January–March •
January 21 •
Viscount Falkland, England's
Lord Deputy of Ireland, issues a proclamation ordering all Roman Catholic priests to leave Ireland, affecting negotiations over the "
Spanish match" (which resume in March). •
Voyage of the Pera and Arnhem to Australia: Captains
Jan Carstenszoon of the
Arnhem and Willem Joosten van Coolsteerdt of the
Pera depart on an expedition for the
Dutch East India Company from
Ambon, Maluku (Amboyna) to explore the Australian coast. •
January –
Battle of Mbanda Kasi: Forces from the
Kingdom of Kongo defeat the
Portuguese. •
February 7 – France,
Savoy and
Venice sign the
Treaty of Paris, agreeing to cooperate in removing Spanish forces from the strategic Alpine pass of
Valtelline. •
February 25 –
Thirty Years' War: Duke
Maximilian I of Bavaria becomes
Elector of the
Electorate of the Palatinate. •
March 5 – The first
American temperance law is enacted, in
Virginia. •
March 7 – Charles, Prince of Wales, the future King
Charles I of England, travelling incognito with royal favourite
George Villiers, arrives in
Madrid to pursue negotiations over the "
Spanish match", the Protestant Charles's proposed marriage with the Catholic Habsburg
Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. •
March 9 –
Amboyna massacre: Ten English merchants in the service of the
British East India Company, together with nine Japanese and one Portuguese, are executed by agents of the
Dutch East India Company in
Ambon, Maluku (Amboyna). •
March 14 – In the Korean
kingdom of Joseon,
Crown Prince Yi Ji is deposed and exiled to
Ganghwa Island, where he dies soon after. •
March 20 –
Richard Frethorne begins writing a letter to his parents from
Jamestown, Virginia.
April–June •
April 11 – King
Gwanghaegun of Joseon (in Korea) is deposed in the
Injo coup and succeeded by King
Injo. •
April 29 – A fleet of 11 Dutch ships depart for the coast of
Peru, seeking to seize Spanish treasure. •
May 5 – Raja
Gaj Singh of Marwar, along with Mahabat Khan and Parviz Mirza, is deputized by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in India to hunt down Jahangir's rebel son,
Shihab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram. The search fails, and Khurram will become the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan after Jahangir's death in 1627. •
May 8 – A Dutch East India Company party, led by explorer
Jan Carstenszoon, fights a skirmish with 200
indigenous Australian Wik peoples. •
May 22 – After negotiations for the release of English women taken from
Jamestown in the British North American colony of Virginia, conducted between Captain William Tucker of the English settlers and Chief
Opchanacanough of the
Powhatan Confederacy (Tsenacommacah), the English arrange a banquet with the Powhatan, and the drinking of wine. The wine is poisoned and many of the Powhatan Indians die, while 50 more are killed while ill. This follows the massacre of 347 English colonists of March 22, 1622, in the
Powhatan uprising. Opchanacanough escapes, and the 20 women never return home. •
June 14 – The first
breach-of-promise lawsuit: Rev. Gerville Pooley, in
Virginia, files against Cicely Jordan, but loses. •
June 29 – Première of
Pedro Calderón de la Barca's first play, '''' (Love, Honor and Power), at the
Court of
Habsburg Spain.
