1630s

1630s: events by year

Contents: 1630 1631 1632 1633 1634 1635 1636 1637 1638 1639

1630

January–June

• February 22 – Native American Quadequine introduces popcorn to English colonists.
• March 3 – A fleet sent by the Dutch West India Company captures Recife from the Portuguese, establishing Dutch Brazil.
• March 22 – Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.
• March 29 – Great Migration: The ship Arbella and three other ships leave Southampton, England with 400 passengers headed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America.
• June 6 – Swedish warships depart from Stockholm to Germany.
• June 14 – Passengers of the Arbella, including Anne Bradstreet, America's first poet of significance, finally set foot in the New World in Salem, MA

July–December

• July 6
  • The Success, last ship of the Winthrop Fleet, lands safely at Salem harbor, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • Thirty Years' War: Leading an army of 13.000, king Gustav Adolf of Sweden enter the Thirty Years' War on protestant side by making landfall at Peenemünde, Pomerania.
• July 9 – Thirty Years' War: Stettin is taken by Swedish forces.
• July 18 – War of Mantuan Succession: Mantua is sacked by an imperial army led by Count Johann von Aldringen.
• July 30 – John Winthrop helps in founding a church in Massachusetts which will later become known as First Church in Boston.
• August – Thirty Years' War: As a result of heavy pressure from the Prince-electors, Ferdinand II dismisses general Wallenstein from command of the imperial army.
• September 4 – Thirty Years' War: the Treaty of Stettin is signed by Sweden and Pomerania, forming a close alliance between them, as well as giving Sweden full military control over Pomerania.
• September 17 – The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.
• September 24 – The first ship of de Sauce's emigrants arrive at Southampton Hundred on the James River in Virginia.
• October 13 – War of Mantuan Succession: the Peace of Regensburg is signed. Charles Gonzaga is confirmed as Duke of Mantua.
• November 10–November 11 – Day of Dupes: Marie de' Medici unsuccessfully attempts to oust Richelieu.

Date unknown

• Johann Heinrich Alsted's Encyclopaedia is published.
• The first account of the Childes Tomb story is published.
• Paramaribo, Suriname is first settled by the British.
• Puritan pamphleteer Dr. Alexander Leighton publishes Zion's Plea Against Prelacy: An Appeal to Parliament, an attack on Anglican bishops, in London. He is sentenced by Archbishop William Laud's High Commission Court to public whipping, branding, and having his ears cut off.
• First year of Deccan famine in India—which will kill some 2,000,000 in 3 years.
• Thirty Years' War: Swedish intervention starts.
• Fedorovych Uprising: Zaporozhian Cossacks rebel against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and occupy a large part of present day Ukraine. After a number of indecisive skirmishes with a Polish army sent to pacify the region, the Treaty of Pereiaslav is signed, ending the uprising.

1631

January–June

• January 23 – Thirty Years' War: Sweden and France sign the Treaty of Bärwalde, a military alliance in which France provides funds for the Swedish army invading northern Germany.
• February 5 – Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
• February 16 – Gustav Adolf Secondary School is founded in Tallinn, Estonia by Swedish king Gustav II Adolf.
• April 13 – Thirty Years' War: Gustav Adolf of Sweden defeats an imperial garrison at the city of Frankfurt an der Oder.
• May 10 – Thirty Years' War: After a two month siege, an Imperial army under the command of Tilly storms the German city of Magdeburg and brutally sacks it, massacring over 20,000 inhabitants. Shocked by the massacre, many protestant states in the Holy Roman Empire decide to ally with Gustav Adolf of Sweden and support his ongoing invasion.
• May 18 – In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts.
• May 30
  • La Gazette, the first French newspaper, was founded.
  • Thirty Years' War: Bavaria and France sign the Treaty of Fontainebleau, forming a secret alliance. The secret alliance does not last long, however.
• June 19 – War of Mantuan Succession: The Treaty of Cherasco is signed, ending the War of Mantuan Succession.
• June 20 – Algerian pirates sack Baltimore, County Cork in Ireland.

