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The 1680s

959 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 17th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1680 CE100 entries

  • 29 April – construction of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin as a home for retired soldiers begins to the design of Sir William Robinson.
  • 23 July–24 July – trial of Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, at Dundalk for conspiracy in the supposed "Popish Plot" ends without indictment and on 24 October he is transferred to London.
  • August 21 – In the Pueblo Revolt, the native Pueblo people capture Santa Fe (now in New Mexico) from the Spanish colonists.

1681 CE88 entries

  • July 1 – Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, falsely convicted in June of treason, is hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, London, the last Catholic martyr to die in England; he is canonised in 1975.
  • 1 July – Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, falsely convicted of treason, is hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, London, the last Catholic martyr to die in England. Catholic intriguer Edward Fitzharris is executed on the same day.
  • December 7 – Wu Shifan, grandson of Chinese general Wu Sangui, commits suicide at Kunming in Yunnan province, ending the 8-year Revolt of the Three Feudatories against the Kangxi Emperor and the Qing dynasty in China.

1682 CE84 entries

  • March 11 – Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London, England.
  • 11 March – work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London.
  • August 23 – A comet that will later become known as Comet Halley, is observed from several locations on Earth after reaching magnitude 2 and becoming visible to the naked eye. Arthur Storer sees it from the North American colony of Maryland, while German astronomer Johannes Hevelius measures it from Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland). Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758.

1683 CE85 entries

  • September 12 – Battle of Vienna: The Ottoman siege of the city is broken with the arrival of a force of 70,000 Poles, Austrians and Germans under Polish–Lithuanian king Jan III Sobieski, whose cavalry turns their flank. The victory marks a turning point in the Ottoman Empire's fortunes and the end of the Turkish attempt to expand its control into Western Europe.
  • November 1 – The English crown colony of the Province of New York is subdivided into 12 counties: Albany, Dutchess, Orange, Ulster, and Westchester (upstate); Kings, New York County, Queens, Richmond (within New York City); Suffolk (eastern Long Island), and two areas not in New York state, Dukes County (now in Massachusetts) and Cornwall County (now 11 counties in Maine).
  • December 14 – Dominic Maguire, O.P., is elected as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

1684 CE87 entries

  • June 27 – Francisco de Távora, the Viceroy of Portuguese India, a small colony located in southwestern India at Goa, issues an order prohibiting indigenous residents from speaking their native language, Konkani, and directs them to learn Portuguese within the next three years.
  • July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails again from France, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
  • September 21 – Morean War: The Republic of Venice captures the fortress town of Preveza from the Ottoman Empire.

1685 CE98 entries

  • January 6 – American-born British citizen Elihu Yale, for whom Yale University in the U.S. is named, completes his term as the first leader of the Madras Presidency in India, administering the colony on behalf of the East India Company, and is succeeded by William Gyfford.
  • February–March – Morean War (part of the Great Turkish War): The Ottoman serasker Halil Pasha invades the Mani Peninsula, and forces it to surrender hostages.
  • 11 June – Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland, lands at Lyme Regis with an invasion force brought from the Dutch Republic to challenge his uncle, James II, for the Crown of England.

1686 CE99 entries

  • January 29 – In Guatemala, Spanish Army Captain Melchor Rodríguez Mazariegos leads a campaign to conquer the indigenous Maya people in the rain forests of Lacandona, departing from Huehuetenango to rendezvous with the colonial governor at San Mateo Ixtatán.
  • May 4 – The Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines.
  • July 17 – King James II of England appoints four Roman Catholics to the Privy Council of England, in defiance of the Test Acts, which bar Catholics from public office. Suspicions about James's intentions lead to a group of conspirators meeting at Charborough House in Dorset, to plan his overthrow and replacement with the Protestant Dutch Stadtholder, William III of Orange-Nassau (James's son-in-law).

1687 CE84 entries

  • January 8 – the Roman Catholic Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
  • July 11 – Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known as the Principia, is published by the Royal Society of London. In it, Newton describes his law of universal gravitation, explains the laws of mechanics, and gives a formula for the speed of sound. The writing of Principia Mathematica ushers in a tidal wave of changes in thought, significantly accelerating the Scientific Revolution by providing new and practical intellectual tools, and becomes the foundation of modern physics.
  • July 24 – Morean War: Battle of Patras – The Republic of Venice defeats the Ottomans, which flee in panic, allowing the Venetians to capture the fortresses of Patras, Rio, Antirrio, and Lepanto unopposed.

1688 CE109 entries

  • September 24 – Louis XIV publishes his manifesto Memoire de raisons, which lists his grievances and demands. He cites three major things as grievances: Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, who had been earlier elected to be the coadjutor-archbishop of Cologne with support of Louis being vetoed by the pope, the continued aggressions and forming of alliances against France and providing an alternative to Fürstenberg in the Cologne election by the Holy Roman Empire, and Philip William becoming Elector Palatine and seizing the territory, which he believed belonged to Elizabeth Charlotte.
  • September 27 – The Nine Years' War begins in Europe and America after Louis XIV attacks Philippsburg in the Holy Roman Empire.
  • November 23 – A group of 1,500 Old Believers immolate themselves to avoid capture, when troops of the tsar lay siege to their monastery on Lake Onega.

1689 CE125 entries

  • January 22 (January 12, 1688 O.S.) – Glorious Revolution in England: The Convention Parliament is convened to determine if King James II of England, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, vacated the throne when he fled to France, at the end of 1688. The settlement of this is agreed on 8 February.
  • 12 March – start of the Williamite War in Ireland: James II lands at Kinsale with 6,000 French soldiers, is met by Major-General McCarthy and marches for Dublin. He is joined by the Earl of Tyrconnel with Irish Catholic troops at Cork on 14 March.
  • May 24 – The Act of Toleration, drawn up by the Convention Parliament of England to protect Protestants but with Roman Catholics intentionally excluded, is passed; this effectively concludes the Glorious Revolution.