Crime & Justice in the 17th century

173 sourced entries, 1600 CE to 1699 CE, oldest first. Also see Crime & Justice across every century or everything else in the 17th century.

• 1600February 17 – On his way to be burned at the stake for heresy in Rome, Giordano Bruno has his tongue "imprisoned" after he refuses to stop talking.source
• 1600March 20 – Linköping Bloodbath: Five Swedish nobles are publicly executed by decapitation and Polish–Swedish King Sigismund III Vasa is de facto deposed as ruler of Sweden.source
• 1600June 5 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Chancellor of the University of Dublin, is put on trial in England before a commission of 18 men, after being charged with malfeasance. He is deprived of his main business, a monopoly on sweet wines, and stripped of his noble title. In revenge, he attempts to organize a coup d'etat to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and fails in his plot.source
• 1600August 5 – The brothers Alexander Ruthven and John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, are killed during a failed attempt to kidnap or murder King James VI of Scotland at their home.source
• 1601October 4 – Claudine de Culam, a 16-year-old girl in the French village of Rognon, is hanged after being convicted of "carnal cohabitation with a dog". The dog is hanged along with her.source
• 1601Martin Möller is accused of Crypto-Calvinism.source
• 1602Ben Jonson's satirical comedy Poetaster.source
• 1603July 17 – Sir Walter Raleigh is arrested in England on charges of treason and of conspiring with Lord Cobham in the "Main Plot" to overthrow King James for replacement by Lady Arbella Stuart.source
• 1603October 18 – Yemişçi Hasan Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, is executed on orders of Sultan Mehmed III, after failing to respond more quickly to the Safavid Empire's actions to take Tabriz. The Sultan appoints Yavuz Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt to replace Yemişçi Hasan.source
• 1603November 17 – Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason, in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle. He is found guilty, but his life is spared by King James I at this time, and he is returned to imprisonment in the Tower of London.source
• 1604According to legend, the vault of Christian Rosenkreuz is discovered.source
• 1606January 24 – Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators, for plotting against Parliament and James I of England, begins in London. They are hanged, drawn and quartered on January 30–31.source
• 1606September 20 – The trial of alleged poisoners in the Frankenstein gravediggers scandal begins in the Bohemian town of Frankenstein.source
• 1607September – The Scrooby Congregation of Protestant English Separatists attempt to flee to the Dutch Republic from Boston, Lincolnshire, but are betrayed, arrested and imprisoned for a time.source
• 1608February 18 – Don Julius Caesar d'Austria, the illegitimate son of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, brutally murders his girlfriend, Markéta Pichlerová, then dismembers her body. Emperor Rudolf imprisons Julius for the rest of his life.source
• 1609January 12 – The Basque witch trials are started in Spain as the court of the Inquisition at Logroño receives a letter from the commissioner of the village of Zugarramurdi, and orders the arrest of four women, including María de Jureteguía and María Chipía de Barrenetxea.source
• 1610November 8 – The Basque witch trials come to an end after almost two years. Out of about 7,000 persons accused of witchcraft, only six are condemned to be executed by the Spanish Inquisition as two men (Domingo de Subildegui and Petri de Joangorena) and four women (María de Echachute, Graciana Xarra, Maria Baztan de Borda, and Maria de Arburu) are burned at the stake at Logroño.source
• 1612April 10 – In England, 12 persons who become known as the Pendle witches allegedly hold a coven at the Malkin Tower in Lancashire on Good Friday, after which 10 people die mysteriously. All but two of the accused witches are tried for causing harm by witchcraft on August 18.source
• 1612August 20 – Ten Pendle witches are hanged, having been found guilty of practising witchcraft in Lancashire in England.source
• 1612The Okamoto Daihachi incident in Japan.source
• 1613April 13 – Samuel Argall captures Algonquian princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia, to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father, Chief Powhatan. She is brought to Henricus as a hostage.source
• 1613October 21 – Gabriel Bathory, ruler of the Principality of Transylvania, is removed from office by vote of the nobles meeting at Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia in Romania). Bathory refuses to vacate the palace at the Transylvanian capital at Várad, (now Oradea in Romania), and is murdered on October 27.source
• 1614September 1 – In England, lawyer Sir Julius Caesar becomes Master of the Rolls.source
• 1614October 17 – On the orders of Ahmed I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier Nasuh Pasha is strangled to death by the chief of the Sultan's bodyguards.source
