1630s

This is a list of events occurring in the 1630s, ordered by year.

1630

January–June

• February 22 – Native American Quadequine introduces popcorn to English colonists.
• March – 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 Pereyaslav is signed, ending the uprising.
• 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.
• April 8 – Winthrop Fleet: The ship Arbella and three others set sail from the Solent in England with 400 passengers under the leadership of John Winthrop headed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America as part of the Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640); seven more, with another 300 aboard, follow in the next few weeks.
• June – Scottish-born Presbyterian (and former physician) Alexander Leighton is brought before Archbishop William Laud's Star Chamber court in London for publishing the seditious pamphlet An Appeale to the Parliament, or, Sions Plea Against the Prelacy, an attack on Anglican bishops (printed in the Netherlands, 1628). He is sentenced to be pilloried and whipped, have his ears cropped, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with "SS" (for "sower of sedition"), to be imprisoned, and be degraded from holy orders.^[1]
• June 6 – Swedish warships depart from Stockholm for Germany.
• June 14 – Passengers of the Arbella, including Anne Bradstreet, America's first poet of significance, finally set foot in the New World at Salem, Massachusetts.

July–December

• July – The Italian plague of 1629–1631 reaches Venice.
• July 6
  • The Success, last ship of the Winthrop Fleet, lands safely at Salem harbor, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War begins when King Gustav Adolf of Sweden, leading an army of 13,000 on the protestant side, makes 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 army of the Holy Roman Empire led by Count Johann von Aldringen.
• July 22 – Galileo Galilei is forced to recant his heliocentric views of the solar system by the Roman Catholic Church.^{[citation needed]}
• 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, Holy Roman Emperor, dismisses general Wallenstein from command of the imperial army.
• September 4 – Thirty Years' War: the Treaty of Stettin is signed by Sweden and the Duchy of Pomerania, forming a close alliance between them, as well as giving Sweden full military control over Pomerania.
• September 7 – The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.^[2]
• 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 10–11 – Day of the Dupes: Marie de' Medici unsuccessfully attempts to oust Cardinal Richelieu from the French Court.

Date unknown

• Paramaribo (Suriname) is first settled by the British.
• Deccan Famine of 1630–1632 in India begins; it will kill some two million.
• In the Mughal Empire, Shah Jahan's Pearl Mosque at Lahore Fort is consecrated (completed 1635).
• The central square of Covent Garden in London is laid out and a market begins to develop there.
• Johann Heinrich Alsted's Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta is published.

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 the Electorate of 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.
• Taj Mahal construction begins.

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.
• April 12 – Galileo Galilei convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic church ^[3]
• June 18 – Charles I is crowned King of Scots, at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh
• 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 Quemoy.

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.
• Completion of St Columb's Cathedral, Derry, Ireland, the first post-Reformation Anglican cathedral built in the British Isles and the first Protestant cathedral built in Europe.^[4]
• 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 24–25 – Rebel Scots and Irish soldiers kill Bohemian military leader Albrecht von Wallenstein at Cheb.
• March 1 – Battle of Smolensk: King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland defeats the Russian army.
• March 25 – Lord Leonard Calvert arrives in Maryland with Jesuit missionaries Andrew White, John Altham Gravenor and Thomas Gervase, establishing St. Mary's as the fourth permanent settlement in British North America. In this year they also establish an institution of higher learning here which later becomes Georgetown University, North America's oldest university.
• June 14 – The Treaty of Polyanovka is signed between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia, concluding the Smolensk War.

July–December

• July 4 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France (the modern-day Canadian province of Quebec).
• August (prob.) – 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 (Lake Michigan).
• August 18 – Urbain Grandier, a priest accused of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France.
• September 5–6 – The Battle of Nördlingen results in a decisive victory for the Army of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg Spain.
• October 11–12 – 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

• Curaçao is captured by the Dutch.
• The English establish a settlement at Cochin (modern-day Kochi) on the Malabar Coast.
• Suspecting that Patriarch Afonso Mendes played a part in the Portuguese assault on Mombasa, Emperor Fasilides expels him and several Jesuit missionaries from Ethiopia.
• The Académie française is founded by Cardinal Richelieu.
• The first performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play is held in Bavaria.
• Moses Amyraut's Traité de la predestination is published.
• The Paulaner Brewery is established in Munich by Minim friars.

