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Colony at Roanoke Island
The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh and carried out by Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin -
England defeats the Spanish Armada
- The Spanish Armada (Spanish: Grande y Felicísima Armada or Armada Invencible, literally "Great and Most Fortunate Navy" or "Invincible Fleet") was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England and putting an end to her involvement in the Spanish Netherlands and in privateering in the Atlantic and Pacific.
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Settlement at Jamestown
Jamestown Settlement is a name used by the Commonwealth of Virginia's portion of the historical sites and museums at Jamestown. Jamestown was the first successful English settlement on the mainland of North America.[1] Named for King James I of England, Jamestown was founded in the Colony of Virginia on May 14, 1607. -
First Anglo-Powhatan War
- On August 9, 1610, tired of waiting for a response from Powhatan, De la Warr sent George Percy with 70 men to attack the Paspahegh capital, burning the houses and cutting down their cornfields. They killed 65 to 75, and captured one of Wowinchopunk's wives and her children. Returning downstream, the English threw the children overboard, and shot out "their Braynes in the water". The queen was put to the sword in Jamestown. The Paspahegh never recovered from this attack, and abandoned their tow
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Establishment of New Netherlands
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod. The settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The provincials capital was New Amsterdam. -
Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the Separatists, also known as the "Saints", fleeing religious persecution from James VI and I. They traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620 along with adventurers, tradesmen, and servants, most of whom were referred to as "Strangers". -
Second Anglo-Powhatan War-
Opechancanough maintained a friendly face to the colony, and finally even met with an English minister to give the appearance of his imminent conversion to Christianity. Then on Friday, 1622, his subjects, planted among the settlements, struck without warning, in what is now known as the Indian Massacre of 1622. A third of the colony were wiped out that day; were it not for last minute warnings by Christianized natives, a higher toll would have been certain. -
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Massachusetts Bay Company
The colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had in 1624 established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann. The second attempt, begun in 1628, was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. -
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Pequot War
The Pequot War was an armed conflict spanning the years 1634–1638 between the Pequot tribe against an alliance of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies who were aided by their Native American allies (the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes). Hundreds were killed; hundreds more were captured and sold into slavery to the West Indies. Other survivors were dispersed. At the end of the war, about seven hundred Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity. -
Banishment of Roger Williams
in 1635, Puritan minister Roger Williams was found guilty of spreading "newe & dangerous opinions" and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Before leaving England in 1630, Williams had seen heretics whipped, imprisoned, and burned at the stake. He called for religious freedom, a serious threat to the social order, and avoided arrest only by fleeing to Boston. -
Establishment of Rhode Island
In 1636, Roger Williams, after being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious views, settled at the tip of Narragansett Bay, on land granted to him by the Narragansett tribe. He called the site "Providence" and declared it a place of religious freedom. Detractors of the idea of liberty of conscience sometimes referred to it as "Rogue's Island". -
Banishment of Anne Hutchinson
in 1638, Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Three years after arriving in Boston, she found herself the first female defendant in a Massachusetts court. When she held prayer meetings attended by both men and women, the authorities were alarmed; but what really disturbed them was her criticism of the colony's ministers and her assertion that a person could know God's will directly. Put on trial for heresy, she defended herself brilliantly. -
Fundamental Orders
In the spring of 1638 three Connecticut towns, Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, chose representatives and held a general court at Hartford. At its opening session the Reverend Thomas Hooker preached a powerful sermon on the text that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people." -
The Maryland Toleration Act
The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. Passed on April 21, 1649 by the assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the second law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies and created the first legal limitations on hate speech in the world. (The colony which became Rhode Island passed a series of laws, the first in 1636, which prohibited religious persecution including agai -
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Navigation Acts
The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws that restricted the use of foreign shipping for trade between England (after 1707 Great Britain) and its colonies, a process which had started in 1651. Their goal was to force colonial development into lines favourable to England, and stop direct colonial trade with the Netherlands, France and other European countries. The original ordinance of 1651 was renewed at the Restoration by Acts of 1660 and 1663. -
Barbados Slave Code
The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 was a law passed by the colonial legislature to provide a legal base for slavery in the Caribbean island of Barbados. The code's preamble, which stated that the law's purpose was to "protect them [slaves] as we do men's other goods and Chattels," established that black slaves would be treated as chattel property in the island's court. The Barbados slave code ostensibly sought to protect slaves from cruel masters and masters from unruly slaves. -
Establishment of the Carolinas
"Carolina was so called by the French, in 1563 or 1564, in honor of Charles IX, King of France (Carolus in Latin, meaning Charles), under whose patronage its coast was discovered.
The territory thus named afterwards included the lands between the 30th and 36th degrees of north latitude, and extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. In 1663, this defined territory was conveyed, by Charles II, King of England, who claimed it by virtue of Cabot's discovery. -
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King Philip's War
King Philip's War, sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion,[1] was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–78. The war is named after the main leader of the Native American side, Metacomet, known to the English as "King Philip".[ -
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Penn's "Holy Experiment"
William Penn, a son of the great Royal Navy admiral William Penn, was a landlord of valuable Irish estates and later went on to inherit a debt owed by King Charles II of England from his deceased father. Penn was a well-educated man, and before that became an evangelist for Quakerism. King Charles II paid off the debt to Penn with a large land grant between the colonies of New York and Maryland. -
New Netherlands becomes New York
In addition to founding the largest metropolis on the North American continent, New Netherland has left a profoundly enduring legacy on both American cultural and political life, "a secular broadmindedness and mercantile pragmatism",[9] greatly influenced by social and political climate in the Dutch Republic at the time as well as by the character of those who immigrated to it.[48] It was during the early British colonial period that the New Netherlanders actually developed the land and society. -
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Dominion of New England
The Dominion of New England in America (1686–89) was an administrative union of English colonies in the New England region of North America. The dominion was ultimately a failure because the area it encompassed (from the Delaware River in the south to Penobscot Bay in the north), composed of present-day Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, was too large for a single governor to manage -
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Great Awakening
The term Great Awakening is used to refer to several periods of religious revival in American religious history. Historians and theologians identify three or four waves of increased religious enthusiasm occurring between the early 18th century and the late 19th century. Each of these "Great Awakenings" was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affec -
Establishment of Georgia
The history of the American state of Georgia spans pre-Columbian time to the present day. The history of the state is formed by its original Native American inhabitants, European exploration and settlement, specifically British colonization, the American Revolution, the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Georgia was formed in 1732 as a trustee colony and was named for George II, but became a royal colony in 1752. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Uprising in 1676 in the Virginia colony led by 29 year old Nathaniel Bacon. Uprising caused by Virginia Governor William Berkeley's friendly policies towards Native Americans.