• 1614Squanto (also known as Tisquantum), a Native American of the Wampanoag Nation, is kidnapped and enslaved by Thomas Hunt, an English sea captain working with Captain John Smith. Freed in Spain, Squanto will travel for five years in Europe and North America, before returning to his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Twenty months later, he will be able to teach the Pilgrim Fathers the basics of farming and trade in the New World.source
• 1615October 5 – The Spánverjavígin, the last massacre to be carried out in Iceland, begins as 14 Basque Whalers from Spain are murdered at Thingeyri while sleeping. Another 18 are killed on October 13, including Captain Martín de Villafranca. The 31 had been survivors of a shipwreck on Iceland in September.source
• 1615Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, is released from the Tower of London, in recognition of her role in helping to discover the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.source
• 1616April 25 – Sir John Coke, in the Court of King's Bench (England), holds the King's actions in a case of In commendam to be illegal.source
• 1616October 10 – Sakazaki Naomori of Iwami Tsuwano han commits suicide after failing to kidnap Princess Sen.source
• 1616October/November – Ben Jonson's satirical five-act comedy, The Devil is an Ass, is produced at the Blackfriars Theatre in London by the King's Men, poking fun at contemporary credence in witchcraft and Middlesex juries.source
• 1616The Swiss Guard is appointed part of the household guard of King Louis XIII of France.source
• 1616A second witch-hunt breaks out in Biscay, Spain. An Edict of Silence is issued by the Inquisition, but the king overturns the Edict, and 300 accused witches are burned alive.source
• 1616Italian natural philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini publishes a radically heterodox book in France, after his English interlude, De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis, for which he is condemned and forced to flee Paris. For his opinion that the world is eternal and governed by immanent laws, as expressed in this book, he is executed in 1619.source
• 1616Elizabeth Rutter is hanged as a witch in Middlesex, England, Agnes Berrye in Enfield, and nine women in Leicester on the testimony of a raving 13-year-old named John Smith, under the Witchcraft Act 1603. In Orkney, Elspeth Reoch is tried. In France Leger (first name unknown) is condemned for witchcraft on May 6, Sylvanie de la Plaine is burned at Pays de Labourde as a witch, and in Orléans eighteen witches are killed.source
• 1617December 30 – Lord Clifton is imprisoned at the Tower of London for threatening Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor. Clifton is prosecuted by the Star Chamber on March 17 and eventually commits suicide in Fleet Prison.source
• 1618August 29 – Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and Hugo Grotius are imprisoned by Maurice, Prince of Orange.source
• 1618October 29 – English adventurer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded at the Palace of Westminster, for allegedly conspiring treasonably against James I of England in 1603, following pressure from the Spanish government, over his attack on their settlement on the Orinoco, on his last (1617–18) voyage.source
• 1619May 13 – Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague, after having been convicted of treason.source
• 1620March 24 – English sailor Owen Fitzpen is captured by Turkish pirates while on a trading voyage in the Mediterranean Sea and sold into slavery. He remains a slave in North Africa for seven years until he and 10 other slaves are able to take over a Turkish ship and sail back to Europe.source
• 1620August 7 – The mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler is arrested for witchcraft.source
• 1620August 15 (probable date; August 5 OS) – Mayflower and Speedwell depart together from Southampton, but are forced to put back into Dartmouth, Devon, for repairs to a leak in the latter ship on August 22 or 23 (August 12 or 13 OS).source
• 1621January 12 – Şehzade Mehmed, the 15-year old half-brother of Ottoman Sultan Osman II, is put to death by hanging on Osman's orders. Before dying, Mehmed prays aloud that Osman's reign as Sultan be ruined.source
• 1621January 24 – Twelve days after the murder of Prince Mehmed on orders of Sultan Osman II, Constantinople is hit by bitter winter weather, leading to rioting by persons who believe that the punishment of Osman is the will of Allah.source
• 1623June 14 – The first breach-of-promise lawsuit: Rev. Gerville Pooley, in Virginia, files against Cicely Jordan, but loses.source
• 1624August 5 – The King's Men perform Thomas Middleton's satire A Game at Chess at the Globe Theatre in London. The performances are suppressed on August 14 in view of the play's allusions to the Spanish Match.source
• 1624August 24 – Jasper Vinall becomes the first person to die while playing the sport of cricket, after being struck on the head with a bat during a game at Horsted Keynes in England.source
