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Period: Jan 1, 1400 to
Renaissance
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Aug 22, 1485
Richard III is killed in battle
Richard's defeat at Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor ended the Plantagenet dynasty and the Wars of the Roses and heralded the Tudor dynasty. -
Aug 3, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos on August 3, 1492. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia but instead ended up in America -
Sep 26, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
Is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world. -
Jan 1, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. -
Jan 1, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry VIII proclaims himself head of Church of England
The title was created for King Henry VIII, who was responsible for the English church breaking away from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church after the Pope excommunicated Henry in 1533 over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Act of Supremacy restored the original act -
Nov 17, 1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
She was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called "The Virgin Queen", "Gloriana", or "Good Queen Bess", Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. -
Apr 26, 1564
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is born
He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616. -
Globe Theatre is built in London
It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. Macbeth tells of a man who is deceived by himself and his wife. -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony for 83 years (from 1616 until 1699). -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. -
King James Bible is published
James wanted something to replace the popular Geneva Bible. In 1607, James appointed nearly fifty scholars and divided them into six companies. For two years and nine months they worked individually and in conference, and then the whole text was gone over by a committee of twelve. While the scholars used the original Hebrew and Greek, they closely followed previous translations. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
One hundred and two individuals, most of whom were Puritans, received a grant of land on which to set up their own colony. They set sail from England on the Mayflower, arriving in Massachusettes in December. When they landed, the colonists called their new home "New Plymouth." The colonists all signed the "Mayflower Covenant" before landing, promising to establish "just and equal laws." -
Newspapers are first published in London
Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was published by the printer Nathaniel Butter in London. The earliest of the seven surviving copies. Corante was the first private newspaper published in English. As a result of a 1586 edict from the Star Chamber, it carried no news about England. -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, changed into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and the -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles II
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
