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The 1580s

785 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 16th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1580 CE80 entries

  • 14 March – Miler Magrath is deposed as Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor by Pope Gregory XIII for heresy, having for a decade simultaneously held bishoprics in the Protestant Church of Ireland.
  • July 12 – The Ostrog Bible, the first complete printed Bible translation into a Slavic language (Old Church Slavonic), is first printed at Ostroh in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (modern-day Ukraine) by Ivan Fyodorov.
  • 25 August – Battle of Glenmalure in the Second Desmond Rebellion: An Irish Catholic force made up of the Gaelic clans led by Fiach McHugh O'Byrne and James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass of the Pale, defeat the English Army under the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Grey, at the O'Byrne's mountain stronghold of Glenmalure. Francis Cosby is among the English dead.

1581 CE72 entries

  • May 15 – Zsigmond Báthory, the 8-year-old son of Kristóf Báthory, ruler of the Principality of Transylvania, is elected by the Diet of Transylvania as the new voivode at the request of Kristóf, who dies 12 days later.
  • August 28 – The army of King Stephen Báthory of Poland begins its siege of the Russian garrison of Pskov.
  • December 1 – In England, Jesuit priest Edmund Campion is executed for treason.

1582 CE74 entries

  • March – The New Testament of the Douai Bible, the translation into English by Father Gregory Martin from Latin of the New Testament, for use in the Roman Catholic Church, is published. Martin had started his work on October 16, 1578.
  • June 21 – (2nd day of the sixth month, Tenshō 10) The Honnō-ji Incident occurs in Kyoto in Japan, as Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga, on the verge of unifying Japan under his rule, is assassinated following a betrayal by a rebel subject, Akechi Mitsuhide.
  • December 9 (Julian) (December 19 Gregorian) – France discards the Julian Calendar at the end of the day and adopts the Gregorian Calendar at midnight. Sunday, December 9 is followed the next day in France by Monday, December 20.

1583 CE86 entries

  • May 22 – Ernest of Bavaria is elected as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cologne, in opposition to Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg. The opposition rapidly turns into armed struggle, the Cologne War within the Electorate of Cologne, beginning with the Destruction of the Oberstift.
  • September – fugitive Roman Catholic priest Maurice MacKenraghty is surprised on Sliabh Luachra by Lord Roche's gallowglasses, handed over to the Earl of Ormond and sent to prison at Clonmel.
  • December 17 – Cologne War: The Siege of Godesberg (begun on November 18) concludes when Catholic forces under Prince-elector-archbishop Ernest of Bavaria capture the strategic position, from defenders of the Calvinist convert Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg.

1584 CE68 entries

  • April 28 – (Tenshō 12, 18th day of the 3rd month) In Japan, the Battle of Komaki begins as fight between Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu when Ieyasu, commander of 100,000 men, begins the occupation of the Komakiyama Castle, prompting Hideyoshi to advance from Osaka with 30,000 troops.
  • May 17 – (Tenshō 12, 8th day of the 4th month) The conflict between Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu culminates in the Battle of Nagakute.
  • July 10 – Willem van Oranje, the leader of the Dutch Republic as Stadtholder of Holland, is assassinated in Delft. Balthasar Gérard, who bought two wheel-lock pistols and then made an appointment with at the Prinsenhof, shoots William in the chest at close range and fatally wounds him, making William the first head of state to be assassinated with a handgun.

1585 CE92 entries

  • April – Roman Catholic recusants in Clonmel are betrayed and seized at Passion Sunday mass by troops of John Norreys, Lord President of Munster, and the celebrant, fugitive priest Maurice MacKenraghty, gives himself up, is immediately tried under martial law as a traitor, and executed. His head is set up in Clonmel market place and his body buried behind the high altar of the Franciscan convent.
  • 14 December – Nicholas Walsh, Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, is stabbed to death in his house in Kilkenny by a disaffected member of his flock.
  • December 20 – Enraged by the disrespect shown to him by Yousuf Shah Chak, the Mughal Emperor, Akbar, orders the invasion of Kashmir with 5,000 men.

1586 CE80 entries

  • February 16 – In what is now Buner District, Pakistan, Kalu Khan leads his Yousafzai-Afghan Lashkar to defeat the Mughal Army at the Karakar Pass in the Afghan-Mughal War, annihilating them by the 10s of thousands and inflicting one of the greatest defeats in Mughal history to Emperor of India Akbar the Great known as Battle of the Malandari Pass.
  • March–July – Babington Plot, an attempt to assassinate Elizabeth I of England and replace her on the English throne by a rescued Mary, Queen of Scots, takes place. Anthony Babington and his co-conspirators are executed on 20 September.
  • July 6 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed between Queen Elizabeth I of England and King James VI of Scotland.

1587 CE81 entries

  • January 7 – Sir Walter Raleigh appoints John White to be the Governor of the Roanoke Colony, to be established later in the year by English colonists on Roanoke Island off the coast of the modern-day U.S. state of North Carolina. White and 121 other colonists depart from Portsmouth on three ships on May 8 and arrive at Croatoan Island on July 22.
  • July 22 – Roanoke Colony: A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off North Carolina, to re-establish the deserted colony.
  • August 27 – Governor John White leaves the Roanoke Colony to get more supplies from England.

1588 CE73 entries

  • May 28 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, begins to set sail from the Tagus estuary, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sedonia and Juan Martínez de Recalde, heading for the English Channel (it will take until May 30 for all of the ships to leave port).
  • August 8 (July 29 Old Style) – Battle of Gravelines: The Spanish Armada is defeated by the English naval force off the coast of Gravelines, in the Spanish Netherlands (modern France).
  • 12 August – the fleeing Spanish Armada sails past the Firth of Forth, and the English call off their pursuit. Much of the Spanish fleet is destroyed by storms as it sails for home around Scotland and Ireland. On 27 September, El Gran Grifón is wrecked on Fair Isle; and on 5 November the San Juan de Silicia is said to have been destroyed by explosion having sought shelter off Tobermory, Mull.

1589 CE79 entries

  • April 13 – An English Armada, led by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys, and largely financed by private investors, sets sail to attack the Iberian Peninsula's Atlantic coast, but fails to achieve any naval advantage.
  • 22 October – James VI sails from Leith in the James Royal to meet Anne of Denmark in Norway.
  • December 25 (Christmas Day) – The monks of the Pechenga Monastery, the northernmost in the world, are massacred by Swedes, led by a Finnish peasant chief, in the course of the Russo-Swedish War.