• 1624September 13 – Ketevan, former queen consort of Kakheti (located around Gremi in what is now the Republic of Georgia), is tortured and killed in the Persian city of Shiraz after refusing to renounce Christianity to convert to Islam.source
• 1624Frans Hals produces the painting later known as the Laughing Cavalier.source
• 1625May 15–16 – Rebellious farmers are hanged in Vocklamarkt, Upper Austria.source
• 1625September 13 – A total of 16 rabbis (including Isaiah Horowitz) are imprisoned in Jerusalem.source
• 1626The Würzburg and Bamberg witch trials, which will lead to the mass executions of hundreds of people until 1630/31, begin.source
• 1627June 20 – Hinchingbrooke House in the east of England is sold by Sir Oliver Cromwell, to Sidney Montagu.source
• 1627July 16 – Turkish Abductions: the Barbary corsairs from Algiers raid the island of Heimaey off Iceland, take captives into slavery and kill others.source
• 1628January 23 – After being incarcerated and blinded on orders of his brother, former Mughal Emperor Shahryar Mirza is put to death, along with his nephews, co-ruler Dawar Bakhsh, and Princes Garshasp, Tahmuras and Hoshang.source
• 1628November 29 – English Army Lieutenant John Felton, who stabbed the Duke of Buckingham to death on August 23, is hanged at Tyburn prison.source
• 1630January 13 – In China, General Yuan Chonghuan is invited to an audience with the Chongzhen Emperor and is arrested on charges of collusion with the enemy. Yuan is executed by the slow death on September 22.source
• 1631June 20 – Algerian pirates sack Baltimore, County Cork, in Ireland.source
• 1633February 13 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.source
• 1633April 12 – Galileo Galilei is convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church.source
• 1634March 4 – Belgian scientist Jan Baptist van Helmont is interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition and put under house arrest for his experiments into plant growth.source
• 1634August 18 – In France, Urbain Grandier, accused of wizardry, is burned alive in Loudun.source
• 1634November 11 – The Irish House of Commons passes an Act for the Punishment of the Vice of Buggery.source
• 1640July 9 – John Punch, a servant of Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn, is sentenced to a life of servitude after attempting to escape, making him the "first official slave in the English colonies".source
• 1640August 9 – Forty-one Spanish delegates to Japan at Nagasaki are beheaded.source
• 1642April 8 – Execution of George Spencer: the first hanging of a settler in the New Haven Colony takes place, on a wrongful conviction of bestiality.source
• 1642September 8 – Thomas Granger is executed by hanging in the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts) following confessions to numerous acts of bestiality.source
• 1643April 28 – Francisco de Lucena, former Portuguese Secretary of State, is beheaded after being convicted of treason.source
• 1643Baden-Baden is pillaged by the French.source
• 1644A Spanish officer is murdered in St. Dominic's Church, Macau during mass by colonists loyal to Portugal during the Portuguese Restoration War.source
• 1645Wallpaper begins to replace tapestries, as a wall decoration.source
• 1646February 28 – Roger Scott is tried in Massachusetts for sleeping in church.source
• 1647January 2 – Chinese bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong, who has ruled the Sichuan province since 1644, is killed at Xichong by a Qing archer, after having been betrayed by one of his officers, Liu Jinzhong.source
• 1648February 11 – England's parliament passes stricter laws against performance of stage plays, providing for demolition of seats in theatres, imprisonment for actors and fines for spectators. The vote comes six days after the King's Men Players are arrested at the Cockpit Theatre during an illegal performance of Rollo Duke of Normandy.source
• 1648The Dutch artist Rembrandt produces the works Rembrandt drawing at a window and Beggars at the Door.source
• 1649January 20 – Charles I of England goes on trial, for treason and other "high crimes".source
• 1649January 27 – King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland is found guilty of high treason in a public session.source
• 1649Dutch artist Frans Hals paints a portrait of René Descartes.source
• 1650January 25 – As part of the purges following the Great Potosí Mint Fraud of 1649 Francisco Gómez de la Rocha, a rich former corregidor of Potosí, is executed.source
• 1650December 14 – Anne Greene is hanged at Oxford Castle in England for infanticide, having concealed an illegitimate stillbirth. The following day she revives in the dissection room and, being pardoned, lives until 1659.source
• 1650Puritans chop down the original Glastonbury Thorn in England.source
• 1651March 26 – The Spanish ship San José, loaded with silver, is pushed south by strong winds; it wrecks on the coast of southern Chile, and its surviving crew is killed by indigenous Cuncos.source
• 1655October 15 – The Jews of Lublin are massacred.source