July–December

• July 16 – The city of Würzburg is taken by Gustav Adolf of Sweden, putting an end to the Würzburg witch trials, but not before an estimated 900 people from the city and its environs had been burned at the stake for witchcraft.
• July 22 – Thirty Years' War: Tilly defeats Gustav Adolf of Sweden at the Battle of Werben, but not decisively.
• End of August – Thirty Years' War: Running out of supply, Tilly is forced to send his army into Electoral Saxony in order to secure supplies, as well as to force a reaction from John George, Elector of Saxony and Gustav Adolf of Sweden.
• September 11 – Thirty Years' War: As a result of Tilly's invasion, John George, Elector of Saxony, who had until now stayed neutral, allies with Gustav Adolf of Sweden in order to drive the Imperial army out of Saxony.
• September 12 – Eighty Years' War: A Spanish fleet under the command of admiral Antonio de Oquendo defeats a Dutch fleet off the coast of Brazil in the Battle of Albrolhos.
• September 12 and 13 – Eighty Years' War: A Spanish fleet carrying an invasion force is intercepted and almost completely destroyed by a Dutch fleet in the Battle of the Slaak.
• September 17 – Thirty Years' War: In the Battle of Breitenfeld, Tilly's imperial army is decisively defeated by Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, shattering the imperial army of the Holy Roman Empire and marking the first significant victory for the Protestants in the war.
• October 10 – Thirty Years' War: A Saxon army takes over Prague.
• December 23 – Thirty Years' War: Gustav Adolph of Sweden takes the city of Mainz without any resistance.

Date unknown

• Moses Amyraut's Traite des Religions is published.
• The bell "Emmanuel" in Notre Dame de Paris is recast.
• The Taj Mahal's construction is started (it is finished in 1653).
• Mount Vesuvius erupts in Pompeii.
• First English settlement by William Claiborne within the State of Maryland, U.S.A.

1632

January–June

• February 22 – Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
• March 29 – The Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.
• March – Thirty Years' War – Gustav Adolf of Sweden invades Bavaria with his army.
• April 15 – Thirty Years' War – Gustavus Adolphus defeats Tilly for the second time within a year at the Battle of Rain. Tilly is severely wounded during the battle.
• April 30 – Thirty Years' War – Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly and commander of the Catholic League armies, dies from wounds sustained at the battle of Rain.
• May – Thirty Years' War – Munich, capital of Bavaria, is captured by the Swedish army.
• June 15 – Sir Francis Windebank is made chief Secretary of State in England.
• June 20 – Charles I of England issues a charter for the colony of Maryland (named in honor of Henrietta Maria), under the control of Lord Baltimore.
• June 25 – Susenyos' son, Emperor Fasilides, declares the state religion of Ethiopia to again be Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, confiscates the lands of the Jesuit missionaries, relegating them to Fremona.
• June – Eighty Years' War – Leading a Dutch army, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange captures in short succession the cities of Venlo, Roermond and Sittard, before besieging the city of Maastricht.

July–December

• July 23 – Three hundred colonists for New France depart Dieppe.
• August 22 – Eighty Years' War – A Dutch army led by Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, captures the city of Maastricht after a two-month siege.
• September 1 – A rebellion against French king Louis XIII is crushed at the Battle of Castelnaudary. The leader of the rebellion, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII, surrenders.
• September 9 – Thirty Years' War – Besieged by Wallenstein at Nuremberg, Swedish king Gustav Adolph attempts to break the siege, but is defeated in the Battle of the Alte Veste.
• October 15 – Official opening of the University of Tartu in Swedish Livonia.
• October 30 – Henry II, Duke of Montmorency, is executed for his participation in the rebellion of Gaston, Duke of Orléans against the French king Louis XIII.
• November 8 – Wladyslaw IV Waza is elected king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after Sigismund III Vasa's death.
• November 16
  • Thirty Years' War – Battle of Lützen – Swedish king Gustav II Adolf leads an assault on Wallenstein's army, but is killed early in the battle. Despite the king's death, the Swedish commanders manage to rally the army and eventually defeat Wallenstein's army. As a result, Wallenstein withdraws from Saxony.
  • Following the death of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, he is succeeded by his 6 year old daughter Christina while five regents, headed by Axel Oxenstierna, govern the country since she is underage.
• November 17 – Thirty Years' War – Gottfried zu Pappenheim, Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, dies from wounds sustained in the Battle of Lützen.

