Crime & Justice in the 16th century

126 sourced entries, 1500 CE to 1598 CE, oldest first. Also see Crime & Justice across every century or everything else in the 16th century.

• 1500September 23 – Bobadilla hears testimony from 22 witnesses and concludes that the Columbus brothers intended to overthrow him; he has them placed in manacles and chains for deportation to Spain. ("La pesquisa de Bobadilla contra Colon habia comenzado el 23-IX-1500."— "Bobadilla's investigation against Colon had begun on 23 September 1500.")source
• 1500Saxony's mint at Annaberg begins producing guldengroschens, also known as guldiners.source
• 1501Dhaulpur is taken by Sikandar Lodi.source
• 1502April 11 – Dmitry Ivanovich Vnuk, who had been the teenage co-ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow since 1498 with his grandfather Ivan III, is arrested along with his mother, Elena of Moldavia on suspicion of conspiracy. Ivan designates his son (and Dmitry's uncle) Vasili Ivanovich as the new heir to the throne of Moscow.source
• 1502December 26 – Cesare Borgia kills Ramiro d'Orco; this incident is referenced in Machiavelli's The Princesource
• 1503Hieronymus Bosch works on the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, although other sources suggest a 1490-1510 date range for when he worked on it.source
• 1503From this year until 1660, sixteen million kilograms of silver and 185,000 kilograms of gold will enter the port of Seville.source
• 1503Mariotto Albertinelli paints The Visitation.source
• 1504Sheikh Ahmed, the final leader of the Great Horde, is last heard of as a Lithuanian prisoner at Vilnius until 1527 when he was released, after which he came to rule over the Astrakhan Khanate.source
• 1507Raphael paints The Deposition, among other works.source
• 1507Cardinal Cisneros is appointed inquisitor general of Castile.source
• 1510September 3 – Sir Thomas More becomes undersheriff of the City of London.source
• 1513Niccolò Machiavelli is suspected of trying to overthrow the House of Medici and is arrested and tortured. He is soon after released and moves to his farm in San Casciano, and writes The Prince.source
• 1515March 31 – Multiple acts of the English parliament are given royal assent by King Henry VIII, including the Deepening River at Canterbury Act 1514, the Thames Watermen Act 1514, and the Felons and Murderers Act 1514.source
• 1516May 8 – In what is now Vietnam, Le Tuong Duc, Emperor of Dai Viet, since 1509, is murdered at his palace at Thang Long (now in Hanoi) by his bodyguards. Le Tuong Duc's 12-year-old nephew, Le Chieu Tong, is installed as the new Emperor by the conspirators.source
• 1517September 13 – Yunus Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman Governor of Egypt after leading the Egyptian conquest, is fired by the Ottoman Sultan Selim I and then executed by decapitation.source
• 1519The first recorded fatal accident involving a gun in England is recorded at Welton, East Riding of Yorkshire.source
• 1521February 2 – The Nydala Abbey Bloodbath takes place at Nydala Abbey, Sweden; the abbot and many monks are murdered by Danes.source
• 1521March 6 – Martin Luther is summoned to appear before the Diet of Worms.source
• 1521April 26 – Martin Luther leaves Worms and disappears for around a year – he is rumored to be murdered, but is actually in hiding at the Wartburg castle.source
• 1522Chinese Ming dynasty War Ministry official He Ru is the first to acquire the Portuguese breech-loading culverin, while copies of them are made by two Westernized Chinese at Beijing, Yang San (Pedro Yang) and Dai Ming.source
• 1523April 23 – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, brings the Spanish Inquisition to the Netherlands with the appointment of Frans Van der Hulst as the inquisitor general of the Seventeen Provinces, which will later become parts of the Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the southern Netherlands.source
• 1523The Ming dynasty Chinese navy captures two Western ships with Portuguese breech–loading culverins aboard, which the Chinese call a fo–lang–ji (Frankish culverin). According to the Ming Shi, these cannons are soon presented to the Jiajing Emperor by Wang Hong, and their design is copied in 1529.source
• 1525February 28 – The last Aztec Emperor, Cuauhtémoc, is killed by Hernán Cortés.source