• 1656December 16 – English Quaker James Nayler is convicted of blasphemy but spared the death penalty.source
• 1656The only English fifty shilling coin is minted.source
• 1657November 10 – Christina, former Queen regnant of Sweden, has Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi killed in her presence, at the Palace of Fontainebleau.source
• 1658November 6 – The Mexican Inquisition carries out the execution, by public burning, of 14 men convicted of homosexuality, while another 109 arrested are either released or given less harsh sentences.source
• 1659January 31 – Giovanna De Grandis is arrested in Rome and charged with trafficking the lethal Aqua Tofana poison. On February 2, she implicates the mastermind of the poisoners, Gironima Spana, starting the case of the Spana Prosecution that eventually leads to the arrest and trial of 40 people.source
• 1659June 10 – Dara Shikoh, at one time the heir apparent for the Mughal Empire, is betrayed by an Afghan chieftain, Junaid Khan Barozai, who had initially given him refuge from pursuit from the new emperor, Aurangzeb. Turned over to Aurangzeb's men, Dara Shikoh is killed on August 30.source
• 1659July 5 – Five women are executed by hanging at Rome after being convicted of murder in the Spana Prosecution by distributing the powerful Aqua Tofana poison, sold primarily to women wishing to get rid of their husbands. Put to death on the same day are Gironima Spana, Giovanna De Grandis, Maria Spinola, Graziosa Farina and Laura Crispoldi, in the public square at the Campo de' Fiori.source
• 1660March 3 – General John Lambert, who had attempted to stop the Restoration, is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He escapes on April 9 but is recaptured on April 24. Though spared the death penalty for treason in 1662, he remains incarcerated on the island of Guernsey for the rest of his life until his death at age 64 on March 1, 1684.source
• 1660May 15 – John Thurloe is arrested for high treason, for his support of Oliver Cromwell's regime.source
• 1660June 29 – John Thurloe is released from custody.source
• 1660August 29 – The Indemnity and Oblivion Act, officially "An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion" is given royal assent. as a general pardon for everyone who had committed crimes during the English Civil War and Interregnum (with the exception of certain crimes such as murder, piracy, buggery, rape and witchcraft, and people named in the act such as those involved in the regicide of Charles I). It also said that no action was to be taken against those involved at any later time, and that the Interregnum was to be legally forgotten.source
• 1661January 30 – The body of Oliver Cromwell is exhumed and subjected to a posthumous execution in London, along with those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton.source
• 1661February 7 – Shah Shuja, who was deprived of his claim to the throne of the Mughal Empire by his younger brother Aurangzeb, then fled to Burma, is killed by Indian troops in an attack on his residence at Arakan.source
• 1661May 27 – The Marquess of Argyll, one of the first of the Scottish-born people sentenced to death as a regicide for his role in the conviction and execution of King Charles I of England and Scotland in 1649, is beheaded at the Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh using the "Scottish Maiden," almost immediately after his conviction of collaboration with the government of Oliver Cromwell. His head is then placed on a spike outside the prison.source
• 1661September 5 – Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances for France, is arrested in Nantes and charged with embezzlement of the state treasury. Spared the death penalty by a jury, Fouquet spends the rest of his life in prison until his death in 1680.source
• 1662January 23 – János Kemény, Prince of Transylvania for slightly more than a year, is killed during Transylvania's defeat by the Ottoman Empire in a battle at Nagyszőllős, now the city of Vynohradiv in Ukraine. An Ottoman appointee, Michael Apafi, replaces Kemény in September and the status of the principality of Transylvania (now part of Romania) is never regained.source
• 1662October 27 – Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to France, for £400,000 (2.5 million French livres).source
• 1662November - December – Helen Guthrie is the last person accused during the Forfar witch trials to be executed.source
• 1663February 8 – English pirates led by Christopher Myngs and Edward Mansvelt carry out the sack of Campeche in Mexico, looting the town during a two week occupation that ends on February 23.source
• 1663October 12 – The Farnley Wood Plot, a conspiracy in the English county of West Yorkshire to overthrow the recently-restored monarchy and to return to the military rule that had been established by the late Oliver Cromwell, fails when only 26 men gather at Farnley. The group is arrested and 21 of the rebels are later executed for treason.source
