giorgio Basta brings 30,000 men against the 22,000 commanded by Wallachia's ruler Michael the Brave. The Wallachians sustain more than 5,000 dead and wounded.
September 24 – All 130 crew of the Dutch Republic ship Hoop die when the merchantman sinks in a storm while traveling in the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and Japan.[7] The Liefde, a ship accompanying Hoop, is badly damaged but survives; all but 24 of its crew of more than 100 die from starvation and thirst after drifting more than six months before arriving in Japan on April 19, 1601.
November 7 –
Emperor Rudolf II grants an audience in
Prague to Persian diplomats Husayn 'Ali Beg and Anthony Shirley, and present the offer of Persia's King
Abbas the Great to supply weapons to the Empire in their fight against the Ottomans.[9][10]
February 25 – The Earl of Essex becomes the first of the Essex's Rebellion participants to be executed. He is beheaded at
Tower Hill. His co-conspirator, the Earl of Southampton, sentenced to death, but Queen Elizabeth commutes his penalty to life imprisonment; Southampton will be released two years later.
March 5 – The treason trial for five secondary participants in
Essex's Rebellion —
Gelli Meyrick,
Henry Cuffe,
Christopher Blount,
Charles Danvers, and Sir John Davies — is held in London. All five are found guilty. Meyrick and Cuffe are hanged at Tyburn on March 13, and Blount and Danvers are beheaded at Tower Hill on March 18. Davies is allowed to go free.
May 5 – Dutch explorer
Joris van Spilbergen, leading three ships of the
Compagnie van De Moucheron, departs on his first expedition to Asia, departing from
Veere with the ships Ram, Schaap, and Lam (Ram, Sheep and Lamb). After establishing trade in
Sri Lanka, Spilbergen and his crew return to the Dutch Republic in 1604.
Juan de Oñate, the Spanish colonial administrator in what is now the U.S. state of
New Mexico, departs from
San Gabriel de Nuevo Mexico with 130 Spanish soldiers and 12 priests on an expedition to explore the interior of the area. [15]
July–September
July 2 – The Spanish expedition of
Juan de Oñate reaches the
Canadian River on (the feast day of Biblical Mary Magdalena), in what is now Texas. [16]
July 5 – The
Siege of Ostend, which will last more than three years and claims more than 100,000 casualties for both Spain and the Netherlands, begins as
Albert of Austria, Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands, leads an attack on the Dutch Netherlands fortress at
Ostend. The Spanish forces eventually triumph on September 20, 1604, albeit in a
Pyrrhic victory that will see at least 60,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or dead from disease. [17]
September 11 – Queen Elizabeth I summons her 10th, and last, meeting of the English Parliament.
September 19 – The Juan de Oñate expedition of Spanish explorers first encounters the indigenous
Escanjaque Indians in what is now the U.S. state of
Kansas. The Escanjaques ask the Spaniards to assist them in a war against a rival tribe, the Rayados. Instead, Oñate befriends the Rayados five days later. [16]
September 28 – The
Escanjaque Indians attack Juan de Oñate's Spanish expedition as the Spaniards are returning from their furthest venture east, the Little Arkansas River. [16]
October 4 –
Claudine de Culam, a 16-year-old girl in the French village of
Rognon, is hanged after being convicted of "carnal cohabitation with a dog". The dog is hanged along with her. [20]
December 6 – The
Battle of Castlehaven is fought off of the coast of southern Ireland as six Spanish Navy ships led by General
Pedro de Zubiaur are intercepted by an English fleet of four warships led and commanded by
Sir Richard Levenson. Two of the Spanish ships are sunk, and the other four are run aground.
December 27 – The
Battle of Bantam is fought within what is now
Indonesia off of the coast of the island of
Java, as Walter Harmensz leads five Dutch Republic galleons in a successful attack against a Portuguese fleet led by André Furtado de Mendonça.
January 3 –
Battle of Kinsale: The English defeat Irish rebels and their Spanish allies. (The battle happens on this date according to the
Gregorian calendar used by the Irish and Spanish but on Thursday, 24 December,
1601 according to the old
Julian calendar used by the English.)
June 2 – Dutch explorer
Joris van Spilbergen lands on the eastern side of the island of
Sri Lanka, at Santhamuruthu, and begins the process of attempting to establish a relationship with the rulers of the
Kingdom of Kandy.[23]
June 17 – An expedition of 14 Dutch Republic ships, commanded by Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, departs from
Texel on its expedition to the
East Indies.
September 1 – The
Mutiny of Hoogstraten, a rebellion by soldiers of the
Army of Flanders, begins with the seizure by 3,000 disgruntled mercenaries of the town of
Hoogstraten (now in Belgium). The mutineers hold the town for almost two years before surrendering on 18 May 1604.
September 12 – King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland receives the delivery of eight specially woven
Persian carpets displaying Poland's royal
coat of arms, after having dispatched agent Sefer Muratowicz to
Kashan.[27]
September 20 – The
siege of the Spanish Netherlands town of
De Graaf ends after two months as a Dutch and English army forces the surrender of the Spanish defenders.[28]
December 11 – A surprise attack by forces under the command of
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his brother-in-law,
Philip III of Spain, is repelled by the citizens of
Geneva (this actually takes place after midnight, in the early morning of December 12, but commemorations/celebrations on
Fête de l'Escalade are usually held on December 11 or the closest weekend).
The
iconoclast and
Confucian scholar
Li Zhi commits suicide while in a Chinese prison, during the late
Ming dynasty; he had taught that women were the intellectual equals of men and should be given equal opportunity in education; he was charged with spreading "dangerous ideas".
January 24 –
Anglo-Spanish War: English Admiral
Christopher Newport leads an unsuccessful attempt to take the Spanish-controlled Caribbean island of
Jamaica, where he was attempting to pillage the area to obtain supplies. The Spanish defenders repel the fleet, and Newport leads the attackers to the coast of Central America.
April 27 – The first permanent Dutch trading post in
Indonesia is established in
Banten by Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, who sets up a factory to store and package the trading commodity
black pepper.
May 19 –
The King's Men, a group of English professional actors composed primarily of former members of the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, is granted its royal patent by King James. The group will give the first performances of many of the plays of
William Shakespeare, who is one of the company's 26 principal actors. Named in order of priority on the patent are group manager
Lawrence Fletcher, Shakespeare, and
Richard Burbage.[35]
May 26 – The
Battle of Sluis is fought at sea off of the Belgian Netherlands as Spanish ships try unsuccessfully to break through a blockade port of the port of
Sluis. The Spanish ships are forced to return to port after at least 414 sailors are killed.[36]
June 7 – Prince
Şehzade Mahmud of the Ottoman Empire, the 16-year-old son of
Sultan Murad III, is executed on orders of his father, on advice of the Grand Vizier, after being accused unjustly of an assassination plot.[38]
Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618): Led by Iranian Emperor
Abbas the Great, the Safavid Army of Iran stages a surprise attack on
Tabriz, which had been taken from the Safavids by the Ottoman Empire in 1588. Tabriz is recaptured after 29 days.
February 17 – King James issues an order for all Jesuits and all Roman Catholic priests to leave his kingdom by March 19.[46]
February 24 – At
Linköping in
Sweden, the
Riksdag declares that
Sigismund, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, who has been absent for five years, has effectively abdicated as King of Sweden, and recognizes Karl, Duke of Södermanland, as the new monarch.
March 19 – King James opens his first parliamentary session as King of England. In his opening speech to the "
Blessed Parliament", the King makes clear that he wants to bring a legal union between England and Scotland and that he does not wish to be "a husband to two wives." The House of Commons refuses to agree with him on the unification of the crown or on the funding that the King requests.
