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1485
Richard III is killed in battle
Richard III is was outnumbered by Henry Tudor and killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field -
1492
Christopher Columbus reached the Americas
Having landed, they saw trees very green, and much water, and fruits of diverse kinds. -
1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
More's book imagines a complex, self-contained community set on an island, in which people share a common culture and way of life. He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. It was a pun - the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means 'a good place' -
1543
Henry VIII proclaims himself head of church of England
The title was created for King Henry VIII, who was responsible for the English Christian (protestant) 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. -
1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last monarch of the House of Tudor. -
1564
William Shakespeare, The Bard of Avon, is born
In this compact, informative biography, Stanley and Vennema return to the 16th-century England they portrayed so deftly in Good Queen Bess: The Story of Elizabeth of England . These seasoned raconteurs have sorted out historical facts, speculation and conjecture to neatly piece together the puzzle of Shakespeare's life -
Globe Theatre is built in london
The Globe was built in 1599 using timber from an earlier theatre, The Theatre, which had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576. The Burbages originally had a 21-year lease of the site on which the theatre was built but owned the building outright. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
Macbeth is thought to have been first performed in 1606. ... Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. -
First permanant English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. William Kelso writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began". -
Shakespeares sonnets are published
Shakespeare's sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman. -
King James Bible is published
The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
Leaving aside the fact that the Pilgrims first made landfall on the tip of Cape Cod in November 1620 before sailing to safer harbors in Plymouth the following month, William Bradford and his fellow Mayflower passengers made no written references to setting foot on a rock as they disembarked to start their settlement -
Newspapers are first published in London
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John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; Monarchy is restored with Charles II
On the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, his son, Richard Cromwell, inherited the title Lord Protector, but internal divisions among the republican party led to his resignation, the end of the Protectorate and a second period of Commonwealth government by a Council of State and Parliament.