• 1666August 19 (August 9 Julian calendar) – Rear Admiral Robert Holmes leads an English Royal Navy raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships in the Vlie estuary over a period of two days, and pillaging the town of West-Terschelling. The action becomes known as "Holmes's Bonfire".source
• 1666September 6 – The Cestui Que Vie Act 1666 is passed by the Parliament of England, to provide for the disposal of the property of missing persons.source
• 1666October 27 – Robert Hubert, a Frenchman who has made a false confession to having started the Great Fire of London (despite not arriving in England until two days after the blaze started), is executed based on his statements.source
• 1666Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer paints The Art of Painting, his largest and most complex work.source
• 1668July 10 – Henry Morgan's raid on Porto Bello: Welsh privateer Henry Morgan and 450 men under his command plunder the city of Portobello on the Isthmus of Panama and spend 14-days in the attack before withdrawing.source
• 1669May 19 – The first people executed in Sweden's Mora witch trial are put to death, with seven women and one man beheaded after being convicted of "abduction of children to Satan."source
• 1669August 25 – The day after the verdicts at the Mora witch trial in Sweden, 14 women and one man are publicly beheaded after having confessed to various crimes involving the use of "enchanted tools" on behalf of the Devil. Another 47 are convicted and taken away for a later execution.source
• 1669October 6 – Molière's comedy ballet Monsieur de Pourceaugnacsource
• 1670January 17 – Raphael Levy, a Jewish resident of the city of Metz in France, is burned at the stake after being accused of the September 25 abduction and ritual murder of a child who had disappeared from the village of Glatigny. The prosecutor applies to King Louis XIV for an order expelling all 95 Jewish families from Metz, but the king refuses.source
• 1670September 5 – William Penn and William Mead are found not guilty of violating the Conventicles Act 1670, after a five day jury trial in London. The two had been arrested on August 14 in front of a meeting house Gracechurch Street after preaching a Quaker sermon outside following a ban on preaching indoors. The defiance by the jury leads to the landmark English decision in Bushel's Case.source
• 1671January 1 – The Criminal Ordinance of 1670, the first attempt at a uniform code of criminal procedure in France, goes into effect after having been passed on August 26, 1670.source
• 1671May 9 – Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom from the Tower of London. He is immediately caught, because he is too drunk to run with the loot. He is later condemned to death, and then mysteriously pardoned and exiled by King Charles II.source
• 1672August 20 – Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland and his brother Cornelis de Witt are killed by an Orangist mob in The Hague.source
• 1673January 22 – Impersonator Mary Carleton is hanged at Newgate Prison in London, for multiple thefts and returning from penal transportation.source
• 1674October 15 – The Torsåker witch trials begin in the Torsåker Parish in Sweden, with over 100 men and women accused of witchcraft and the abduction of children. On June 1, 1675, the mass beheading of the 71 people convicted takes place at Häxberget, 65 of whom are women. The others are two men and four boys.source
• 1675June 1 – The Torsåker witch trials is concluded in Sweden with the execution of 71 people (65 of them women) executed on the same day at the village of Häxberget. The condemned prisoners are beheaded and their bodies are then burned.source
• 1675June 8 – John Sassamon's alleged murderers are executed at Plymouth, Massachusetts.source
• 1675November 11 – Guru Teg Bahadur, ninth of the Sikh gurus, is executed by Mughal rulers, proclaiming that he prefers death rather than disavowing the right of Hindus to practice their own religion. He is succeeded by Guru Gobind Singh, who becomes the tenth Guru.source
• 1676April 2 – Chief Canonchet of the Narragansett people is captured by mercenaries of the Pequot, Mohegan and Niantic nations who have been hired by English settlers. He is offered a chance to live if he makes peace with the English, refuses, and is executed the next day in Stonington, Connecticut.source
• 1676April 12 – Richard Raynsford becomes the new Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.source
• 1676August 12 – King Philip (Metacomet), chief of the Wampanoags that had waged a war throughout southern New England that bore his name, is killed by an Indian named Alderman, a soldier led by Captain Benjamin Church.source
• 1677February 15 – Four members of the English House of Lords embarrass King Charles II at the opening of the latest session of the "Cavalier Parliament" by proclaiming that the session is not legitimate because it had not met in more than a year. The Duke of Buckingham, backed by Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Salisbury and Baron Wharton, makes an unsuccessful motion to end the session. When the four Lords refuse to apologize, they are arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.source