April 9 – On the first day of the new year 966 M.E. on the Burmese calendar, King
Nyaungyan Min of
Burma makes a triumphant return to his capital at
Inwa after his victory in the war against the principality of
Mongnai (Monē), one of the
Shan States between Burma and
Siam
April 17 –
Tsar Dmitry of Russia makes a public conversion to Roman Catholicism in order to attract the aid of Jesuits in his attempt to rule all of Russia.
April 18 –
Maurice of Nassau assembles a combined army of 7,000 Dutch and 4,000 English soldiers to make an attack on the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium).
May 19 – Maurice of Nassau begins the
Siege of Sluis, a port in the Spanish Netherlands, with 11,000 Dutch and English troops. Despite reinforcements from Spanish relief troops, the city surrenders after three months, with both sides having lost hundreds of casualties.
Five conspirators in England, 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.[47]
Peace discussions between England and Spain begin at Somerset House in London to end the
Anglo-Spanish War after 19 years of fighting.
May 22 – English entrepreneur
Charles Leigh and a crew of 46 arrive in South America at what is now the
Oyapock River in
French Guiana after traveling on the ship Olive Plant. The 35 men and boys who stay create a colonial settlement which they call Oliveleigh, and make a claim to all of the area.
June 9 –
Thomas Percy, one of the English conspirators in the
Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I, is appointed as one of the king's bodyguards by the Earl of Northumberland.
July 4 – The
Jesuits Act 1603 (officially "An Act for the due execution of the Statutes against Jesuits, seminary Priests and recusants") is given royal assent by King James I of England to create penalties against Jesuits and Catholics who send their children abroad to Catholic colleges.[48]
King James angrily dismisses the English parliament after failing to get full financial subsidies. He tells the members in his closing speech, "I am not of such a stock as to praise fools."[49]
July 16 – The last of the 18 sessions of the English and Spanish peace conference is held at the
Old Somerset House in
London, with the parties reaching an agreement on terms of a treaty.
August 19 – The Dutch
siege of Sluis in the Spanish Netherlands ends after three months, a day after relief troops commanded by General
Ambrogio Spinola retreat. At least 2,000 of the members of the Spanish garrison inside had been killed or incapacitated by disease and famine. Sluis becomes part of the Netherlands afterward.
January 7 – Shakespeare's play, Henry V, copyrighted 1600, is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the Lord Chamberlain's Men for
King James I of England. [56]
January 16 – The first part of
Miguel de Cervantes' satire on the theme of
chivalry, Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, "The Ingenious
Hidalgo Don Quixote of
La Mancha"), is published in
Madrid. One of the first significant
novels in the western literary tradition, it becomes a global bestseller almost at once.[57]
February 10 – Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the King's Men Players at the
Palace of Whitehall for King James I of England. A second performance is given on February 12, Shrove Tuesday, at the King's request. [59]
February 25 – Admiral
Steven van der Hagen leads a fleet of ships for the
Dutch East India Company and makes the first capture of land for the Netherlands in what will become the Dutch East Indies, and later Indonesia. Hagen's men capture the Portuguese citadel of
Forte Amboino and the rest of
Ambon Island, and make it the capital of the Dutch possessions in Asia.
March 11 – A proclamation declares all people of Ireland to be the direct subjects of the
British Crown and not of any local lord or chief.[60]
March 3 –
Pope Clement VIII dies at the age of 69 after a reign of 13 years, prompting the assembling of cardinals to elect as successor.
April 1 – Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, the
Bishop of Pistoia, is elected by the assembled 61 cardinals at the heated
Papal conclave after 17 days of balloting. He takes the regnal name of
Pope Leo XI to become the 232nd pope, but serves for less than four weeks.[61]
April 27 – Pope Leo XI dies suddenly from a cold at the age of 69, after a reign of only 26 days, prompting the return of the cardinals for
the second papal conclave in less than two months. During his brief reign, the Pope issued a bull requiring secret balloting in papal conclaves.
May 8 – A group of 59 Roman Catholic cardinals assemble at Rome for another
papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Leo XI. During the meeting, a fistfight breaks out among the cardinals over the two rival candidates,
Antonio Sauli and
Domenico Toschi, neither of whom receive the necessary 40 votes for a two-thirds election. In the fight, Cardinal
Alfonso Visconti sustains several fractures.[64]
May 16 – Camillo Borghese, Cardinal Vicar of Rome and cardinal-priest of
Sant'Eusebio is elected the 233rd pope, and takes the name of
Pope Paul V. Another "
Year of Three Popes" will not occur until 373 years later, in 1978. Borghese is elected as a compromise candidate after the physical disagreements during the conclave.[65]
June 1 – Russian troops in Moscow imprison
Feodor II and his mother, later executing them.
August 14 – A Spanish attack on the Moorish fortress of
Hammamet, in
Ottoman Tunisia, ends in a disaster for the Spaniards. Although Spanish troops had managed to scale the walls and open the gates, they are suddenly ordered to retreat and are massacred while waiting on the coast for the return of the ships that brought them.
August 19 –
Eighty Years' War: The
siege of the Dutch city of Lingen, by 13,000 Spanish troops and 3,000 cavalry, ends with the surrender of Captain Maerten Cobben after nine days of defense. Although the Dutch Republic's stadtholder,
Maurice, Prince of Orange, had proclaimed that Lingen must be held at all costs, Dutch troops failed to come to Cobben's aid and Don
Ambrogio Spinola of Spain peacefully takes control of the city. [67]
November 5 (
O.S.) – The
Gunpowder Plot, a scheme to bomb England's
Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament, is foiled after Sir
Thomas Knyvet is tipped off, and finds Catholic plotter
Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building. Knyvet orders a search of the area and 36 barrels of
gunpowder are found. Fawkes is arrested for trying to assassinate
King James I and the members who had been scheduled to sit together in Parliament the next day.[69]
December 6 – In England
Thomas Bonham petitions to become a member of the College of Physicians in order for his practice to be legal, and is rejected. Dr. Bonham continues to practice, and is eventually imprisoned on November 13, 1606, leading to the landmark decision in Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610.
December 21 – On behalf of Spain, Portuguese navigator
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós begins his expedition to the South Pacific Ocean with 160 men on three ships. Queiros departs from
Callao in the
Viceroyalty of Peru with his flagship, San Pedro y San Pablo, and San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes.
May 1 –
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós discovers the islands of
Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides). [76] Believing them to be Australia, he names them La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.[77]
July 1 – Scottish minister
Patrick Simson and 44 other ministers of the
Church of Scotland sign Simson's Protest to the Scottish Parliament against the introduction to Scotland of a hierarchy of bishops.
Simion Movilă becomes the new
Prince of Moldavia upon the death of his older brother,
Ieremia Movilă. Simion will reign for only 14 months before being poisoned on September 14, 1607.
England deports 47 Roman Catholic priests, including
Thomas Garnet, putting them on board a ship bound for
Flanders in what is now
Belgium. A royal proclamation is read to the group, warning them that they will be put to death if they ever return to the British Isles.
April 25 –
Battle of Gibraltar: A
Dutch fleet of 26 warships, led by Admiral
Jacob van Heemskerck, stages a surprise attack on a
Spanish fleet anchored in the
Bay of Gibraltar. In the battle that ensues, Spain loses as many as 10 galleons and 12 smaller ships, and at least 300 men are killed. The disaster causes Spain to go into bankruptcy by October. [86]
May 26 – At
Jamestown, the president of the governing council,
Edward Wingfield, directs the fort to be strengthened and armed against the many attacks of the natives: "Hereupon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed, the ordinance mounted, his men armed and exercised, for many were the assaults and Ambuscadoes of the Savages ..." [John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964)]; 200 armed Indians attack the Jamestown settlement, killing two people and wounding 10.
