World Timelines - South-east England - AD 1500-1750 Early modern

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Map of South-east England - AD 1500-1750 Early modern


Sir Thomas More (AD 1478-1535)	The Spanish Armada	Elizabethan adventurers	Timekeeping and navigation
The French Connection	Witchcraft

Events

AD 1501

First printing press set up in Fleet Street

AD 1509

Death of Henry VII; Henry VIII becomes king of England

AD 1515

Thomas Wolsey begins re-modelling Hampton Court

AD 1525

Henry VIII takes Hampton Court for himself

AD 1529

Sir Thomas More succeeds Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor

AD 1532

Henry VIII forces Sir Thomas More to resign

AD 1534

Sir Thomas More refuses to swear an oath on the new royal succession and is imprisoned

AD 1535

Treason Act passed: makes it treasonable not to recognise the King as sole Head of the Church of England

AD 1535

Sir Thomas More executed

AD 1545

Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of Isle of Wight, successfully commands resistance to the last of French attacks

AD 1547

Death of Henry VIII; Edward VI becomes king of England

AD 1553

Death of Edward VI; Lady Jane Grey becomes queen of England for 9 days

AD 1553

Mary I becomes queen of England

AD 1558

Death of Mary I; Elizabeth I becomes queen of England

AD 1571

Stock exchange established in London

AD 1577

The Theatre built at Shoreditch; first London theatre

AD 1580

Sir Francis Drake returns from circumnavigating the world

AD 1588

Spanish Armada repulsed by the English at Straights of Dover

AD 1599

Globe Theatre built in Southwark

AD 1603

Outbreak of plague in London

AD 1603

Death of Elizabeth I; James I becomes king of England and Scotland

AD 1605

Gunpowder Plot attempt to blow up the House of Lords and kill the King fails

AD 1606

Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot are executed at Whitehall

AD 1625

Death of James I; Charles I becomes king of Great Britain and Ireland

AD 1642

Civil War in England begins between Royalists and Parliamentarians

AD 1644

Countryside in parts of south-east ravaged by marching armies of Civil War

AD 1649

Charles I executed at Whitehall; the office of king abolished

AD 1649

Charles I flees to Isle of Wight but is captured and imprisoned at Carisbrook Castle

AD 1650

Protestant Huguenot silk weavers from France settle in Spitalfields, founding British silk industry

AD 1655

Rapid spread of hop cultivation: third of all hops are grown in Kent

AD 1660

Londoner Samuel Pepys begins writing his famous diary

AD 1660

Charles II becomes king of Great Britain and Ireland

AD 1660

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens open in Kennington

AD 1665

Bubonic plague kills 70,000 people in London

AD 1666

Great Fire of London destroys around 70,000 buildings in a few days

AD 1668

Christopher Wren is given the task of building a new cathedral at St Paul's

AD 1675

Royal Greenwich Observatory established by Charles II

AD 1677

The Monument to the Great Fire of London is completed

AD 1685

Death of Charles II; James II becomes king of Great Britain and Ireland

AD 1688

James II flees England, abandoning the throne

AD 1688

Battle of Reading: only substantial military action in England during the Glorious Revolution

AD 1689

Mary II and William III (of Orange) become king and queen

AD 1690

Population of London reaches 500,000

AD 1694

Bank of England founded

AD 1697

William Hogarth, painter and engraver, born in Bartholomew Close, London

AD 1702

Death of William III; Anne I becomes queen of Great Britain and Ireland

AD 1705

Buckingham House completed for the Duke of Buckingham

AD 1708

Rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral by Sir Christopher Wren completed

AD 1714

Death of Anne; George I becomes king of Great Britain and Ireland

AD 1727

Death of George I; George II becomes king of Great Britain and Ireland

South-east England

AD 1500-1750 Early modern

Under the Tudors and Stuarts, south-east England was the region most open to new ideas and opportunities. Even the Civil Wars did not stop London’s growth as a centre of government, law, trade and commerce. In AD 1690, after the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of 1666, its population was half a million. The founding of the Bank of England in 1694 emphasised the financial importance of the capital. As well as merchants from mainland Europe, the city was open to refugees from Catholic persecution abroad. In the 1650s, Protestant Huguenot silk weavers from France settled in Spitalfields and founded a local silk industry.

London was also a theatre for great national events. Elizabeth I’s coronation was attended by elaborate pageants, portraying her as a Protestant saviour. Charles I’s dignified behaviour at his execution in Whitehall gave him a posthumous propaganda coup in a city known for its Parliamentary loyalties.

In the countryside, regional industries such as market gardening, shipbuilding, and hop-growing flourished. The nobility and the new class of ‘gentry’ (gentlemen below the rank of peers who did not need to work for a living) built large and splendid houses around London, and grew rich by enclosing their lands for grazing.

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