• 1677February 26 – The first arrests are made in the case that will develop into the "Affair of the Poisons" in France, as Magdelaine de La Grange and her accused accomplice, Father Nail, are detained on suspicion of poisoning her lover, a Messr. Faurie. While in prison in the Bastille and awaiting trial Mademoiselle La Grange writes letters accusing other persons of carrying out murders by poison as well.source
• 1678October 17 – English magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey is found murdered in Primrose Hill, London. His death is seen as proof of the "Popish Plot" to the public.source
• 1678November 11 (November 1 O.S.) – England's House of Commons votes to begin impeachment proceedings against five Roman Catholic members of the House of Lords, Viscount Stafford, the Marquess of Powis, Baron Arundell, Baron Petre and Baron Belasyse accused by Protestant members as participating in a "Popish Plot". Viscount Stafford is convicted and executed, while the other four are imprisoned in the Tower of London for more than five years.source
• 1678November 26 – William Staley, an English banker and a Roman Catholic, becomes the first person to be executed in connection with the "Popish Plot" arrests.source
• 1679March 12 – Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, commonly called "La Voisin" and the suspected killer of over 1,000 people in France by poisoning, is arrested outside of the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle in Paris and imprisoned at Vincennes for the next 11 months. After her conviction, she is publicly burned at the stake on February 22, 1680.source
• 1680February 22 – Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, a fortune teller in France who organized a ring of killers in what became known as the "Affair of the Poisons" that killed at least 1,000 people, is burned at the stake after being convicted of witchcraft. In all, 36 people are executed for their role in the poisoning.source
• 1680June 11 – Elizabeth Cellier, an English Catholic midwife, is tried and acquitted of treason for pamphleting against the government.source
• 1680June 30 – During the Spanish Inquisition, an auto-da-fé takes place in the Plaza Mayor, Madrid.source
• 1680December 17 (December 7 O.S.) – The trial for treason of William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford before his fellow members of the House of Lords having concluded after seven days, the Lords vote on whether to convict him of the articles of impeachment. The Lords vote, 55 to 31 to convict him and to impose the death sentence and Lord Stafford is beheaded on 29 December (8 January 1681 N.S.)source
• 1681August 31 – English perjurer Titus Oates is told to leave his state apartments in Whitehall; his fame begins to wane, and he is soon arrested and imprisoned for sedition.source
• 1681The bell Emmanuel in Notre-Dame de Paris is recast.source
• 1681Collections are made in England for needy French refugees.source
• 1682August 25 – Following the Bideford witch trial, three women (probably) become the penultimate known to be hanged for witchcraft in England, at Exeter.source
• 1684January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice.source
• 1684November 19 – Richard Keigwin, who had arrested the East India Company's Governor of Bombay in 1683, Josiah Child and had taken over as the unauthorized administrator of Bombay, turns control back to the company and its envoy, Sir Thomas Grantham, receiving a general pardon.source
• 1685January 8 – Almost 200 people are arrested in Coventry by English authorities for gathering to hear readings of the sermons of the non-conformist Protestant minister Obadiah Grew .source
• 1685July 15 – James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, is executed at Tower Hill, London, England.source
• 1685Alice Molland becomes the last known person in England to be sentenced to death for witchcraft, in Exeter.source
• 1686February 27 – Gabriel Milan, the controversial Governor of the Danish West Indies since 1684, is removed from office by order of King Frederick III and placed under arrest for treason. Three years later, after being found guilty in a trial after being brought back to Copenhagen, Milan is beheaded on March 26, 1689.source
• 1687January 27 – In one of the most sensational cases in England in the 17th century, midwife Mary Hobry murders her abusive husband, Denis Hobry, after he beats her up for the last time. Mary then dismembers his body and scatters the remains in a dunghill and in several outhouses (or privies) in the area. Despite a defense of justifiable homicide, Mary is convicted of murder and burned at the stake.source
• 1688January 29 – Madame Jeanne Guyon, French mystic, is arrested in France and imprisoned for seven months.source
• 1688June 5 – Constantine Phaulkon is beheaded after having been arrested in May.source
• 1690January 13 – Captain Thomas Pound, after being captured with his crew the previous month, is tried in Boston and found guilty of piracy although he is later reprieved.source