May 28 – A wooden defensive wall (
palisade) is built by settlers around the Fort at Jamestown. Gabriel Archer writes in his journal, "we laboured, pallozadoing our fort".
June 10 – In Jamestown,
Captain John Smith is released from arrest and sworn in as a member of the colony Council.
June 15 – At Jamestown, the triangular fort is completed and armed: "The fifteenth of June we had built and finished our Fort, which was triangle wise, having three Bulwarkes, at every corner, like a halfe Moone, and foure or five pieces of Artillerie mounted in them. We had made our selves sufficiently strong for these Savages. We had also sowne most of our Corne on two Mountaines." [George Percy (Tyler 1952:19)] The colony reportedly bears extreme toil in strengthening the fort [from John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964:210)].
June 22 – Christopher Newport sails back to England.
July–September
July 2 –
Luis de Velasco returns to office as the Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, which at the time includes Mexico, parts of the future United States, and much of Central America. Velasco had previously been Viceroy from 1590 to 1595, then served as Viceroy of Peru (encompassing much of South America) from 1596 to 1604. He serves as New Spain's viceroy until 1611.
July 17 – In what is now the South Kalimantan province in Indonesia,
Sultan Mustain Billah of
Banjar orders the massacre of the crew of a Netherlands East India Company ship visiting the capital at
Banjarmasin.
July 20 – The second "
False Dmitry", one of three people claiming to be
Dmitry Ivanovich, son of the late Tsar
Ivan the Terrible, appears at the Russian town of
Starodub and persuades residents that he is the rightful heir to the Russian throne.
August 3 – After Catholics and Protestants clash in
Donauwörth, emperor
Rudolph II declares an
imperial ban over the city and orders Bavarian duke
Maximilian I to execute the ban leading to the occupation of the city by a force of 15,000 in December. This in turn leads to the creation of the
Protestant Union in 1608.
August 13 – The ship Gift of God of the
Plymouth Company arrives at the mouth of the modern-day
Kennebec River in
Maine. English colonists establish
Fort St. George, also known as the
Popham Colony. The settlement lasts little more than a year, before residents return to England in the first oceangoing ship built in the
New World, a 30-ton
pinnace called The Virginia.
September 5 – Hamlet is performed aboard the
East India Company ship Red Dragon, under the command of Capt.
William Keeling, anchored off the coast of
Sierra Leone, the first known performance of a Shakespeare play outside England in English, and the first by amateurs.
October 4 –
Flight of the Earls: The Earl of Tyrone and the Earl of Tyrconnell, along with their followers, reach the European continent, landing on St. Francis' Day at Quilleboeuf in France with 99 people. [87] after having departed Rathmullan in Ireland on September 12.
November 7 – A Dutch warship commanded by Admiral
Cornelis Matelief de Jonge arrives at the Malay Peninsula to attempt opening trade with the
Pahang Sultanate, and get Pahang's assistance in the Dutch Navy's fight against the Portuguese Navy in Asian trade.
Sultan Abdul Ghafur agrees to assistance in return for Dutch technical assistance. [88]
November 9 – King
Philip III of Spain announces that his government had run out of money and that it is suspending payments on its foreign debts [89] effectively declaring the state bankrupt. The decision in the wake of the destruction of most of the ships of Spain's Navy at the April 25 Battle of Gibraltar.
November 15 –
Flight of the Earls: After the departure from Ireland of
Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and
Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, along with 90 of their followers, King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland issues a proclamation "that the flight of the Earles of Tyrone and Tyrconell, with some others of their fellowes out of the North parts of our Realme of Ireland; these men's corruption and falshood, whose hainous offences remaine so fresh in memorie since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only whithdraw themselues from their personall obedience to their Soveraigne, but were content to sell over their Native Countrey to those that stood at that time in the highest termes of hostilitie with the two Crownes of England and Ireland... we doe hereby professe in the worde of a King, that... notwithstanding all that they can claime, must be acknowledged to proceed from meere Grace upon their submission after their great and unnaturall Treasons", and must forfeit their rights and possessions as nobles. [90]
December 10 – Captain
John Smith and nine men depart the Jamestown Colony on a barge in order to get more corn for the English fort. Sailing up the
Chickahominy River, the boat reaches a settlement of the
Appomattoc tribe at Apocant. While Smith, Jehu Robinson and Thomas Emery are further upstream in a canoe, George Casson is captured at Apocant by
Opchanacanough, brother of Chief
Powhatan. Robinson and Emery are killed while Smith is away from their camp, and Smith is soon taken prisoner by Opchancanough and, on January 5, is delivered to Powhatan at
Werowocomoco for execution. After an intervention by Powhatan's daughter,
Pocahontas, Smith is released a month after his capture. [91]
December 22 – A fleet of 13 Dutch warships, under the command of Admiral
Pieter Verhoeff, departs the Netherlands on an expedition to the Indian Ocean to open trade with Asian nations and to fight hostile resistance. Verhoeff never returns, and he and many of his crew will be ambushed and killed on May 22 at the
Banda Islands in
Indonesia.
January 2 – The first of the
Jamestown supply missions returns to the Colony of Virginia with
Christopher Newport commanding the John and Francis and the Phoenix bringing about 100 new settlers to supplement the 38 survivors he finds at Jamestown.
January 11 –
John Smith is released by
Powhatan after 15 days of captivity, and arrives back at
Jamestown the next day. [92] Upon his return, instead of being welcomed, he is charged with negligence for the deaths of the two men with him at the time of his capture, Jehu Robinson and Thomas Emery, but later exonerated.
February 26 – After being held captive in
Morocco for more than 13 years, popular professor Malian
Ahmad Baba is able to return to
Timbuktu on 10 Dhu 'l-Qa'da 1016 A.H.
October 1 – The second of the
Jamestown supply missions, which set out in July from
England, arrives at
Jamestown, Virginia, with
Christopher Newport commanding the Mary and Margaret carrying 70 settlers, bringing the population back up to 120; the passengers include two women and some skilled artisans, mostly from continental Europe, to develop industries.[99]
November 30 – At the colony of
Portuguese Macau, a port on the Chinese mainland leased from the Chinese Empire,
a group of 100 Japanese samurai, wielding katana and muskets engage in a fight with musket-armed Portuguese soldiers commanded by Governor André Pessoa. [100] Around 50 Japanese are killed and the others are imprisoned until they sign an affidavit blaming themselves for the incident.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the principal shogun of
Japan, subsequently ends the "
red seal ships" program of authorizing Japanese nationals to visit Macau. The incident eventually leads to much larger naval battle in 1610, the
Nossa Senhora da Graça incident.
December – Jamestown supply missions:
Christopher Newport returns to England from
Jamestown carrying cargo with "tryals of Pitch, Tarre, Glasse, Frankincense, Sope Ashes ..."
January 12 – The
Basque witch trials are started in
Spain as the court of the
Inquisition at
Logroño receives a letter from the commissioner of the village of
Zugarramurdi, and orders the arrest of four women, including María de Jureteguía and María Chipía de Barrenetxea.[101]
March 11 – The Swedish Army, under the command of General
Jacob De la Gardie, begins marching east from
Vyborg (at this time, part of the Swedish Empire, modern-day Russia) in order to defend the Russian Empire against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the course of the
Polish–Muscovite War.
March 19 – The
Dutch warship Mauritius sinks off the coast of the Cape of Cape Lopes Gonçalves on the modern-day West African nation of
Gabon. The wreckage of the Mauritius will not be located until 375 years later, in
1985.
March 24 – Led by the Grand Hetman of Lithuania,
Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, the Lithuanian Navy breaks the blockade of
Riga by sinking two Swedish Navy warships off the coast of
Salacgrīva.
