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May 3, 653
Celtic church begins to spread Christianity among people in the Severn Valley.
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May 3, 731
Bede completes A History of the English Church and People.
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May 3, 750
Surviving version of Beowulf composed.
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May 3, 1040
Macbeth kill Duncan l.
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May 3, 1042
Edward the Confessor becomes king of Saxons.
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May 3, 1066
Normans defeat Saxons at Hastings: William the Conqueror becomes king of England.
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May 3, 1073
Canterbury becomes England's religious center.
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May 3, 1130
Oxford becomes a center for learning.
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May 3, 1170
Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered.
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May 3, 1215
King John forced to sign Magna Carta.
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May 3, 1233
First coal mined at Newcastle.
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May 3, 1258
First commoners allowed in Parliament.
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May 3, 1272
Edward l becomes king.
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May 3, 1277
England conquers Wale.
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May 3, 1295
Edward l assembles Model Parliament.
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May 3, 1337
Beginning of the Hundred Years' War with France.
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May 3, 1375
Surviving version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written.
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May 3, 1381
Peasants' Revolt.
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May 3, 1386
Chaucer begins writing The Canterbury Tales.
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May 3, 1470
Thomas Malory writes Morte d'Arthur.
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May 3, 1485
Henry Vll Becomes first Tudor king
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May 3, 1485
The English renaissance Period Begins
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May 3, 1485
1485-1625 The English Renaissance Period begins
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May 3, 1485
Henry Vll becomes the first Tudor King.
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May 3, 1500
The play Everyman was first performed
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May 3, 1516
Thomas More publishes Utopia
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May 3, 1534
Henry Vlll issues Act of Supermacy
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May 3, 1535
Thomas More executed
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May 3, 1547
Henry Vlll dies
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May 3, 1558
Elizabeth l becomes queen.
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May 3, 1560
Thomas Tallis publishes English cathedral music.
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May 3, 1563
More than 20,000 Londoners die in plague.
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May 3, 1564
William Shakespeare born.
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May 3, 1580
Francis Drake returns from circumnavigating the globe.
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May 3, 1582
Sir Phillip Sidney write Astrophel and Stella.
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English navy defeats Spanish Armada.
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Edmund Spenser publishes The Faerie Queene, Part 1.
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Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet.
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Globe theater opens.
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East India Company founded.
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Elizabeth l dies: James l becomes king.
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The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser is published in its entirety.
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King James Bible published.
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Francis Bacon publishes Novum Organum.
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First patent laws passed.
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James l dies.
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The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries begin.
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Sir Francis Bacon publishes The New Atlantis.
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William Henry explains blood circulation.
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John Donne's Songs and Sonnets published.
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Public mail service established.
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Johm Milton publishes Lycidas.
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Charles l summons Long Parliament.
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English Civil War begins.
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John Suckling publishes Fragmenta Aurea.
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George Fox founds Society of Friends (Quakers).
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Richard Lovelace publishes Lucasta.
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Full-bottomed wigs come into fashion.
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Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector.
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James ll becomes king.
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Sir Isaac Newton publishes his Principia.
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Glorious Revolution.
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Bill of Rights become law.
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Alexander Pope publishes The Rape of the Lock.
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George l becomes king.
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Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe.
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Jonathan Swift publishes Gulliver's Travels.
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William Hogarth paints The Rake's Progress.
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Henry Fielding publishes Tom Jones.
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Thomas Gay publishes "Elegy in a Country Churchyard."
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Britian enters Seven Years' War.
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James Boswell publishes The Life of Samuel Johnson.
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England goes to war with France.
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The Romantic period begins.
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William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads.
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Union Jack becomes official flag.
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Battle of Trafalgar.
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Thomas Moore writes Irish Melodies.
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Bryon publishes Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
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Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley publishes Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.
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Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.
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Horse-drawn buses begin operating in London.
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Robert Peel establishes Metropolitan Police in London.
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Liverpool-Manchester railway opens.
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The Victorian period Begins
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First Reform Act extends voting rights.
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Slaverly abolishes in British empire.
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Victoria becomes queen.
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William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate.
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Women begin attending University of London.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Sonnets from the Portuguese.
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Britian enters Crimean War.
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London Fire Department established.
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Robert Browning publishes The Ring and the Book.
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Debtors' prisons abolished.
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First Sherlock Holmes tale published.
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Thomas Hardy publishes tess of the d'Urbervilles.
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A. E. Housman publishes A Shropshire Lad.
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The modern and Postmodern Period begins.
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Queen Victoria dies.
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Edward Vll becomes king.
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Joseph Conrad publishes Heart of Darkness.
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Britian enters World War l.
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Irish Free State formed.
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James Joyce publishes Ulysses.
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Britian enters World War ll.
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Winston Churchill becomes prime minister.
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George Orwell publishes Animal Farm.
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Elizabeth ll becomes queen.
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Doris Lessing publishes The Golden Notebook.
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Miniskirt becomes fashionable.
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Britian imposes direct rule on Northern Ireland.
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North Sea oil production begins.
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V. S. Naipaul publishes A Bend in the River.
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Nadline Gordimer wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Tony Blair elected Prime Minister.
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Celebration of New Year's Eve in Millennium Dome.
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Rock Star Sting is made Commander of the British Empire for services to the music industry.
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Anglo Saxon invasion
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St. Augustine founds Christian monastery at Canterbury Kent.
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449-1485 The Old English Period begins
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Vikings attack Lindisfarne
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Alfred the Great becomes King of Wessex.
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Saxon monks copy Old English poems into The Exeter Book.
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English defeated by Danes at Battle of Maldon.