Date unknown

• Fasilides succeeds his father Susenyos as Emperor of Ethiopia.
• Antigua and Barbuda is first colonized by England.
• The Portuguese driven out of Bengal.
• Yakutsk, Russia is founded.
• King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland forbids antisemitic books and printings.

1633

January–June

• February 13 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• March 1 – Samuel de Champlain reclaims his role as commander of New France on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu.
• June 22 – The Roman Catholic church forces Galileo Galilei to recant his heliocentric view of the solar system: Eppur si muove (Italian) (Which, in fact, he did not say).

July–December

• October 22 – A Ming dynasty fleet under Zheng Zhilong beat a Dutch East India Company fleet at the island of Kinmen.

Date unknown

• The Jews of Poznań are granted the privilege of forbidding Christians to enter into their city quarter.
• In Ethiopia, the Emperor Fasilides expels the Jesuit missionaries.
• Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu of Japan outlaws Christianity and begins a policy of extreme isolationism.
• Mission San Luis de Apalachee is built in the New World by two Spanish friars.
• A professorship in Arabic studies is founded at Cambridge University.

1634

January–June

• February 24–February 25—Rebellious soldiers kill Albrecht von Wallenstein.
• March 1 – Battle of Smolensk: King Ladislaus IV of Poland defeats the Russian army.
• March 25 – The first settlers arrive in St. Mary's City, Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore), the fourth permanent settlement in British North America.

July–December

• July 4 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France (later the Canadian province of Quebec).
• August 18 – Urbain Grandier, a priest accused of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France.
• September 5–September 6 – The Battle of Nördlingen results in a Catholic victory.
• October 11–October 12 – The Burchardi flood (also known as the second Grote Mandrenke) strikes the North Sea coast of Germany and Denmark, causing 8,000–12,000 deaths.
• November 11 – The Irish House of Commons passes an Act for the Punishment of the Vice of Buggery

Date unknown

• Moses Amyraut's Traite de la predestination is published.
• Curaçao is captured by the Dutch.
• The Treaty of Polianovska is defined.
• The first meeting of the Académie française occurs.
• Jean Nicolet becomes the first European to set foot in Wisconsin. He is in search of a water-route to the Pacific when he lands at Green Bay, most likely in August of 1634.
• Covent Garden Market opens in London.
• The German Brewery Paulaner is established.
• The English establish a settlement at Cochin (now Kochi) on the Malabar Coast.
• The first decennial performance of the Oberammergau Passion Plays is held.
• In England, Oxford University Press receives its charter and becomes the second of the privileged presses.
• In Maryland, the Jesuits Andrew White, John Altham Gravenor, and Thomas Gervase arrived with Lord Leonard Calvert on March 25, 1634, and in that year established an institution of higher learning at St. Mary's which later became known as Georgetown University, North America's oldest university.
• Suspecting that Patriarch Afonso Mendes played a part in the Portuguese assault on Mombasa, Emperor Fasilides expels him and several Jesuit missionaries from Ethiopia.

1635

January–June

• February 22 – The Académie française in Paris is formally constituted as the national academy for the preservation of the French language.^[1]
• April 13 – Maronite warlord Fah-al-Din II is executed in Constantinople.
• May – France declares war on Spain.
• May 30 – Thirty Years' War – The Peace of Prague is signed.

