January–March •
January 4 –
Dziaddin Mukarram Shah becomes the new Sultan of
Kedah, an independent kingdom on the
Malay Peninsula, upon the death of his father,
Sultan Muhyiddin Mansur. •
January 10 – At the age of 19,
Louis Grimaldi becomes the new
Prince of Monaco upon the death of his grandfather,
Honoré II. •
January 14 – A Portuguese garrison invades Morocco and kidnaps 35 women and girls, then steals 400 head of cattle. The Moroccans counterattack and kill the garrison's commander, 12 knights and 38 other Portuguese soldiers before the surviving Portuguese are given sanctuary inside the
English fortress at Tangier. A brief war ensues between England and Morocco. •
January 22 – Former Chinese Emperor
Yongli, who had surrendered to General
Wu Sangui in December, is put on a boat along with his sons and grandsons at
Sagaing in
Burma (at the time, Burma), leaving under the promise that they will be given safe passage elsewhere in Burma. Instead, the former Emperor is taken back to China and executed on June 1. •
January 23 –
János Kemény,
Prince of Transylvania for slightly more than a year, is killed during Transylvania's defeat by the Ottoman Empire in a battle at Nagyszőllős, now the city of
Vynohradiv in Ukraine. An Ottoman appointee,
Michael Apafi, replaces Kemény in September and the status of the principality of Transylvania (now part of
Romania) is never regained. • c. January –
John Graunt, in one of the earliest uses of
statistics, publishes statistical information about births and deaths in London. •
February 1 – Chinese general
Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) captures the
Dutch East India Company's settlement at
Fort Zeelandia (now
Tainan) on the island of
Taiwan after a nine-month
siege, ending the company's rule on the island, then establishes the
Kingdom of Tungning. In response, the
Kangxi Emperor of the mainland
Qing dynasty relocates all residents along the southern coast, by 50 miles. •
February 11 – A violent storm in the
Indian Ocean strikes a fleet of seven ships of the
Dutch East India Company (VOC) as they are traveling back to the
Dutch Republic from
Batavia in the
Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). Three of the freighters—
Wapen van Holland,
Gekroonde Leeuw and
Prins Willem — are lost with all hands. The ships
Vogel Phoenix,
Maarsseveen and
Prinses Royal make their way back to the Netherlands. The other ship, the freighter
Arnhem remains afloat and its roughly 80 survivors are able to evacuate in boats to search for land. •
February 20 – The survivors of the wreck of the Dutch freighter
Arnhem strike reefs but are able to make their way to an uninhabited island, or Ilot Fourneau
April–June •
April 19 – Three of the former members of the English Parliament who had signed the death warrant for
Charles I of England in 1649 and then fled into exile in the Netherlands after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 —
Miles Corbet,
John Okey and
John Barkstead — are hanged after having been extradited, returned to England, and convicted of
regicide. Their bodies are then
drawn and quartered. •
April 22 – The
Paugussett tribe, granted reservations in the British colony of
Connecticut in North America, sell a large amount of tribal land to Captain
Joseph Hawley including several towns in
Fairfield County:
Shelton,
Trumbull,
Derby and
Monroe. •
April 24 – Chinese warlord
Zheng Chenggong sends a message to the Spanish government of the Philippines demanding payment of
tribute and threatening to send a fleet of ships to conquer the area. The message reaches the Spanish Governor-General on May 5, and preparations are made to resist the invasion. •
May 3 –
John Winthrop the Younger, the son of the first governor of Massachusetts, is honored by being made a fellow of the
Royal Society, England's new scientific society. Winthrop uses his election to the Society to gain access to the king, who grants him a new charter, uniting the colonies of
Connecticut and
New Haven. •
May 9 –
Samuel Pepys witnesses a
Punch and Judy show in London (the first on record). •
May 16 – The
hearth tax is introduced in England and Wales. •
May 19 • The
Act of Uniformity 1662, officially "An Act for the uniformity of common prayer and service in the Church, and administration of the sacraments", is given royal assent after being passed by the English Parliament to regulate the form of public prayers, sacraments, and other rites of the
Church of England to conform with the newest edition of the
Book of Common Prayer, the
1662 prayer book. • Royal assent is also given to England's new
hearth tax law, with one shilling charged for each stove or fireplace in a building, to be collected on 29 September and on 25 March each year in order to provide the £1,200,000 annual household income for King Charles II. The unpopular tax is abolished in 1689. •
May 21 – (May 31 N.S.); Princess
Catherine of Braganza, daughter of
King João IV of
Portugal, marries
Charles II of England. As part of the
dowry, Portugal cedes
Bombay in India, and
Tangier in Morocco, to England. •
May 24 – Rioting in the Chinese section of
Manila breaks out in the wake of calls to kill non-Christian Chinese residents of the Philippines, and the Spanish Army fires cannons at the rioting crowd. An order follows for non-Christian Chinese Filipinos to leave Manila, and for Christian Filipinos to register with the government. Boats begin transporting the non-Christians back to China •
May – The last credible report of a sighting of the
dodo bird, now extinct, is made by Volkert Evertsz, a survivor of the shipwreck of the Dutch ship
Arnhem, which struck reefs on February 12. The survivors had made their way in a small boat to Ile d'Ambre, an island in the Indian Ocean northeast of
Mauritius. When rescued by the English ship
Truroe in May, •
June 4 – The "
Sangley Massacre" is ordered by
Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, the Spanish
Governor-General of the Philippines, with the directive for the government to kill all Filipinos of Chinese ancestry —
Sangleys — who disobey orders to assemble at Manila for deportation. •
June 15 – The
Matthews baronets British nobility title is created. •
June 21 – The
Pierce baronets British nobility title is created. •
August 20 –
Ignatius Andrew Akijan is installed as the new Patriarch of the
Syriac Catholic Church for Christians within the Muslim-ruled
Ottoman Empire after his appointment is confirmed by the
Sultan Mehmed IV. •
August 24 – The
Act of Uniformity goes into effect on St Bartholomew's Day, making mandatory in the
Church of England the forms of worship prescribed in the new edition of the
Book of Common Prayer the deadline having been set for "every clergyman and every schoolmaster... to express, by August 24, his unfeigned consent to everything contained in the
Book of Common Prayer. This is followed by the resignation of over 2,000 clergy who resign "for conscience sake". Those who refuse to take the required oath of conformity to the
established church are subject to the
Great Ejection from their jobs. •
September 9 – The Parliament of Scotland passes the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, an amnesty (with numerous specific exceptions) for most political crimes committed by Scottish citizens during the years between January 1, 1637 (prior to the 1639 beginning of the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms and before the restoration of the monarchy on September 16, 1660. •
September 29 – The first payments under
England's hearth tax law, enacted on May 19, become due.
October–December •
October 19 – An English
Buccaneer force led by
Royal Navy commodore
Christopher Myngs launches an
attack on Santiago de Cuba. •
October 27 –
Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to France, for £400,000 (2.5 million
French livres). •
November 28 – The English
Royal Society holds its first meeting. •
December 4 – The
Purefoy baronets British nobility title is created. • November - December –
Helen Guthrie is the last person accused during the
Forfar witch trials to be executed.
Date unknown •
Robert Boyle publishes
Nova experimenta physico-mechanica in Oxford (2nd edition), setting forth the
law bearing his name. •
Joan Blaeu publishes
Atlas Maior, sive cosmographia Blaviana in Amsterdam (first complete edition, 11 volumes in Latin). •
Milton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town. • The
Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg is founded in Germany. • The last widely accepted sighting of a
dodo, now extinct. == Births ==