• 1525December 31 – The deadline for Spanish Muslims to convert to Christianity in the Valencia is reached, after which remaining Muslims, or those who harbor them as fugitives, becomes punishable by forced exile, imprisonment or death.source
• 1525The Navarre witch trials (1525-1526) begins.source
• 1527January 5 – Felix Manz, co-founder of the Swiss Anabaptists, is drowned in the Limmat in Zürich by the Zürich Reformed state church.source
• 1528May 9 – King James V of Scotland, 16, held captive for more than two years under the guardianship of the Earl of Angus, is able to escape from Edinburgh to Stirling after several failed rescue attempts.source
• 1529March 25 – A blood libel is carried out against the Jewish community of Bosen in Hungary (now Pezinok in Slovakia), on the first day of Passover, after a boy in the town disappears. Three Jews are accused and killed. The boy is later discovered alive, having been kidnapped for the benefit of the scheme.source
• 1531Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor abolishes the worst abuses of the encomienda system, by pressure of Bartolomé de las Casas.source
• 1531A witch-hunt is conducted in the town of Schiltach, Germany.source
• 1532November 16 – Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca, ambushing and slaughtering a large number of his followers, without loss to themselves. He subsequently offers a ransom of approximately $50 million in gold.source
• 1532December 20 – The first payment for Atahualpa's ransom from the Spaniards is made as gold is delivered to Cuzco to fill up a room.source
• 1534April 5 (Easter Sunday) – Anabaptist Jan Matthys is killed by the Landsknechte, who laid siege to Münster on the day he predicted as the Second Coming of Christ. His follower John of Leiden takes control of the city.source
• 1535May 10 – In Amsterdam, a small troop of Anabaptists, led by the minister Jacob van Geel, attacks the city hall, in an attempted coup to seize the city. In the counter-attack by the city's militia, the burgemeester, Pieter Colijns, is killed by the rebels. In another incident this year in Amsterdam, seven men and five women walk nude in the streets; and Anabaptists rebel in other cities of the Netherlands.source
• 1535May 20 – William Tyndale is arrested in Antwerp for heresy, in relation to his Bible translation, and imprisoned in Vilvoorde.source
• 1535November 30 – Jakob Hutter, leader of the Hutterites is arrested along with his wife in Klausen in the Tyrol region on the Italian side of the Alps. The two are taken to the prison at the fortress in Bronzolo.source
• 1535December – Manco Inca Yupanqui, nominally Sapa Inca, is imprisoned by the Spanish Conquistadors of Peru.source
• 1536May 2 – Anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII of England, is arrested on the grounds of incest, adultery, and treason.source
• 1536May 19 – Anne Boleyn is beheaded.source
• 1536May 23 – The Inquisition is implemented in Portugal.source
• 1536November 13 – On "a great misty morning such as hath seldom been seen", Robert Pakington, a London merchant and a member of the English Parliament, becomes the first person in Britain to be murdered with a handgun, while he is walking across the street from his home at Soper's Lane toward the Mercers' Chapel. His assailant is never caught, despite the offer of a large reward.source
• 1538January 31 – General Johann Katzianer of the Holy Roman Empire, on trial in Vienna for the disastrous Imperial campaign against the Ottoman Empire and for desertion during the Battle of Gorjani, escapes and flees to Kostajnica Fortress in Ottoman-controlled Croatia. After 14 months, Nikola IV Zrinski has Katzianer murdered.source
• 1540June 10 – Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minister for King Henry VIII, is arrested at meeting of the Privy Council of England at Westminster and charged with treason. Cromwell is removed from his positions as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, Lord Great Chamberlain and Governor of the Isle of Wight, and will be executed on July 28.source
• 1540November 8 – William Whorwood becomes the new Attorney General for England and Wales, succeeding Sir John Bakersource
• 1541November 23 – Catherine Howard, the Queen consort of England, is arrested after 16 days of questioning by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reveals that she had also been conducting an adulterous affair with Francis Dereham while married to King Henry VIII. She is imprisoned at Syon Abbey in Middlesex near London.source