May 23 – The
Second Virginia Charter is officially ratified; it is intended to replace the council with a governor, who has absolute control in the colony.
June 2 – With the Sea Venture as its flagship, a fleet of nine English ships and more than 500 passengers altogether, departs from England to bring supplies to the English settlement in
Jamestown, Virginia. The fleet runs into a storm in July and the Sea Venture is wrecked in the Bermuda islands on July 24.
June 29 – A fleet of ships from the
Kingdom of Spain, assisted by a French warship, fights a battle in the Mediterranean Sea against a larger fleet of 23 ships from the North African
Eyalet of Tunisia and sinks 21 of them. The other two Tunisian ships are captured.
July 23 – A three-day hurricane begins in the Caribbean Sea and separates the nine
London Company's ships and their 600 passengers who are en route to relieve the
Jamestown settlement. One ship sinks, and the flagship is wrecked. Less than 300 settlers make it to Virginia.
The Sea Venture, flagship of the nine-ship fleet of the
London Company is deliberately wrecked at
Bermuda during a storm, as Admiral
George Somers drives the ship into the reefs of Discovery Bay in order to prevent the ship from sinking. A group of 153 survivors stay, making the first English settlement of the island.[105]
After a fight on November 30 in
Portuguese Macau between Japanese traders and Portuguese soldiers, Japan's ruling shogun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, strictly prohibits further trade between Japan and Portugal.[106]
August 10 – The Spanish galleon San Francisco sinks in a storm off the coast of
Japan, with the loss of 56 men. Clinging to floating wreckage, the survivors are able to reach Yubanda, near
Onjuku in modern-day
Chiba Prefecture.
August 11 – Four ships arrive at the colony of
Jamestown, Virginia, with almost 300 men, women and children, to bring supplies for the starving English colonists. They are followed days later by the other three ships remaining from the
London Company. Most of the supplies, however, are spoiled by rain and seawater, and many of the passengers are ill with the bubonic plague.[107]
August 15 (August 5 O.S.) – English astronomer
Thomas Harriot becomes the first person to make a detailed drawing of the
Moon, based on his observations through a telescope.
December 8 – One of the first
public libraries, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, is opened in the Italian city of
Milan, founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Unlike other reading rooms, the library houses its collection on shelves along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables.
The Dutch East India Company establishes a
trading post in
Hirado, Japan.
Dutch entrepreneur
Isaac Le Maire devizes the concept of selling
short shares in order to benefit from a falling Dutch East India Company share price.[113]
^Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters as translated into English by Owen Connellan, ed. by Michael O'Clery (Irish Genealogical Foundation, 2003) p. 666
^
ab("Dispatch of 23rd October, 1600: On the 20th the two ambassadors from Persia made their entry here; one is an Englishman called, as I understand, he is the principal Ambassador, and the other is a Persian called Assan Halevech; there are about twenty or twenty-five persons with them...") contemporary account, quoted in Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure, ed by Edward D. Ross (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005) p. 23-24
^("Dispatch of November 8th, 1600: "Yesterday these Ambassadors from the King of Persia had had an audience. The Englishman spoke in Spanish, and the substance of that King's offer to His Imperial Majesty was that he would arm against the Turk...")
^Claes-Göran Isacson, Vägen till stormakt - Vasaättens krig ("Road to Power: The war of the Vasa family") (Norstedts, 2006)
^Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, The Coronado Expedition: From the Distance of 460 Years (University of New Mexico Press, 2003)
^
abcdStan Hoig, Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate (University Press of Colorado, 2013) pp. 221-230
^Anna E.C. Simoni, The Ostend Story: Early Tales of the Great Siege and the Mediating Role of Henrick Van Haestens (BRILL, 2021)
^"Litany", by Francis Mershman, in The Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Company, 1910)
^The Modern Part of an Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time, Vol. XII: History of the Othman Empire (S. Richardson 1759) p. 415
^A. F. Niemoller, Bestiality and the Law: A Resume of the Law and Punishments for Bestiality with Typical Cases from Fifteenth Century to the Present (Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1946)
^Shakespeare, William (2001). Smith, Bruce R. (ed.). Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts. Boston, Mass: Bedford/St Martin's. p. 2.
ISBN0-312-20219-9.
^Karle Schlieff.
"Gosnold: 1602". Ancient Lights. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
^
abcdPenguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006.
ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^Weir, Alison (1999), Elizabeth the Queen, London: Pimlico, p. 486,
ISBN978-0-7126-7312-9
^Sænluang Ratchasomphan and David K. Wyatt, The Nan Chronicle (SEAP Publications, 1994) p.69
^F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964 (Penguin, 1964) p. 168
^Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada Española desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón ("The Spanish Armada after the Union of the Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon") (Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1898) p. 223
^The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire, ed. by Selcuk Aksin Somel (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) p.41
^The Library of Historic Characters and Famous Events of All Nations and All Ages, ed. by A. R. Spofford, Frank Weitenkampf and J. P. Lamberton (Art Library Publishing Company, 1904) pp. 64-65
^Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603.
^Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 83
^Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 63.
^Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot (Phoenix Press, 1996) pp. 41-42
^C. Northcote Parkinson, Gunpowder Treason and Plot (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976) p. 48
^"Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603–1605", by Albert J. Loomie, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society ((1963), p. 31
^Pauline Croft, King James (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 62
^"Cases of Tensho, Bunroku, and Keicho periods, the appointment of samurai families and the granting of the Toyotomi surname", by Kohei Murakawa, Komazawa Shigaku (2013) pp. 112-129
^Frederic J. Baumgartner, Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 141
^Norman Davies, Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey Into History (Penguin Books, 2017)
^McHugh, Evan (2006). 1606: An Epic Adventure. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. p. 20.
ISBN978-0-86840-866-8.
^"The Impact of Jacques Gillot's Actes du Concile de Trente (1607) in the Debate Concerning the Council of Trent in France", by Tom Hamilton, in The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545-1700) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018) p. 376
^William Eisler, The Furthest Shore: Images of Terra Australis from the Middle Ages to Captain Cook (Cambridge University Press, 1995) p.47
^Richardson, William A. R. (2008). Was Australia Charted Before 1606: the Jave la Grande Inscriptions. Australia: Everbest. p. 20.
^W. B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p. 80
^Scholars date completion as between 1603 and 1606. Boyce, Charles (1990). Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare. New York: Roundtable Press.
^"Smith, John (1580-1631)", by Edward Arbab, in Encyclopaedia Britannica (R.S. Peale, 1892) p. 175
^Alexander Brown, The First Republic in America: An Account of the Origin of this Nation, Written from the Records Then (1624) Concealed by the Council, Rather Than from the Histories Then Licensed by the Crown (Houghton, 1898) p.55
^"A Historical, Topographical & Agricultrual Survey of the County of Washington, by Dr. Asa Fitch, in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society: Report of the Executive Committee for 1848 (New York State Agricultural Society, 1849) p. 882 ("Attended by some of the Mountain Indians, he left Quebec, May 28th, 1609... On the 4th day of July they entered Lake Champlain.")
^James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (Basic Books, 2006) pp. 158–160
^C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (University of California Press, 1951) p. 272
^Lyon Gardiner Tyler, England in America, 1580-1652 (Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1907) p. 63
^Günther, Hans-Jürgen, Der Humanist Johannes Pistorius – Gründer des „Gymnasium Illustre“ zu Durlach, Markgrafen-Gymnasium Karlsruhe Durlach, Jahresbericht 1993/94, Durlach 1994.
June 25 – In England, a fire destroys much of the town of
North Walsham,
Norfolk, burning down 118 homes, 70 shops, and most of the stalls in the
market square. The fire is traced to the home of one person who tries to flee town after the blaze begins. Many of the persons left homeless are given shelter at the
St Nicholas Church.
