1631 in England

• Monarch – Charles I • Lord Chancellor – Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry ==Events==

• 5 February – Puritan minister and theologian Roger Williams emigrates to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. • 20 February – A fire breaks out in Westminster Hall, but is put out before it can cause serious destruction. • 14 May – Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, and attainted for sodomy and for assisting in the rape of his wife following a leading case which admits the right of a spouse claiming to be injured to testify against her husband. • 28 May – William Claiborne sails from England to establish a trading post on Kent Island, the first English settlement in Maryland. • December – The Holland's Leguer, a notorious brothel in Southwark (London), is ordered closed and besieged for a month before this can be carried out. • Poor harvest for second year in a row causes widespread social unrest. • Worshipful Company of Clockmakers established in London. • Publication of the "Wicked Bible" by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, an edition of the King James Version of the Bible in which a typesetting erratum leaves the seventh of the Ten Commandments () with the word not omitted from the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery". Copies are withdrawn and about a year later the publishers are called to the Star Chamber, fined £300 and have their licence to print revoked. • William Oughtred publishes Clavis Mathematicae, introducing the multiplication sign (×) and proportion sign (::). • Thomas Hobbes is employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family, to teach the future Earl of Devonshire. ==Arts and literature==

• 9 January – The masque ''Love's Triumph Through Callipolis'', written by Ben Jonson with music by Nicholas Lanier and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace. • 11 January – The Master of the Revels refuses to license Philip Massinger's new play, Believe as You List, because of its seditious content; it is first performed in a revised version on 7 May. ==Births==

• 1 January – Katherine Philips, poet (died 1664) • 6 February – Edward Abney, politician (died 1727) • 20 February – Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, statesman (died 1712) • 15 April – Walter Vincent, English politician (died 1680) • 29 April – Joseph Bridger, Colonial Governor of Virginia (died 1686) • 4 May – William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton, politician (died 1680) • 29 May – Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth, politician (died 1683) • 4 July – John Roettiers, engraver (died 1703) • 15 July – Richard Cumberland, philosopher (died 1718) • 7 August – Nicholas Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet, (died 1679) • 19 August – John Dryden, writer (died 1700) • 24 August – Philip Henry, nonconformist minister (died 1696) • 6 September – Charles Porter, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (died 1696) • 29 September – Richard Edlin, astrologer (died 1677) • 12 October – George Saunderson, 5th Viscount Castleton, politician (died 1714) • 13 October – Richard Hampden, politician (died 1695) • 18 October – Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan minister, doctor and poet in New England (died 1705) • 4 November – Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange (died 1660) • 10 November – Daniel Harvey, merchant, diplomat and politician (died 1672) • 14 December – Lady Anne Finch Conway, philosopher (died 1679) • John Barret, Presbyterian minister and religious controversialist (died 1713) • Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, statesman, implicated in Rye House Plot (suicide 1683) • Joan Dant, Quaker merchant and philanthropist (died 1715) • Richard Lower, physician who performs the first direct blood transfusion (died 1691) • John Phillips, satirist (died 1706) • approx. date – William Ball, astronomer (died 1690) ==Deaths==

• 1 January – Thomas Hobson, carrier and origin of the phrase "Hobson's choice" (born 1544) • 7 February – Gabriel Harvey, writer (born c. 1552) • 31 March – John Donne, poet and Dean of St Paul's (born 1572) • 6 May – Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington, politician and antiquarian (born 1571) • 25 May – Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York and religious writer (born 1561) • 18 June – Sir Robert Payne, politician (born 1573) • 21 June – John Smith, soldier and colonist (born 1580) • 28 October – Sir Richard Beaumont, 1st Baronet, politician (born 1574) • 23 December – Michael Drayton, poet (born 1563) ==References==