British Literature By epic May 3, 653 Celtic church begins to spread Christianity amoung people living in Severn Valley May 3, 664 Synod of Whitby establishes Roman Church in England May 3, 731 Bede completes A History of the English Church and People May 3, 750 Surviving version of Beowulf composed May 5, 1040 Macbeth kills Duncan I May 5, 1042 Edward the Confessor becomes king of Saxons May 5, 1066 Normans defeat Saxons at Hastings May 5, 1073 Canterbury becomes England's religious center May 5, 1130 Oxford becomes a center for learning May 5, 1215 King John forced to sign Magna Carta May 5, 1233 First coal mined at Newcastle May 5, 1258 First commoners allowed in Parliament May 5, 1272 Edward I becomes king May 5, 1277 England conquers Wales May 5, 1295 Edward I assembles Model Parliament May 5, 1337 Beginning of Hundred Years' War with France May 5, 1348 Black Death begins sweeping through England May 5, 1375 Surviving version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written May 5, 1381 Bible first translated into English May 5, 1381 Peasants' Revolt May 5, 1386 Chaucer begins writing The Canterbury Tales May 5, 1455 The War of the Roses May 5, 1470 Thomas Malory writes Morte d' Arthur May 5, 1485 Henry VII becomes the first Tudor king. Period: May 5, 1485 to May 5, 1625 The English Renaissance May 5, 1500 Everyman first performed May 5, 1512 First masque performed May 5, 1516 Thomas More publishes Utopia May 5, 1534 Henry VIII issues Act of Supremacy May 5, 1534 Church of England established May 5, 1535 Thomas More executed May 5, 1541 John Knox leads Calvinist reformation in Scotland May 5, 1547 Henry VIII dies May 5, 1549 The Book of Common Prayer issued May 5, 1558 Elizabeth I becomes queen May 5, 1560 Thomas Tallis publishes English cathedral music May 5, 1563 More than 20,000 Londoners die in plague May 5, 1564 William Shakespeare born May 5, 1580 Francis Drake returns from circumnavigating the globe May 5, 1582 Sir Philip Sydney writes Astrophel and Stella May 5, 1588 English navy defeats Spanish Armada May 5, 1590 Edmund Spenser publishes The Faerie Queene, Part I May 5, 1594 Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet May 5, 1599 Globe theater opens May 5, 1600 East India Company founded May 5, 1603 Elizabeth I dies May 5, 1606 Guy Fawkes executed for Gunpowder Plot May 5, 1606 Royal debt amounts to more than 600,000 May 5, 1609 The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser is published in its entirety May 5, 1611 King James Bible published May 5, 1620 Francis Bacon publishes Novum Organum May 5, 1623 First patent laws passed May 5, 1625 James I dies Period: May 9, 1625 to May 9, 1800 Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries May 9, 1627 Sir Francis Bacon publishes The New Atlantis May 9, 1633 John Donne's Songs and Sonnets published May 9, 1638 John Milton publishes Lycidas May 9, 1646 John Suckling publishes Fragmenta Aurea May 9, 1648 Robert Herrick publishes Hesperides May 9, 1649 Richard Lovelace publishes Lucasta May 9, 1660 Samuel Pepys begins Diary May 9, 1667 John Milton's Paradise Lost published May 9, 1712 Alaxander Pope publishes The Rape of the Lock May 9, 1719 Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe Mar 2, 2022 Anglo-Saxon Invasion Mar 2, 2022 St. Augustine founds Christian monastery at Canterbury, Kent Mar 2, 2022 Vikings attack Lindisfarne Mar 2, 2022 Alfred the Great becomes King of Wessex Mar 2, 2022 Saxon monks copy Old English poems into The Exeter Book Mar 2, 2022 English defeated by Danes at Battle of Maldon Period: Mar 2, 2022 to May 3, 1470 Old English