September 18 – The
Battle of Mirăslău takes place within Transylvania as Hungarian troops, backed by the Holy Roman Empire, triumph over the Principality of Wallachia, backed by Poland. Hungarian General
Giorgio Basta brings 30,000 men against the 22,000 commanded by Wallachia's ruler Michael the Brave. The Wallachians sustain more than 5,000 dead and wounded.
September 24 – All 130 crew of the Dutch Republic ship Hoop die when the merchantman sinks in a storm while traveling in the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and Japan.[7] The Liefde, a ship accompanying Hoop, is badly damaged but survives; all but 24 of its crew of more than 100 die from starvation and thirst after drifting more than six months before arriving in Japan on April 19, 1601.
November 7 –
Emperor Rudolf II grants an audience in
Prague to Persian diplomats Husayn 'Ali Beg and Anthony Shirley, and present the offer of Persia's King
Abbas the Great to supply weapons to the Empire in their fight against the Ottomans.[9][10]
February 25 – The Earl of Essex becomes the first of the Essex's Rebellion participants to be executed. He is beheaded at
Tower Hill. His co-conspirator, the Earl of Southampton, sentenced to death, but Queen Elizabeth commutes his penalty to life imprisonment; Southampton will be released two years later.
March 5 – The treason trial for five secondary participants in
Essex's Rebellion —
Gelli Meyrick,
Henry Cuffe,
Christopher Blount,
Charles Danvers, and Sir John Davies — is held in London. All five are found guilty. Meyrick and Cuffe are hanged at Tyburn on March 13, and Blount and Danvers are beheaded at Tower Hill on March 18. Davies is allowed to go free.
May 5 – Dutch explorer
Joris van Spilbergen, leading three ships of the
Compagnie van De Moucheron, departs on his first expedition to Asia, departing from
Veere with the ships Ram, Schaap, and Lam (Ram, Sheep and Lamb). After establishing trade in
Sri Lanka, Spilbergen and his crew return to the Dutch Republic in 1604.
Juan de Oñate, the Spanish colonial administrator in what is now the U.S. state of
New Mexico, departs from
San Gabriel de Nuevo Mexico with 130 Spanish soldiers and 12 priests on an expedition to explore the interior of the area. [15]
July–September
July 2 – The Spanish expedition of
Juan de Oñate reaches the
Canadian River on (the feast day of Biblical Mary Magdalena), in what is now Texas. [16]
July 5 – The
Siege of Ostend, which will last more than three years and claims more than 100,000 casualties for both Spain and the Netherlands, begins as
Albert of Austria, Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands, leads an attack on the Dutch Netherlands fortress at
Ostend. The Spanish forces eventually triumph on September 20, 1604, albeit in a
Pyrrhic victory that will see at least 60,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or dead from disease. [17]
September 11 – Queen Elizabeth I summons her 10th, and last, meeting of the English Parliament.
September 19 – The Juan de Oñate expedition of Spanish explorers first encounters the indigenous
Escanjaque Indians in what is now the U.S. state of
Kansas. The Escanjaques ask the Spaniards to assist them in a war against a rival tribe, the Rayados. Instead, Oñate befriends the Rayados five days later. [16]
September 28 – The
Escanjaque Indians attack Juan de Oñate's Spanish expedition as the Spaniards are returning from their furthest venture east, the Little Arkansas River. [16]
October 4 –
Claudine de Culam, a 16-year-old girl in the French village of
Rognon, is hanged after being convicted of "carnal cohabitation with a dog". The dog is hanged along with her. [20]
December 6 – The
Battle of Castlehaven is fought off of the coast of southern Ireland as six Spanish Navy ships led by General
Pedro de Zubiaur are intercepted by an English fleet of four warships led and commanded by
Sir Richard Levenson. Two of the Spanish ships are sunk, and the other four are run aground.
December 27 – The
Battle of Bantam is fought within what is now
Indonesia off of the coast of the island of
Java, as Walter Harmensz leads five Dutch Republic galleons in a successful attack against a Portuguese fleet led by André Furtado de Mendonça.
January 3 –
Battle of Kinsale: The English defeat Irish rebels and their Spanish allies. (The battle happens on this date according to the
Gregorian calendar used by the Irish and Spanish but on Thursday, 24 December,
1601 according to the old
Julian calendar used by the English.)
June 2 – Dutch explorer
Joris van Spilbergen lands on the eastern side of the island of
Sri Lanka, at Santhamuruthu, and begins the process of attempting to establish a relationship with the rulers of the
Kingdom of Kandy.[23]
June 17 – An expedition of 14 Dutch Republic ships, commanded by Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, departs from
Texel on its expedition to the
East Indies.
September 1 – The
Mutiny of Hoogstraten, a rebellion by soldiers of the
Army of Flanders, begins with the seizure by 3,000 disgruntled mercenaries of the town of
Hoogstraten (now in Belgium). The mutineers hold the town for almost two years before surrendering on 18 May 1604.
September 12 – King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland receives the delivery of eight specially woven
Persian carpets displaying Poland's royal
coat of arms, after having dispatched agent Sefer Muratowicz to
Kashan.[27]
September 20 – The
siege of the Spanish Netherlands town of
De Graaf ends after two months as a Dutch and English army forces the surrender of the Spanish defenders.[28]
December 11 – A surprise attack by forces under the command of
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his brother-in-law,
Philip III of Spain, is repelled by the citizens of
Geneva (this actually takes place after midnight, in the early morning of December 12, but commemorations/celebrations on
Fête de l'Escalade are usually held on December 11 or the closest weekend).
The
iconoclast and
Confucian scholar
Li Zhi commits suicide while in a Chinese prison, during the late
Ming dynasty; he had taught that women were the intellectual equals of men and should be given equal opportunity in education; he was charged with spreading "dangerous ideas".
January 24 –
Anglo-Spanish War: English Admiral
Christopher Newport leads an unsuccessful attempt to take the Spanish-controlled Caribbean island of
Jamaica, where he was attempting to pillage the area to obtain supplies. The Spanish defenders repel the fleet, and Newport leads the attackers to the coast of Central America.
April 27 – The first permanent Dutch trading post in
Indonesia is established in
Banten by Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, who sets up a factory to store and package the trading commodity
black pepper.
May 19 –
The King's Men, a group of English professional actors composed primarily of former members of the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, is granted its royal patent by King James. The group will give the first performances of many of the plays of
William Shakespeare, who is one of the company's 26 principal actors. Named in order of priority on the patent are group manager
Lawrence Fletcher, Shakespeare, and
Richard Burbage.[35]
May 26 – The
Battle of Sluis is fought at sea off of the Belgian Netherlands as Spanish ships try unsuccessfully to break through a blockade port of the port of
Sluis. The Spanish ships are forced to return to port after at least 414 sailors are killed.[36]
June 7 – Prince
Şehzade Mahmud of the Ottoman Empire, the 16-year-old son of
Sultan Murad III, is executed on orders of his father, on advice of the Grand Vizier, after being accused unjustly of an assassination plot.[38]
Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618): Led by Iranian Emperor
Abbas the Great, the Safavid Army of Iran stages a surprise attack on
Tabriz, which had been taken from the Safavids by the Ottoman Empire in 1588. Tabriz is recaptured after 29 days.
February 17 – King James issues an order for all Jesuits and all Roman Catholic priests to leave his kingdom by March 19.[46]
February 24 – At
Linköping in
Sweden, the
Riksdag declares that
Sigismund, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, who has been absent for five years, has effectively abdicated as King of Sweden, and recognizes Karl, Duke of Södermanland, as the new monarch.