1635

January–June

• February 22 – The Académie française in Paris is formally constituted as the national academy for the preservation of the French language.^[5]
• April 13 – Maronite warlord Fakhr-al-Din II is executed in Constantinople.
• May – France declares war on Spain.
• May 30 – Thirty Years' War – The Peace of Prague is signed, which ends the German civil war aspect of the conflict.

July–December

• July 31 – The Royal Mail service is made available to the public by Charles I of England.
• 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.
• November 22 – Dutch pacification campaign on Formosa against Taiwanese aborigines begins.

Date unknown

• Guadeloupe and Martinique are colonized by France.
• Dominica is claimed by France.
• The Ottomans are expelled from Yemen.
• In the Mughal Empire, Shah Jahans Pearl Mosque at Lahore Fort is completed.
• 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

• Thirty Years' War: French intervention starts.
• 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.
• Emperor Fasilides founds the city of Gondar, which becomes the capital of Ethiopia for the next two centuries.
• In the American colonies, Roger Williams (theologian) founds Rhode Island.
• The first American ancestor of John Adams, Henry Adams, emigrates to Massachusetts.
• The first synagogue of the New World, Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, is founded in Recife by the Dutch.
• A "great charter" to the University of Oxford establishes the Oxford University Press as the second of the privileged presses in England.^[6]

1637

January–June

• January – Pierre Corneille's tragicomedy Le Cid is first performed, in Paris.
• February 3 – Tulip mania collapses in the Dutch Republic.
• February 15 – Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• February 18 – Eighty Years' War: Battle off Lizard Point: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
• April 10 – Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts.
• April 30 – King Charles I of England issues a proclamation attempting to stem emigration to the North American colonies.^[7]
• May 26 – Pequot War: A band of English settlers under Captain John Mason, and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies, set fire to a fortified village of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe near the Mystic River in what is later known as the Mystic massacre. Between 400 and 700 people, mostly women, children and old men, are killed.
• 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 attempted by captain John Weddell, who sails into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming Dynasty with six ships. The voyages are for trade, which is dominated here by the Portuguese (at this time combined with the power of Spain). He brings 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses, perhaps the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China.^[8]

July–December

• July 23 – After a court battle, King Charles I of England hands over title to the North American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the founders of Plymouth Council for New England.
• October 13 – English Royal Navy first-rate ship of the line HMS Sovereign of the Seas is launched at Woolwich Dockyard at a cost of £65,586, adorned from stern to bow with gilded carvings after a design by Anthony van Dyck.
• December 17 – The Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan when 30,000 peasants in the heavily Catholic area of northern Kyūshū revolt.

Date unknown

• 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.
• Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's Last Theorem.
• René Descartes promotes intellectual rigour in his Discourse on the Method and introduces the Cartesian coordinate system in its appendix La Géométrie (published in Leiden).^[9]
• France places a few missionaries in the Côte d'Ivoire, a country it will rule more than 200 years later.
• The first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice.
• Scottish army officer Robert Monro publishes Monro, His Expedition With the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys in London, the first military history in English.
• Elizabeth Poole becomes the first woman to have founded a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
• The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.

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 – Settlers from Sweden arrive on the ships Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip to establish the settlement of New Sweden in Delaware, beginning the Swedish colonization of the Americas.
• 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 21 – The Treaty of Hartford is signed, ending the Pequot War between British American colonists and the Pequot.
• September – John Spofford arrives in Boston Harbor on 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.
• c. January – The first printing press in British North America is started in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Stephen Daye.
• March 3 – The early settlement of Taunton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.
• March 13 – Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.
• April 14 – Swedish forces 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.
• May – The first of the Bishops' Wars breaks out between Charles I and Scotland. Charles arrives with his army at Berwick-on-Tweed.
• 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 British East India Company buys a strip of land from the King of the Vijayanagara Empire, Peda Venkata Raya, for the construction of Fort St. George, the first settlement of British India, so founding modern-day Chennai, capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu (celebrated as Madras Day).^[10]
• October 31 – Naval Battle of the Downs: A Republic of the United Provinces fleet decisively defeats a Spanish fleet in English waters.
• December 4 (November 24 O.S.) – Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus.

Date unknown

• 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.
• 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