Elizabethan England

• Elizabeth becomes queen

  1558
• Cecil becomes secretary of state

  1558
• Mary Queen of Scots executed

  1587
• Elizabethan religious settlement

  1559
• Peter Wentworth imprisoned

  1576
• Deaths of Dudley, Walsingham and Cecil

  1588, 1590, 1598
• Oxfordshire Uprising (due to bad harvests)

  1596
• St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

  1572
• James VI becomes king

  1603
• Essex's Rebellion

  1601 (February)
• Population grows from 3 million to 4 million: 1530 - 1600
• Sumptuary Laws 


  1574
• Published plays required licence

  1572
• All theatres banned in city of London

  1596
• The Plague killed 17,000 Londoners

  1563
• Trade restrictions in the Netherlands

  1580s
• Poor Relief Act 


  1576
• Vagabonds Act

  1572
• Elizabethan Poor Law 


  1601
• Drake's circumnavigation

  1577-80
• Drake captures £40,000 of Spanish silver

  1572
• Royal charter signed for Raleigh to explore new lands: 1584
• Raleigh names Virginia

  1586
• Hawkins kidnaps 400 West Africans

  1562
• Drake and Hawkins travel to West Africa and enslave 1300: 1562 - 67
• Fitch went to be ambassador to China and talks about possible trade in the East: 1582
• East India Company founded 


  1600
• Gilbert reached Newfoundland 


  1583
• Mercator Map

  1569
• Reformation

  1532
• Jesuit missionaries emerge

  1580
• Fine for recusancy increased to £20

  1581
• Act against Jesuits and Seminary Priests (becoming a priest = treason): 1585
• Lambeth Articles (Calvinist ideas challenging religious settlement)

  1595
• Papal Bull

  1570
• Treason Act

  1571
• Act of Supremacy and Uniformity

  1559
• Puritan printing presses destroyed

  1572
• Whitgift

  1583 - 1604
• Thirty-Nine Articles

  1563