March 19 – King James opens his first parliamentary session as King of England. In his opening speech to the "
Blessed Parliament", the King makes clear that he wants to bring a legal union between England and Scotland and that he does not wish to be "a husband to two wives." The House of Commons refuses to agree with him on the unification of the crown or on the funding that the King requests.
April 9 – On the first day of the new year 966 M.E. on the Burmese calendar, King
Nyaungyan Min of
Burma makes a triumphant return to his capital at
Inwa after his victory in the war against the principality of
Mongnai (Monē), one of the
Shan States between Burma and
Siam
April 17 –
Tsar Dmitry of Russia makes a public conversion to Roman Catholicism in order to attract the aid of Jesuits in his attempt to rule all of Russia.
April 18 –
Maurice of Nassau assembles a combined army of 7,000 Dutch and 4,000 English soldiers to make an attack on the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium).
May 19 – Maurice of Nassau begins the
Siege of Sluis, a port in the Spanish Netherlands, with 11,000 Dutch and English troops. Despite reinforcements from Spanish relief troops, the city surrenders after three months, with both sides having lost hundreds of casualties.
Five conspirators in England, 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.[47]
Peace discussions between England and Spain begin at Somerset House in London to end the
Anglo-Spanish War after 19 years of fighting.
May 22 – English entrepreneur
Charles Leigh and a crew of 46 arrive in South America at what is now the
Oyapock River in
French Guiana after traveling on the ship Olive Plant. The 35 men and boys who stay create a colonial settlement which they call Oliveleigh, and make a claim to all of the area.
June 9 –
Thomas Percy, one of the English conspirators in the
Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I, is appointed as one of the king's bodyguards by the Earl of Northumberland.
July 4 – The
Jesuits Act 1603 (officially "An Act for the due execution of the Statutes against Jesuits, seminary Priests and recusants") is given royal assent by King James I of England to create penalties against Jesuits and Catholics who send their children abroad to Catholic colleges.[48]
King James angrily dismisses the English parliament after failing to get full financial subsidies. He tells the members in his closing speech, "I am not of such a stock as to praise fools."[49]
July 16 – The last of the 18 sessions of the English and Spanish peace conference is held at the
Old Somerset House in
London, with the parties reaching an agreement on terms of a treaty.
August 19 – The Dutch
siege of Sluis in the Spanish Netherlands ends after three months, a day after relief troops commanded by General
Ambrogio Spinola retreat. At least 2,000 of the members of the Spanish garrison inside had been killed or incapacitated by disease and famine. Sluis becomes part of the Netherlands afterward.
January 7 – Shakespeare's play, Henry V, copyrighted 1600, is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the Lord Chamberlain's Men for
King James I of England. [56]
January 16 – The first part of
Miguel de Cervantes' satire on the theme of
chivalry, Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, "The Ingenious
Hidalgo Don Quixote of
La Mancha"), is published in
Madrid. One of the first significant
novels in the western literary tradition, it becomes a global bestseller almost at once.[57]
February 10 – Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the King's Men Players at the
Palace of Whitehall for King James I of England. A second performance is given on February 12, Shrove Tuesday, at the King's request. [59]
February 25 – Admiral
Steven van der Hagen leads a fleet of ships for the
Dutch East India Company and makes the first capture of land for the Netherlands in what will become the Dutch East Indies, and later Indonesia. Hagen's men capture the Portuguese citadel of
Forte Amboino and the rest of
Ambon Island, and make it the capital of the Dutch possessions in Asia.
March 11 – A proclamation declares all people of Ireland to be the direct subjects of the
British Crown and not of any local lord or chief.[60]
March 3 –
Pope Clement VIII dies at the age of 69 after a reign of 13 years, prompting the assembling of cardinals to elect as successor.
April 1 – Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, the
Bishop of Pistoia, is elected by the assembled 61 cardinals at the heated
Papal conclave after 17 days of balloting. He takes the regnal name of
Pope Leo XI to become the 232nd pope, but serves for less than four weeks.[61]
April 27 – Pope Leo XI dies suddenly from a cold at the age of 69, after a reign of only 26 days, prompting the return of the cardinals for
the second papal conclave in less than two months. During his brief reign, the Pope issued a bull requiring secret balloting in papal conclaves.
May 8 – A group of 59 Roman Catholic cardinals assemble at Rome for another
papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Leo XI. During the meeting, a fistfight breaks out among the cardinals over the two rival candidates,
Antonio Sauli and
Domenico Toschi, neither of whom receive the necessary 40 votes for a two-thirds election. In the fight, Cardinal
Alfonso Visconti sustains several fractures.[64]
May 16 – Camillo Borghese, Cardinal Vicar of Rome and cardinal-priest of
Sant'Eusebio is elected the 233rd pope, and takes the name of
Pope Paul V. Another "
Year of Three Popes" will not occur until 373 years later, in 1978. Borghese is elected as a compromise candidate after the physical disagreements during the conclave.[65]
June 1 – Russian troops in Moscow imprison
Feodor II and his mother, later executing them.
August 14 – A Spanish attack on the Moorish fortress of
Hammamet, in
Ottoman Tunisia, ends in a disaster for the Spaniards. Although Spanish troops had managed to scale the walls and open the gates, they are suddenly ordered to retreat and are massacred while waiting on the coast for the return of the ships that brought them.
August 19 –
Eighty Years' War: The
siege of the Dutch city of Lingen, by 13,000 Spanish troops and 3,000 cavalry, ends with the surrender of Captain Maerten Cobben after nine days of defense. Although the Dutch Republic's stadtholder,
Maurice, Prince of Orange, had proclaimed that Lingen must be held at all costs, Dutch troops failed to come to Cobben's aid and Don
Ambrogio Spinola of Spain peacefully takes control of the city. [67]
November 5 (
O.S.) – The
Gunpowder Plot, a scheme to bomb England's
Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament, is foiled after Sir
Thomas Knyvet is tipped off, and finds Catholic plotter
Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building. Knyvet orders a search of the area and 36 barrels of
gunpowder are found. Fawkes is arrested for trying to assassinate
King James I and the members who had been scheduled to sit together in Parliament the next day.[69]
December 6 – In England
Thomas Bonham petitions to become a member of the College of Physicians in order for his practice to be legal, and is rejected. Dr. Bonham continues to practice, and is eventually imprisoned on November 13, 1606, leading to the landmark decision in Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610.
December 21 – On behalf of Spain, Portuguese navigator
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós begins his expedition to the South Pacific Ocean with 160 men on three ships. Queiros departs from
Callao in the
Viceroyalty of Peru with his flagship, San Pedro y San Pablo, and San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes.
May 1 –
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós discovers the islands of
Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides). [76] Believing them to be Australia, he names them La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.[77]
July 1 – Scottish minister
Patrick Simson and 44 other ministers of the
Church of Scotland sign Simson's Protest to the Scottish Parliament against the introduction to Scotland of a hierarchy of bishops.
Simion Movilă becomes the new
Prince of Moldavia upon the death of his older brother,
Ieremia Movilă. Simion will reign for only 14 months before being poisoned on September 14, 1607.
England deports 47 Roman Catholic priests, including
Thomas Garnet, putting them on board a ship bound for
Flanders in what is now
Belgium. A royal proclamation is read to the group, warning them that they will be put to death if they ever return to the British Isles.
April 25 –
Battle of Gibraltar: A
Dutch fleet of 26 warships, led by Admiral
Jacob van Heemskerck, stages a surprise attack on a
Spanish fleet anchored in the
Bay of Gibraltar. In the battle that ensues, Spain loses as many as 10 galleons and 12 smaller ships, and at least 300 men are killed. The disaster causes Spain to go into bankruptcy by October. [86]
May 26 – At
Jamestown, the president of the governing council,
Edward Wingfield, directs the fort to be strengthened and armed against the many attacks of the natives: "Hereupon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed, the ordinance mounted, his men armed and exercised, for many were the assaults and Ambuscadoes of the Savages ..." [John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964)]; 200 armed Indians attack the Jamestown settlement, killing two people and wounding 10.