• 1542February 13 – Catherine Howard, until recently the Queen consort of England and the wife of King Henry VIII, is executed by beheading, two days after the King gives royal assent to a bill of attainder passed by the English Parliament on February 7. Catherine had been arrested in November on accusations that she had sexual relations with Thomas Culpeper.source
• 1542November 27 – Palace plot of Renyin year: A group of Ming dynasty palace women fail to murder the Jiajing Emperor, and are executed by slow-slicing.source
• 1544April 21 – The Italian town of Agropoli, frequently targeted by pirates from North Africa, is sacked by Ottoman raiders and 100 people are taken prisoner.source
• 1546April 13 – Alice Glaston, age 11, becomes the youngest girl ever to be legally executed in England (though John Dean, age 8, is executed on February 23, 1629)source
• 1546September 8 – The first Protestant Huguenot church in France, established by Pierre LeClerc and Etienne Mangin at Meaux 25 mi from Paris, is seized by the French Army and its 60 members are arrested. Ten women are released and 50 others put on trial for heresy. LeClerc, Mangin and 12 others are burned at the stake on October 8.source
• 1546December 12 – Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and the Lord High Treasurer of England since 1522 is arrested along with his eldest son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and both are imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Earl of Surrey is executed for treason on January 19; the Duke of Norfolk is sentenced to death, but before the sentence can be carried out, King Henry VIII passes away and Norfolk remains in the Tower until being pardoned in 1553.source
• 1546Katharina von Bora flees to Magdeburg.source
• 1547January 13 – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey is sentenced to death for treason in England.source
• 1547September 10 – Conspirators led by Ferrante Gonzaga murder Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and son of the Pope, and hang his body from a window of his palace in Piacenza.source
• 1548June 10 – (5th day of the waxing moon in the 8th month of the 910th year of the Chula Sakarat Era): Yotfa, the 13-year-old ruler of the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand since 1546, is murdered with the consent of his mother, the regent Si Sudachan, who installs her lover, Worawongsathirat, on the throne. Yotfa's younger brother, Prince Sissin, is spared from execution. Worawongsathirat and Si Sudachan are both killed in a counter-coup in November.source
• 1549October 11 – Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector of England and Lord High Treasurer since 1547, is arrested on orders of the Regency Council on charges of "ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars" as well as malfeasance and improper use of the royal treasury.source
• 1550May 6 – Italian Protestant Michelangelo Florio, jailed since 1548 before being brought to trial for and sentenced to death for heresy, escapes from prison and is able flee to France.source
• 1551February 14 – Alice Arden and her lover, Richard Mosbey, carry out the murder-for-hire of her husband, Thomas Arden of Faversham with the assistance of a highwayman known as "Black Will", two of Arden’s domestic servants (Michael Saunderson and Elizabeth Stafford) and Mosbye's sister (Cicely Pounder). The body is carried outside, and Thomas is reported as missing, but a discovery is made that the murder was committed inside the house. The conspirators are later executed.source
• 1552June 22 – Peter Ernst I von Mansfeld-Vorderort, the Spanish Governor of Luxembourg, is taken prisoner by France and remains captive for almost five years.source
• 1553August 18 – John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, is tried and convicted of treason for his role in putting his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne.source
• 1553October 6 – Şehzade Mustafa, oldest son of Suleiman the Magnificent, is executed in Konya by order of his father.source
• 1554February 12 – After claiming the throne of England the previous year, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.source
• 1555John Dee is charged, but cleared, of treason in England.source