July–December

• August 25 – The Great Colonial Hurricane strikes Narragansett Bay as a possible Category 3 hurricane, killing over 46 people.
• September 12 – The Treaty of Sztumska Wieś is signed between Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• October 9 – Rhode Island founder Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident, after speaking out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
• November 15 – Thomas Parr, dead at the alleged age of 152, is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Date unknown

• Guadeloupe and Martinique are colonized by France.
• Dominica is claimed by France.
• The Ottomans are expelled from Yemen.
• Nagyszombat University (predecessor of Budapest University) is established.
• Boston Latin School, the oldest school in the United States of America, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Japan forbids merchants to travel abroad under penalty of death.
• A Japanese imperial memorandum decrees: "Hereafter entry by the Portuguese galeota is forbidden. If they insist on coming, the ships must be destroyed and anyone aboard those ships must be beheaded."
• Willem and Joan Blaeu publish the first edition of their Atlas Novus in Amsterdam.

1636

January–June

• February 24 – King Christian of Denmark gives an order that all beggars that are able to work must be sent to Brinholmen, to build ships or to work as galley rowers.
• March 26 – Utrecht University is founded in the Netherlands.

July–December

• August 15
  • The Spanish besiege Corbie, France.
  • The covenant of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts is first signed.
• September 8 – A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes New College (Harvard University) as the first college founded in North America.
• December 13 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

Date unknown

• Emperor Fasilides of Ethiopia founds the city of Gondar, which becomes the capital of Ethiopia for the next two centuries.
• Harvard University is established by the colonial Massachusetts legislature.
• The first American ancestor of John Adams, Henry Adams, emigrates to Massachusetts.
• Pierre Corneille's play, Le Cid, is first performed.
• Manchus occupy the Liaoning region in north China, select Shenyang (Mukden) as their capital, and proclaim the new Qing Dynasty ("pure").
• The Shogun forbids Japanese to travel abroad and those abroad from returning home.
• In the American colonies, Roger Williams (theologian) founds Rhode Island.
• Thirty Years' War: French intervention starts.
• The first synagogue of the New World, Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, is founded in Recife by the Dutch.

1637

January–June

• February 3 – Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands).
• February 15 – Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• April 10 – Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts.
• May – Chinese encyclopedist, Song Yingxing, publishes his Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), considered one of the most valuable encyclopedias of classical China.
• June 27 – The first English venture to China is undertaken by Admiral Weddell, who sails into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming Dynasty. The voyages are for trade, which is dominated there by the Portuguese (then combined with the power of Spain).

July–December

• October 13 – The launching ceremony is held for HMS Sovereign of the Seas, the gilded warship of the British Royal Navy.
• December 17 – The Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan.

Date unknown

• Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's last theorem.
• France places a few missionaries in the Côte d'Ivoire, a country it will rule more than 200 years later.
• The Kingdom of England wages war against the Mashantucket Pequots.
• The first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice.
• René Descartes writes his Discours de la Méthode.
• Elizabeth Poole becomes the first woman to have founded a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
• The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.
• Second Manchu invasion of Korea: The Joseon court reluctantly submits to the Manchu's demands of vassalhood while continuing to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Ming Dynasty.
• Six European ships dock at a port in China, bringing 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses to China during the late Ming Dynasty, the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China. Now the Daoist unconcern with sight will change, along with their favorable attitude towards lack of intricate detail in painting (although those with good eyesight often favor intricate details in their painting). Refer to page 57 of Timothy Brook's book The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. However, the historian Kaiming Chiu argues in his The Introduction of Spectacles Into China that spectacles were introduced into China as far back as the late 13th century.
• 30,000 peasants in the heavily Catholic area of northern Kyūshū revolt.

