15 July – the armed merchant ship Mayflower embarks about 65 emigrants for New England at or near her home port of Rotherhithe on the Thames east of London.[3]
c. 19 July – the Mayflower anchors in Southampton Water to rendezvous with the Speedwell which on 22 July (1 August NS) sets out from Delfshaven carrying English separatist Puritans from Leiden, arriving on 26 July. On or about 5 August the ships set sail, but the Speedwell is found to be leaking.[3]
12 or 13 August – the Mayflower and Speedwell put into Dartmouth, Devon, for repairs to the Speedwell.
23 August – the Mayflower and Speedwell set out from Dartmouth; they are well out into the Atlantic when the Speedwell is again found to be leaking.[3]
28 August – the Mayflower and Speedwell return again to England, anchoring off Plymouth in the Cattewater; the latter ship is given up as a participant in the voyage and on 2 September departs for London, with most of her passengers and stores having been transferred to the Mayflower.[3]
6 September (16 September NS) – the Mayflower leaves Plymouth carrying the Pilgrims to Cape Cod in North America, where they land on 11 November.[4] She carries 41 "saints" (English separatists largely from Holland), 40 "strangers" (largely secular planters from London), 23 servants and hired workers, and c. 30 crew.
24 July – while hunting at Bramshill, George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally kills a keeper with his crossbow.[8] A royal commission of inquiry narrowly finds in his favour.
23 May – Nathaniel Butter begins publication in London of Newes from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries, one of the first regular English language newspapers.[4]
26 October – "Fatal Vespers": 95 people are killed when an upper floor of the French ambassador's house in Blackfriars, London, collapses under the weight of a congregation attending a mass.[13]
Between 8 November and 5 December – publication in London of the "First Folio" (Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies), a collection of 36 of the plays of Shakespeare (d. 1616), half of which have not previously been printed.[4]
13 June – Marriage in person of King Charles I and the Catholic Henrietta Maria, Princess of France and Navarra, at Canterbury.[4]
18 June – The "Useless Parliament" refuses to vote Charles I the right to collect customs duties for his entire reign, seeking to restrict him to one year instead.[4]
August
Over 40,000 killed by bubonic plague in London; court and Parliament temporarily moved to Oxford.[4]
A very high tide occurs, the highest ever known in the Thames, and the sea walls in Kent, Essex and Lincolnshire are overthrown, with great desolation caused to the lands near the sea.[17]
8 November – Duke of Buckingham leaves La Rochelle, having lost half of his expeditionary force.[1]
28 November – Sir Thomas Darnell launches an unsuccessful appeal against his imprisonment without trial for refusing to pay forced loans; a major impetus for the Petition of Right the following year.[1]
^Disney, Francis (1992). Shepton Mallet Prison (2nd ed.). Author. ISBN978-0951147023.
^"Charles I". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
^Sharp, Buchanan (1980). In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN0520036816.