• 1556January 4 – In Japan, Saitō Yoshitatsu, the eldest son of Saitō Dōsan, arranges the murders of his two younger brothers, Magoshiro and Kiheiji, and forces his father to flee from the Sagiyama Castle.source
• 1556The false Martin Guerre appears in the French village of Artigat.source
• 1557June 18 – Mass executions by burning at the stake resume in England for Protestants convicted of heresy under the law of England's Catholic ruler, Queen Mary I. On the first day, four women and three men are put to death at Maidstone at Kent. The next day, at Canterbury, another seven prisoners are burned. On June 22, ten more people (six men and four women) burn at the stake at Lewes at Sussex. In all, 24 people (12 men and 12 women) are killed in a five-day periodsource
• 1557Repton School, by Sir John Port.source
• 1557Hampton School, Hampton, London, by Robert Hammond.source
• 1557Brentwood School, Essex, by Sir Antony Browne.source
• 1560The great age of piracy in the Caribbean starts around this time.source
• 1561June 25 – Francis Coxe, an English astrologer, is pilloried at Cheapside in London, and makes a public confession of his involvement in "sinistral and artes".source
• 1561Ruy López de Segura develops modern techniques of chess playing in Spain.source
• 1562August 3 – A severe hailstorm causes serious damage in the German town of Wiesensteig, and leads a few days later to the demand of Mayor Ulrich von Helfenstein for the arrest of several women on charges of practicing witchcraft. Six of the women are executed, the first of 63 women and men put to death after being convicted of practicing sorcery.source
• 1563October 7 – Giovanni Battista Lercari is elected as the new Doge of the Republic of Genoa.source
• 1566August 10 – The Beeldenstorm, also called the "Iconoclastic Fury", begins as Protestant Calvinists engage in widespread destruction of religious art in what are now the Netherlands and Belgium.source
• 1566August 25 – The vandalism of the Beeldenstorm reaches Leiden.source
• 1566October 28 – In Kneiphof, a city in the Duchy of Prussia (modern-day Ostrov Immanuinga Kanta in Russia), Albert, Duke of Prussia has three of the town's five councilors beheaded on charges of causing political and religious disputes with the other Prussian states. Johann Funck, Matthias Horst, and Hans Schnell are executed in the town's marketplace, while Paul Skalich and Johann Steinbach are able to flee the country.source
• 1567February 10 – Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered at the Provost's House in Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh.source
• 1567April 12 – The Earl of Bothwell is acquitted on charges of murder in the February 10 killing of Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Upon acquittal he makes plans to become Mary's new husband.source
• 1567April 20 – The Ainslie Tavern Bond is signed by a group of Scottish clerics and nobles, recommending Bothwell as an appropriate husband for Queen Mary and approving his acquittal after trial for the murder of her previous husband.source
• 1567April 24 – Bothwell takes Mary prisoner at his castle at Dunbar after preventing her from traveling from her palace to Edinburgh, then rapes her.source
• 1567May 24 – Sture Murders: The mentally unstable King Erik XIV of Sweden and his guards murder five incarcerated nobles at Uppsala Castle.source
• 1568May 2 – The deposed Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Lochleven Castle.source
• 1568June 1 – A mass execution is carried out in the Spanish Netherlands at Sablon, near Brussels, as 18 persons who signed the Compromise of Nobles on April 5, 1566, are beheaded.source
• 1572July 9 – The Sea Beggars hang 19 previously imprisoned Roman Catholic priests (the Martyrs of Gorkum) at Brielle.source
• 1572September 24 – Tupac Amaru and other Inca Empire nobles are executed in Peru at Cuzco on orders of the Spanish colonial Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, who then carries out the destruction of the relics of the Incan civilization.source
• 1573February 15 – On orders of the Croatian Viceroy Juraj Drašković, Matija Gubec, the defeated leader of the Croatian–Slovene Peasant Revolt is publicly tortured with the placement of a red-hot iron crown on his head, dragged through the streets of Zagreb, and then dismembered.source