May 28 – A wooden defensive wall (
palisade) is built by settlers around the Fort at Jamestown. Gabriel Archer writes in his journal, "we laboured, pallozadoing our fort".
June 10 – In Jamestown,
Captain John Smith is released from arrest and sworn in as a member of the colony Council.
June 15 – At Jamestown, the triangular fort is completed and armed: "The fifteenth of June we had built and finished our Fort, which was triangle wise, having three Bulwarkes, at every corner, like a halfe Moone, and foure or five pieces of Artillerie mounted in them. We had made our selves sufficiently strong for these Savages. We had also sowne most of our Corne on two Mountaines." [George Percy (Tyler 1952:19)] The colony reportedly bears extreme toil in strengthening the fort [from John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964:210)].
June 22 – Christopher Newport sails back to England.
July–September
July 2 –
Luis de Velasco returns to office as the Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, which at the time includes Mexico, parts of the future United States, and much of Central America. Velasco had previously been Viceroy from 1590 to 1595, then served as Viceroy of Peru (encompassing much of South America) from 1596 to 1604. He serves as New Spain's viceroy until 1611.
July 17 – In what is now the South Kalimantan province in Indonesia,
Sultan Mustain Billah of
Banjar orders the massacre of the crew of a Netherlands East India Company ship visiting the capital at
Banjarmasin.
July 20 – The second "
False Dmitry", one of three people claiming to be
Dmitry Ivanovich, son of the late Tsar
Ivan the Terrible, appears at the Russian town of
Starodub and persuades residents that he is the rightful heir to the Russian throne.
August 3 – After Catholics and Protestants clash in
Donauwörth, emperor
Rudolph II declares an
imperial ban over the city and orders Bavarian duke
Maximilian I to execute the ban leading to the occupation of the city by a force of 15,000 in December. This in turn leads to the creation of the
Protestant Union in 1608.
August 13 – The ship Gift of God of the
Plymouth Company arrives at the mouth of the modern-day
Kennebec River in
Maine. English colonists establish
Fort St. George, also known as the
Popham Colony. The settlement lasts little more than a year, before residents return to England in the first oceangoing ship built in the
New World, a 30-ton
pinnace called The Virginia.
September 5 – Hamlet is performed aboard the
East India Company ship Red Dragon, under the command of Capt.
William Keeling, anchored off the coast of
Sierra Leone, the first known performance of a Shakespeare play outside England in English, and the first by amateurs.
October 4 –
Flight of the Earls: The Earl of Tyrone and the Earl of Tyrconnell, along with their followers, reach the European continent, landing on St. Francis' Day at Quilleboeuf in France with 99 people. [87] after having departed Rathmullan in Ireland on September 12.
November 7 – A Dutch warship commanded by Admiral
Cornelis Matelief de Jonge arrives at the Malay Peninsula to attempt opening trade with the
Pahang Sultanate, and get Pahang's assistance in the Dutch Navy's fight against the Portuguese Navy in Asian trade.
Sultan Abdul Ghafur agrees to assistance in return for Dutch technical assistance. [88]
November 9 – King
Philip III of Spain announces that his government had run out of money and that it is suspending payments on its foreign debts [89] effectively declaring the state bankrupt. The decision in the wake of the destruction of most of the ships of Spain's Navy at the April 25 Battle of Gibraltar.
November 15 –
Flight of the Earls: After the departure from Ireland of
Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and
Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, along with 90 of their followers, King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland issues a proclamation "that the flight of the Earles of Tyrone and Tyrconell, with some others of their fellowes out of the North parts of our Realme of Ireland; these men's corruption and falshood, whose hainous offences remaine so fresh in memorie since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only whithdraw themselues from their personall obedience to their Soveraigne, but were content to sell over their Native Countrey to those that stood at that time in the highest termes of hostilitie with the two Crownes of England and Ireland... we doe hereby professe in the worde of a King, that... notwithstanding all that they can claime, must be acknowledged to proceed from meere Grace upon their submission after their great and unnaturall Treasons", and must forfeit their rights and possessions as nobles. [90]
December 10 – Captain
John Smith and nine men depart the Jamestown Colony on a barge in order to get more corn for the English fort. Sailing up the
Chickahominy River, the boat reaches a settlement of the
Appomattoc tribe at Apocant. While Smith, Jehu Robinson and Thomas Emery are further upstream in a canoe, George Casson is captured at Apocant by
Opchanacanough, brother of Chief
Powhatan. Robinson and Emery are killed while Smith is away from their camp, and Smith is soon taken prisoner by Opchancanough and, on January 5, is delivered to Powhatan at
Werowocomoco for execution. After an intervention by Powhatan's daughter,
Pocahontas, Smith is released a month after his capture. [91]
December 22 – A fleet of 13 Dutch warships, under the command of Admiral
Pieter Verhoeff, departs the Netherlands on an expedition to the Indian Ocean to open trade with Asian nations and to fight hostile resistance. Verhoeff never returns, and he and many of his crew will be ambushed and killed on May 22 at the
Banda Islands in
Indonesia.
January 2 – The first of the
Jamestown supply missions returns to the Colony of Virginia with
Christopher Newport commanding the John and Francis and the Phoenix bringing about 100 new settlers to supplement the 38 survivors he finds at Jamestown.
January 11 –
John Smith is released by
Powhatan after 15 days of captivity, and arrives back at
Jamestown the next day. [92] Upon his return, instead of being welcomed, he is charged with negligence for the deaths of the two men with him at the time of his capture, Jehu Robinson and Thomas Emery, but later exonerated.
February 26 – After being held captive in
Morocco for more than 13 years, popular professor Malian
Ahmad Baba is able to return to
Timbuktu on 10 Dhu 'l-Qa'da 1016 A.H.
October 1 – The second of the
Jamestown supply missions, which set out in July from
England, arrives at
Jamestown, Virginia, with
Christopher Newport commanding the Mary and Margaret carrying 70 settlers, bringing the population back up to 120; the passengers include two women and some skilled artisans, mostly from continental Europe, to develop industries.[99]
November 30 – At the colony of
Portuguese Macau, a port on the Chinese mainland leased from the Chinese Empire,
a group of 100 Japanese samurai, wielding katana and muskets engage in a fight with musket-armed Portuguese soldiers commanded by Governor André Pessoa. [100] Around 50 Japanese are killed and the others are imprisoned until they sign an affidavit blaming themselves for the incident.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the principal shogun of
Japan, subsequently ends the "
red seal ships" program of authorizing Japanese nationals to visit Macau. The incident eventually leads to much larger naval battle in 1610, the
Nossa Senhora da Graça incident.
December – Jamestown supply missions:
Christopher Newport returns to England from
Jamestown carrying cargo with "tryals of Pitch, Tarre, Glasse, Frankincense, Sope Ashes ..."
January 12 – The
Basque witch trials are started in
Spain as the court of the
Inquisition at
Logroño receives a letter from the commissioner of the village of
Zugarramurdi, and orders the arrest of four women, including María de Jureteguía and María Chipía de Barrenetxea.[101]
March 11 – The Swedish Army, under the command of General
Jacob De la Gardie, begins marching east from
Vyborg (at this time, part of the Swedish Empire, modern-day Russia) in order to defend the Russian Empire against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the course of the
Polish–Muscovite War.
March 19 – The
Dutch warship Mauritius sinks off the coast of the Cape of Cape Lopes Gonçalves on the modern-day West African nation of
Gabon. The wreckage of the Mauritius will not be located until 375 years later, in
1985.
