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The 1680s

601 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 CE60 entries

  • February 16 – Rev. Ralph Davenant's will provides for foundation of the Davenant Foundation School for poor boys in Whitechapel, in the East End of London.
  • August 21 – In the Pueblo Revolt, the native Pueblo people capture Santa Fe (now in New Mexico) from the Spanish colonists.
  • October 29 – At the request of King Charles XI of Sweden, the Riksdag in Sweden enacts the Great Reduction, returning fiefs which had been granted to the Swedish nobility to the Crown. The nation becomes an absolute monarchy under the rule of Charles.

1681 CE47 entries

  • March 4 – In order to settle a debt of £16,000, King Charles II of England grants a land charter to William Penn, for territory west of Delaware River in America between 40° N and 42° N, later to be called Pennsylvania.
  • 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.
  • 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 CE52 entries

  • March 11 – Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London, England.
  • July 19 – Iyasus succeeds his father Yohannes I as Emperor of Ethiopia.
  • 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 CE60 entries

  • July 8 – Admiral Shi Lang of Qing dynasty China leads 300 ships with 20,000 troops out of Tongshan, Fujian, and sails towards the Kingdom of Tungning, in modern-day Taiwan and Penghu, in order to quell the kingdom in the name of the Qing.
  • October 3 – Shi Lang reaches Taiwan and occupies modern-day Kaohsiung.
  • October 9 (possible date) – Louis XIV of France makes a morganatic marriage with Madame de Maintenon in a secret ceremony following the death on July 30 of his queen consort, Maria Theresa of Spain.

1684 CE56 entries

  • June 7 – After a siege of six weeks that began on April 27, Luxembourg City is taken by the French Army from control by Spain, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, previously part of the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) is acquired by France.
  • 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 CE57 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.
  • September 14 – Morean War: The Republic of Venice defeats an Ottoman army at Kalamata.

1686 CE63 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.
  • June 20 – French Canadian soldiers on the Hudson Bay expedition capture the first of the British Hudson's Bay Company outposts, with the surrender the unarmed inhabitants of the fortress at Moose Factory, Ontario.

1687 CE50 entries

  • February 11 – In India, troops under the command of Job Charnock of the East India Company, preparing to go to war against the Nawab of Bengal, Shaista Khan of the Mughal empire, destroy his fortresses located at Thana.
  • 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.
  • August 12 – Great Turkish War: Battle of Mohács – The Habsburg imperial army, and allies under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, defeat the Ottoman Turks, and enable Austria to conquer most of Ottoman-occupied Hungary.

1688 CE73 entries

  • September 27 – The Nine Years' War begins in Europe and America after Louis XIV attacks Philippsburg in the Holy Roman Empire.
  • November 11 (November 1 OS) – Glorious Revolution: William III of Orange sets sail a second time from Hellevoetsluis, the Netherlands, to take over England, Scotland and Ireland from King James II of England.
  • 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 CE83 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.
  • April 11 (O.S.) – William III and Mary II are crowned in London as King and Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ireland does not recognise them yet, while the Estates of Scotland declare King James VII deposed.
  • 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.