• 1574December 15 – Selim II, the 50-year-old Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is killed after becoming drunk, falling, and fracturing his skull on the floor of the Topkapi Palace.source
• 1574December 22 – Prince Murad bin-Selim of the Ottoman Empire completes the murders, by strangulation, of his four younger brothers, Süleyman, Abdüllah, Osman, and Cihangir.source
• 1575September 26 – Future Spanish author and playwright Miguel de Cervantes, then 28, is taken hostage by the Ottoman Albanian pirate Arnaut Mami after an attack on the Spanish galley Sol off of the Catalan coast. Cervantes spends the next five years as a slave in Algeria before his family pays a ransom to free him.source
• 1576February 8 – Peter Wentworth, a Puritan M.P. of the Parliament of England, is arrested in the middle of giving an address criticizing "rumours and messages" given to suppress freedom of speech. When he says that "the devil was the first author of them, from whom proceedeth nothing but wickedness", he is interrupted and taken to the Tower of London for imprisonment.source
• 1576July 4 – Alonso de Solís, who was appointed by Spain as Governor of the colony of La Florida, is killed in the colonial capital at San Augustin, the modern U.S. city of St. Augustine, Florida.source
• 1576Sutton Valence School, by William Lambe.source
• 1576Dartford Grammar School, by William d'Aeth, Edward Gwyn and William Vaughn.source
• 1577February 23 – The new Shah of Iran, Ismail II, has most of the advisers of his late father executed, including Prince Ibrahim Mirza. "Ebrāhīm Mīrzā", by Marianna S. Simpson, insource
• 1577October 19 – In Italy, Giovanni Battista Gentile Pignolo is elected as the new Doge of the Republic of Genoa for a two-year term, replacing Prospero Centurione Fattinanti.source
• 1579November 3 – The English puritan John Stubbs, author of numerous pamphlets against the doctrines of the Church of England, is convicted of sedition, and his right hand is amputated as punishment.source
• 1580December 31 – James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, formerly the regent for King James VI of Scotland, is arrested during a meeting of Scotland's Privy Council at Holyrood on the accusation of James Stewart, Earl of Arran that the Earl of Morton had participated in the 1567 murder of Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots and father of King James. Morton is taken to Dumbarton Castle and convicted of conspiracy to murder, and executed on June 2.source
• 1581June 2 – James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, the last regent for Scotland from 1572 to 1578 during the minority of King James VI, is beheaded at Edinburgh using the "Scottish Maiden", after being convicted of conspiracy in the 1567 murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort of Mary, Queen of Scots and father of King James."source
• 1581July 14 – English Jesuit Edmund Campion is arrested.source
• 1582August 23 – Raid of Ruthven in Scotland: Presbyterian nobles led by William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie kidnap King James VI of Scotland, the kingdom's 16-year-old ruler, while he is hunting in Perthshire. The Earl of Gowrie imprisons the King at Ruthven Castle as part of a coup d'etat to reform the Scottish government.source
• 1582September 28 – Ruthven and his co-conspirators arrange for John Maxwell, 8th Lord Maxwell, heir to former regent James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, to be installed as Scotland's regent. Douglas had been executed in 1581 for the 1567 murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and father of King James VI, who is imprisoned at Ruthven's castle.source
• 1583October 16 – King Philip II of Spain orders the transfer of Abada the rhinoceros from the Casa de Campo public park of Madrid, to the menagerie at his residence at El Escorial.source
• 1583November 4 – Francis Throckmorton, instigator of the Throckmorton Plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I of England, is arrested. Convicted of treason, he is executed on July 10, 1584.source
• 1583November 5 – Willem IV van den Bergh, the Stadtholder of Guelders for the Dutch Republic is arrested along with his family and charged with treason on suspicion of having allowed the Spanish Army to seize Zutphen. Imprisoned for five months, he is released in March after promising to retire from public service.source