• 1690January 27 – William Coward is hanged for acts of piracy, following his capture after seizing the ketch Elenor anchored in Boston Harbor the previous year.source
• 1690November 9 – Near South Mimms, England, several highwaymen stop a convoy carrying taxes from the Midlands to London and take £15,000.source
• 1691January 15 – King Louis XIV of France issues an order specifically prohibiting play of games of chance, specifically naming basset and similar games, on penalty of 1,000 livres for the first offence.source
• 1691March 14 – The Public Security Police Force of Macau is founded.source
• 1691May 6 – The Spanish Inquisition condemns and forcibly baptizes 219 Xuetas in Palma, Majorca. When 37 try to escape the island, they are burned alive at the stake.source
• 1691May 16 – Jacob Leisler is hanged for treason.source
• 1692March 1 – The Salem witch trials begin in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony, with the charging of 3 women with witchcraft. Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parris, is the first to be arrested, and she implicates Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, who are arrested later in the day.source
• 1692April 18 – Giles Corey, Mary Warren, Abigail Hobbs and Bridget Bishop, all residents of Salem, Massachusetts, are arrested and charged with the practice of witchcraft.source
• 1692July 5 – Wine shop owner Antoine Savetier and his wife are murdered by thieves in the French city of Lyon, and a peasant named Jacques Aymar-Vernay is called in as a detective to solve the case. Aymar finds one of the perpetrators, Joseph Arnoul, who confesses to the crime and implicates two accomplices who manage to escape. Arnoul is executed by being "broken on the wheel" on August 30.source
• 1692September 19 – Giles Corey is pressed to death in an attempt to coerce a confession from him of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.source
• 1692September 22 – The last of those convicted of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials are hanged. By the end of September, 14 women and 5 men have been executed by hanging. The remainder of those convicted are all eventually released.source
• 1692September 27 – The trial for sorcery of Anne Palles of Denmark begins, and she gives a long confession of giving her body and soul to Satan. The court finds her guilty on November 2 and sentences her to death.source
• 1693April – Tituba, a slave who had been convicted at the Salem witch trials of practicing witchcraft after making a confession, is released from jail in Boston after 13 months when an unknown purchaser pays her jail fees.source
• 1693September 23 – Manuel Afonso Nzinga a Nlenke, ruling as King Manuel I of the Kingdom of Kongo (in present-day northern Angola) is executed on orders of the new king, Álvaro X.source
• 1695March 7 – John Trevor, Speaker of the English House of Commons, is expelled from the House by vote of the members, after being found guilty of accepting a bribe of 1000 pounds sterling from the City of London Corporation.source
• 1695March 26 – John Hungerford is expelled from the English House of Commons when members vote to find him guilty of accepting a bribe in return for using his committee chairmanship to promote the pending Orphans Bill.source
• 1695December 31 – A window tax is imposed in England. Some windows are bricked up to avoid it.source
• 1695English manufacturers call for an embargo on Indian cloth, and silk weavers picket the House of Commons of England.source
• 1695Johanne Nielsdatter is executed for witchcraft, the last such confirmed execution in Norway.source
• 1696March 18 – Robert Charnock, who had been arrested for the Jacobite plot to kill King William is hanged at the Tower of London.source
• 1696December 23 – By a vote of 66 to 60, the English House of Lords approves the bill of attainder for the conviction of Sir John Fenwick for high treason. Fenwick is beheaded on January 28, 1697.source
• 1696December 24 – The Inquisition in Portugal carries out the sentence of burning at the stake against several Marrano Jews in Évora.source
• 1697June 10 – The last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe when the five Paisley witches are hanged and then burned in Scotland.source
• 1697October 16 – The Norwegian Code, promulgated by King Christian V of Denmark-Norway in 1687, is amended to provide for torture of condemned criminals in certain capital offenses in Norway, with permission for burning with hot irons, or cutting off the prisoner's right hand while the prisoner is being transported for decapitation.source
• 1698January 30 – William Kidd, who initially seized foreign ships under authority as a privateer for the British Empire before becoming a pirate, becomes an outlaw and uses his ship, the Adventure Galley, to capture an Indian ship, the valuable Quedagh Merchant, near India.source
• 1699July 6 – Scottish-born pirate captain William Kidd is arrested and imprisoned in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, after being tricked by his former patron New York Governor Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont.source