July–September •
July 8 –
Pope Gregory XV (Alessandro Ludovisi) dies from a kidney ailment after a reign of a little more than two years. •
July 10 – The English
ship Anne becomes the third vessel to bring settlers to
Plymouth Colony, the Puritan settlement in modern-day Massachusetts, carrying more settlers, after the
Mayflower on November 21, 1620, and the
Fortune on November 9, 1621. •
July 15 –
Trịnh Tùng is deposed as ruler of the kingdom of
Đại Việt in northern Vietnam after more than 50 years. His son, Trịnh Xuan, burns the palace. Trinh Tung is carried away by his servants in a sedan chair and abandoned in the road to die. Another son,
Trịnh Tráng, succeeds to the throne of Đại Việt. •
July 16 – A
great conjunction of
Jupiter and
Saturn, with the planets only 5 arc minutes apart, the closest between
1226 and 2874. This conjunction likely goes unobserved, as it occurs near the Sun and the telescope has been invented only recently. •
July 30 (probable date) – The second
Thanksgiving is celebrated in
Plymouth Colony. •
August 5 – The English
ship Little James arrives at Plymouth Colony, 26 days after the
Anne. •
August 6 •
1623 papal conclave:
Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) succeeds
Pope Gregory XV, as the 235th
pope. •
Thirty Years' War: Pursued by the army of the
Catholic League (Germany) led by
Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, the army of the Protestant
Electoral Palatinate led by
Christian the Younger of Brunswick attempts to flee to the
Dutch Republic. Tilly's army catches Brunswick five miles from the border. In the resulting
Battle of Stadtlohn, Christian's army is destroyed. This brings the
Palatinate campaign to an end. •
August 30 – Negotiations, resumed in March, of the planned "
Spanish match" break down. On October 5,
Prince Charles returns to England from Spain without a bride. •
September 10 –
Murat IV, age 11, succeeds his deposed uncle
Mustafa I as
Ottoman Emperor. Because Murat is a minor, his mother,
Kösem Sultan, serves as
regent until 1632.
October–December •
October 9 –
Kara Mustafa Pasha is replaced as the Ottoman Governor of Egypt on orders of Sultan Murad IV. •
October 20 – Cardinal
Antonio Marcello Barberini informs
Galileo Galilei that his brother, the newly-enthroned
Pope Urban VIII, wishes to receive a visit from Galileo. •
October 26 – "
Fatal Vespers": 95 people are killed when an upper floor of the French ambassador's house in London collapses under the weight of a congregation attending a mass. •
November 1 • The
Battle of Anjar is fought in modern-day
Lebanon as the Druze emir
Fakhr al-Din II defeats an invasion by Mustafa Pasha al-Hannaq, the
Ottoman Governor of Damascus, and takes him prisoner. • Fire at
Plymouth Colony destroys several buildings. •
November 8–
December 5 – Publication between these dates in London of the "
First Folio" (
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies), a collection of 36 of the plays of
Shakespeare, half of which have not previously been printed. •
December 4 – 50 Christians are executed in
Edo, Japan, during the
Great Martyrdom of Edo.
Date unknown • In
British America: • On the coast of Massachusetts Bay, the settlement that will become the City of
Gloucester, Massachusetts, is first inhabited by men from
Dorchester, Dorset, England. • On the coast of
New Hampshire, the settlement of Hilton's Point, which will become
Dover, New Hampshire, is established by men from
London, England, the first European settlers in the state. • The
1623 Malta plague outbreak is contained after killing around 40 people on the island of
Malta. •
Erotomania, a
delusional disorder, is first mentioned, in a psychiatric treatise. •
Johannes Rudbeck founds
Rudbeckianska gymnasiet, the first
gymnasium in
Sweden. •
Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, issues an order, dated at Kolozsvár/Klausenburg/
Cluj, that allows Jews to settle, trade freely and practice religion in Transylvania, and exempts them from wearing the usual Jewish sign. •
Procopius' long-lost
Secret History is rediscovered, in the
Vatican Library. • Italian poet
Giambattista Marini's epic ''L'Adone'' is published in Paris. • Imprisoned Italian Dominican philosopher
Tommaso Campanella's utopian
The City of the Sun is published in Latin (as
Civitas Solis) in
Frankfurt. •
Wilhelm Schickard devizes a
Calculating Clock, an early
mechanical calculator. •
Zildjian begins the commercial manufacture of
cymbals in
Turkey. The company will still be operating, from
Massachusetts, in the 21st century. == Births ==