• 1583The current building housing the Bunch Of Grapes pub is built on Narrow Street in Limehouse, London. Referred to by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend as "The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters", it still stands in the 21st century, much rebuilt and renamed 'The Grapes'.source
• 1584January 16 – Roman Catholic priest George Haydock, imprisoned in the Tower of London since 1582, states during an interrogation that he claimed that Queen Elizabeth, leader of the Church of England, was a heretic. Convicted of treason, he is executed on February 12.source
• 1588August 29 (8th day of the 7th month, Tensho 16) – In Japan, the Chancellor of the Realm, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, issues an edict for the katanagari (the :sword hunt), the confiscation of swords from any persons thought to be opposed to his rule.source
• 1589May 4 – In Spain, María Pita leads the defense of La Coruña against the English Armada after her husband is killed by a crossbow."source
• 1589October 31 – Alleged serial killer and accused werewolf Peter Stumpp 'the Werewolf of Bedburg' is tortured and executed.source
• 1590December 7 – North Berwick witch trials: Agnes Sampson is questioned by King James VI of Scotland, and confesses to practising witchcraft. She will be executed on January 28.source
• 1591January 27 – Scottish schoolmaster John Fian becomes the first person to be executed after the North Berwick witch trials, following his conviction for the crime of witchcraft. Fian is taken to the Castlehill outside of Edinburgh and strangled after which his body is burned. Agnes Sampson is garroted the next day at Castlehill and then burned.source
• 1591May 15 – In Russia, Tsarevich Dimitri, son of Ivan the Terrible, is found dead in mysterious circumstances, at the palace in Uglich. The official explanation is that he has cut his own throat during an epileptic seizure. Many believe he has been murdered by his rival, Boris Godunov, who becomes tsar.source
• 1592February 7 – George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly, sets fire to Donibristle Castle in Scotland and murders James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray.source
• 1592September 7 – The captured Madre de Deus enters Dartmouth harbour in England and is then subjected to mass theft.source
• 1593January 27 – The Roman Inquisition opens the seven-year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno.source
• 1593May 12 – English dramatist Thomas Kyd is arrested over the "Dutch church libel". "Atheist" literature found in his home is claimed to be Marlowe's.source
• 1593May 18 – A warrant for the arrest of Christopher Marlowe is issued. On May 20 he presents himself to the Privy Council.source
• 1593May 30 – Christopher Marlowe is stabbed to death in a dispute over a bill at a lodging house in Deptford.source
• 1594August 28 – Farkas Kovacsóczy, who has served as Chancellor of Transylvania for 16 years, is arrested on orders of Prince Sigismund Báthory, and István Jósika is appointed in his place. Kovacsóczy is imprisoned at Szamosújvár (now Gherla in Romania) and executed by strangulation on September 11.source
• 1596July 14 – King Dominicus Corea (Edirille Bandara) is beheaded by the Portuguese in Colombo, Ceylon.source
• 1597July 14 – Scottish poet Alexander Montgomerie is declared an outlaw, after the collapse of a Catholic plot.source
• 1597July 28 – After the performance of the satirical play The Isle of Dogs, written by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson, at the Swan Theatre, the Privy Council of England concludes that the "lewd play" is full of seditious and slanderous matter. Jonson is arrested, along with two actors, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Shaa, and the three are sent to Marshalsea Prison. A raid on the home of Thomas Nashe seizes his papers, but Nashe is not found. The three prisoners are released later in the year and return to the stage. All copies of The Isle of Dogs script are destroyed.source
• 1598July 10 – John Barrose, a Burgundian fencer who has challenged all comers and killed several, is hanged for murder. Barrose's story is dramatized by playwright Ben Jonson in Every Man in His Humour.source
• 1598Illustrations of Ottoman Turkish and European riflemen, with detailed illustrations of their firearms, appear in Zhao Shizhen's book Shenqipu in this year, during the Ming Dynasty of China.source