March 24 – Led by the Grand Hetman of Lithuania,
Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, the Lithuanian Navy breaks the blockade of
Riga by sinking two Swedish Navy warships off the coast of
Salacgrīva.
May 23 – The
Second Virginia Charter is officially ratified; it is intended to replace the council with a governor, who has absolute control in the colony.
June 2 – With the Sea Venture as its flagship, a fleet of nine English ships and more than 500 passengers altogether, departs from England to bring supplies to the English settlement in
Jamestown, Virginia. The fleet runs into a storm in July and the Sea Venture is wrecked in the Bermuda islands on July 24.
June 29 – A fleet of ships from the
Kingdom of Spain, assisted by a French warship, fights a battle in the Mediterranean Sea against a larger fleet of 23 ships from the North African
Eyalet of Tunisia and sinks 21 of them. The other two Tunisian ships are captured.
July 23 – A three-day hurricane begins in the Caribbean Sea and separates the nine
London Company's ships and their 600 passengers who are en route to relieve the
Jamestown settlement. One ship sinks, and the flagship is wrecked. Less than 300 settlers make it to Virginia.
The Sea Venture, flagship of the nine-ship fleet of the
London Company is deliberately wrecked at
Bermuda during a storm, as Admiral
George Somers drives the ship into the reefs of Discovery Bay in order to prevent the ship from sinking. A group of 153 survivors stay, making the first English settlement of the island.[105]
After a fight on November 30 in
Portuguese Macau between Japanese traders and Portuguese soldiers, Japan's ruling shogun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, strictly prohibits further trade between Japan and Portugal.[106]
August 10 – The Spanish galleon San Francisco sinks in a storm off the coast of
Japan, with the loss of 56 men. Clinging to floating wreckage, the survivors are able to reach Yubanda, near
Onjuku in modern-day
Chiba Prefecture.
August 11 – Four ships arrive at the colony of
Jamestown, Virginia, with almost 300 men, women and children, to bring supplies for the starving English colonists. They are followed days later by the other three ships remaining from the
London Company. Most of the supplies, however, are spoiled by rain and seawater, and many of the passengers are ill with the bubonic plague.[107]
August 15 (August 5 O.S.) – English astronomer
Thomas Harriot becomes the first person to make a detailed drawing of the
Moon, based on his observations through a telescope.
December 8 – One of the first
public libraries, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, is opened in the Italian city of
Milan, founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Unlike other reading rooms, the library houses its collection on shelves along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables.
The Dutch East India Company establishes a
trading post in
Hirado, Japan.
Dutch entrepreneur
Isaac Le Maire devizes the concept of selling
short shares in order to benefit from a falling Dutch East India Company share price.[113]
^Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters as translated into English by Owen Connellan, ed. by Michael O'Clery (Irish Genealogical Foundation, 2003) p. 666
^
ab("Dispatch of 23rd October, 1600: On the 20th the two ambassadors from Persia made their entry here; one is an Englishman called, as I understand, he is the principal Ambassador, and the other is a Persian called Assan Halevech; there are about twenty or twenty-five persons with them...") contemporary account, quoted in Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure, ed by Edward D. Ross (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005) p. 23-24
^("Dispatch of November 8th, 1600: "Yesterday these Ambassadors from the King of Persia had had an audience. The Englishman spoke in Spanish, and the substance of that King's offer to His Imperial Majesty was that he would arm against the Turk...")
^Claes-Göran Isacson, Vägen till stormakt - Vasaättens krig ("Road to Power: The war of the Vasa family") (Norstedts, 2006)
^Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, The Coronado Expedition: From the Distance of 460 Years (University of New Mexico Press, 2003)
^
abcdStan Hoig, Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate (University Press of Colorado, 2013) pp. 221-230
^Anna E.C. Simoni, The Ostend Story: Early Tales of the Great Siege and the Mediating Role of Henrick Van Haestens (BRILL, 2021)
^"Litany", by Francis Mershman, in The Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Company, 1910)
^The Modern Part of an Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time, Vol. XII: History of the Othman Empire (S. Richardson 1759) p. 415
^A. F. Niemoller, Bestiality and the Law: A Resume of the Law and Punishments for Bestiality with Typical Cases from Fifteenth Century to the Present (Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1946)
^Shakespeare, William (2001). Smith, Bruce R. (ed.). Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts. Boston, Mass: Bedford/St Martin's. p. 2.
ISBN0-312-20219-9.
^Karle Schlieff.
"Gosnold: 1602". Ancient Lights. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
^
abcdPenguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006.
ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^Weir, Alison (1999), Elizabeth the Queen, London: Pimlico, p. 486,
ISBN978-0-7126-7312-9
^Sænluang Ratchasomphan and David K. Wyatt, The Nan Chronicle (SEAP Publications, 1994) p.69
^F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964 (Penguin, 1964) p. 168
^Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada Española desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón ("The Spanish Armada after the Union of the Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon") (Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1898) p. 223
^The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire, ed. by Selcuk Aksin Somel (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) p.41
^The Library of Historic Characters and Famous Events of All Nations and All Ages, ed. by A. R. Spofford, Frank Weitenkampf and J. P. Lamberton (Art Library Publishing Company, 1904) pp. 64-65
^Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603.
^Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 83
^Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 63.
^Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot (Phoenix Press, 1996) pp. 41-42
^C. Northcote Parkinson, Gunpowder Treason and Plot (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976) p. 48
^"Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603–1605", by Albert J. Loomie, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society ((1963), p. 31
^Pauline Croft, King James (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 62
^"Cases of Tensho, Bunroku, and Keicho periods, the appointment of samurai families and the granting of the Toyotomi surname", by Kohei Murakawa, Komazawa Shigaku (2013) pp. 112-129
^Frederic J. Baumgartner, Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 141
^Norman Davies, Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey Into History (Penguin Books, 2017)
^McHugh, Evan (2006). 1606: An Epic Adventure. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. p. 20.
ISBN978-0-86840-866-8.
^"The Impact of Jacques Gillot's Actes du Concile de Trente (1607) in the Debate Concerning the Council of Trent in France", by Tom Hamilton, in The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545-1700) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018) p. 376
^William Eisler, The Furthest Shore: Images of Terra Australis from the Middle Ages to Captain Cook (Cambridge University Press, 1995) p.47
^Richardson, William A. R. (2008). Was Australia Charted Before 1606: the Jave la Grande Inscriptions. Australia: Everbest. p. 20.
^W. B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p. 80
^Scholars date completion as between 1603 and 1606. Boyce, Charles (1990). Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare. New York: Roundtable Press.
^"Smith, John (1580-1631)", by Edward Arbab, in Encyclopaedia Britannica (R.S. Peale, 1892) p. 175
^Alexander Brown, The First Republic in America: An Account of the Origin of this Nation, Written from the Records Then (1624) Concealed by the Council, Rather Than from the Histories Then Licensed by the Crown (Houghton, 1898) p.55
^"A Historical, Topographical & Agricultrual Survey of the County of Washington, by Dr. Asa Fitch, in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society: Report of the Executive Committee for 1848 (New York State Agricultural Society, 1849) p. 882 ("Attended by some of the Mountain Indians, he left Quebec, May 28th, 1609... On the 4th day of July they entered Lake Champlain.")
^James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (Basic Books, 2006) pp. 158–160
^C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (University of California Press, 1951) p. 272
^Lyon Gardiner Tyler, England in America, 1580-1652 (Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1907) p. 63
^Günther, Hans-Jürgen, Der Humanist Johannes Pistorius – Gründer des „Gymnasium Illustre“ zu Durlach, Markgrafen-Gymnasium Karlsruhe Durlach, Jahresbericht 1993/94, Durlach 1994.