1638

January–June

• February 28 – The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
• March 3 – a mercenary army under Bernard de Saxe-Weimar fighting for France defeats imperial forces at the Battle of Rheinfelden.
• March 5 – Thirty Years' War – The Treaty of Hamburg is signed by France and Sweden.
• March 29 – The Swedish arrive on the ships Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
• March – Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy and goes to Rhode Island.
• April 3 – John Wheelwright is banished from Boston and founds Exeter New Hampshire.
• April 15 – Shogunate forces defeat the last remnants of the Shimabara Rebellion in the fortress of Hara.
• May 23 – signing of the Kandyan Treaty between the Singhala King Rajasimha II and the Dutch to rid Ceylon of the Portuguese.
• June 20 – Spanish troops under Ferdinand of Austria defeat a much larger Dutch force near Antwerp at the Battle of Kallo during the Eighty Years War.
• June 27 – Patriarch Cyril of Constantinople is deposed for high treason and strangled and thrown into the sea by Janissaries on Ottoman Sultan Murad IV's command.

July–December

• September– John Spofford originator and forefather of the decedents of Spofford family arrives in Boston harbor by way of the ship "john of london" and is one of the first people to establish Rowely, Essex County, Massachusetts.
• October 21 – The Great Thunderstorm breaks out in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England.
• November – The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is summoned to Glasgow by King Charles I of England.
• December 18 – Mazarin becomes first adviser to French potentate Richelieu on the death of Leclerc du Tremblay.
• December 21 – The full moon is in total eclipse from 1:12 to 2:47 UT and the solstice occurs later in the day at 16:05 UT.

Date unknown

• Covenanters meet at Muchalls Castle to compose responses to the Bishops of Aberdeen.
• The Dutch settle in Ceylon.
• Pedro Teixeira makes the first ascent of the Amazon River, from its mouth to Quito, Ecuador. The same trip had been made in the opposite direction in 1541.
• Dutch merchant Willem Kieft is appointed Director of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company.
• The Netherlands colonizes Mauritius.
• Shipwrecked sailors from England found the first known European settlement in Belize.
• The Finnish postal service, Suomen Posti, is founded.
• New Haven, the first planned city in America, is founded.
• The Beijing Gazette makes an official switch in its production process of newspapers, from woodblock printing to movable type printing; private newspapers in Ming Dynasty China were first mentioned in 1582.
• Sultan Murad IV captures Baghdad.
• Shah Jahan transfers the capital of the Moghul Empire from Agra to Delhi.
• Buccaneer Peter Wallace called "Ballis" by the Spanish, settles near and perhaps gives his name to the Belize River.

1639

January–June

• January 14 – Connecticut's first constitution, the Fundamental Orders, is adopted.
• March 3 – The early settlement of Taunton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.
• March 13 – Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.
• May – The first of the Bishops' Wars breaks out between Charles I and Scotland. Charles arrives with his army at Berwick-on-Tweed.
• April 14 – Swedish forcus under Johan Baner inflict a crushing defeat on the Imperial army at the Battle of Chemnitz. This prolongs the Thirty Year's War and allows the Swedes to occupy Pirna and advance into Bohemia.
• June – The first battle of the Bishops' Wars is fought by Earl Marischal and the Marquess of Montrose, when they lead a Covenanter army of 9,000 men past Muchalls Castle over the Causey Mounth to fight at the Bridge of Dee.
• June 18 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed by Charles I and the Scots.

July–December

• August 22 – The founding day of Madras.
• October 31 – Naval Battle of the Downs: A Republic of the United Provinces fleet decisively defeats a Spanish fleet in English waters.
• November 24 – Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus.

Date unknown

• Fort St George, the first settlement of British India, is founded at Madras. ^[2]
• The Casiquiare canal, a river forming a natural canal between the Amazon River and Orinoco River basins, is first encountered by Europeans.
• The Barbados House of Assembly meets for the first time.
• The first printing press in North America is started in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Russian Cossacks advance over the Urals to the Pacific, to Okhotsk.
• Montreal is first settled.
• Sakoku (closed country policy) starts in Japan (approximate date).
• Jules Mazarin enters the service of Richelieu.
• Treaty of Zuhab between Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and Safavid Persia. Modern Turkey-Iran and Iraq-Iran border lines.

Significant people

Births

Deaths

• November 6, 1632 – King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (in the Battle of Lützen) (b. 1594)

References