1680s

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	16th century – 17th century – 18th century
Decades:	1650s 1660s 1670s – 1680s – 1690s 1700s 1710s
Years:	1680 1681 1682 1683 1684 1685 1686 1687 1688 1689
Categories:	Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a list of events occurring in the 1680s, ordered by year.

January–June

• February – The Reverend Ralph Davenant dies, leaving £100 in his will to start up a new school for the poor boys of Whitechapel, in the East End.
• May – The volcano Krakatoa erupts, probably on a relatively small scale.

July–December

• July 8 – The first documented tornado in America kills a servant at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• August 21 – Pueblo Revolt: Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe (New Mexico) from the Spanish.
• August 24 – Comédie-Française is founded by decree of Louis XIV of France as La maison de Molière in Paris.
• November 14 – The Great Comet of 1680 is first sighted.
• November 17 – Whigs organize pope-burning processions in London.

Date unknown

• Chambers of Reunion (French courts under Louis XIV) decide on complete annexation of Alsace.
• The first Portuguese governor is appointed to Macau.
• The Swedish city of Karlskrona is founded, as the Royal Swedish Navy relocates there.

January–June

• January 3 – Treaty of Bakhchisarai One side Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and vassal Crimean Khanate , the other side Russian Empire.
• March 14 – Charles II of England grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania.
• April – Following the death of its last count, the Palatinate-Landsberg passes to the King of Sweden.

July–December

• August – Robert Knox escapes prison in Ceylon, and details his adventures across Kandy and life in the kingdoms of the Tamil country Vanni in his book An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon.
• August 12 – The Ahom King Gadadhar Singha or Gadapani, who took the Tai name Supaatphaa, ascends the throne.
• August 31 – Titus Oates is told to leave his state apartments in the Whitehall; his fame begins to wane and he is soon arrested and imprisoned for sedition.
• October 28 – A London woman is publicly flogged for the crime of "involving herself in politics."
• December – Wu Shifan, grandson of Chinese general Wu Sangui, commits suicide in Yunnan province, ending the 8-year conflict of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories against Qing Dynasty authority in China, then led by the Kangxi Emperor.
• December 22 – King Charles II of England signs a warrant for the building of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Date unknown

• France annexes the city of Strasbourg.
• The last dodo bird is killed.
• Collections are made in England for needy French refugees.
• The Port of Honfleur in France is re-modelled by Abraham Duquesne.

January–June

• March 11 – The Royal Chelsea Hospital for Soldiers is founded in England.
• April 7 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, exploring rivers in America, reaches the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• April 9 – At the mouth of the Mississippi River, near modern Venice, Louisiana, Robert de La Salle buries an engraved plate and a cross, claiming the territory as La Louisiane for France.
• May 6 – Louis XIV of France moves his court to Versailles.
• May 7 – The reign of Peter the Great officially begins.
• May 11 – Moscow Uprising of 1682: A mob takes over the Kremlin and lynches the leading boyars and military commanders.

July–December

• July 19 – Iyasus succeeds his father Yohannes I as Emperor of Ethiopia.
• August 12 – Vesuvius begins a period of volcanic activity lasting for 10 days.
• September – Halley's comet makes an appearance, and is observed by Edmond Halley himself.
• September 14 – Bishop Gore School in Swansea, Wales is founded.
• October 12 – Sultan Mehmed IV departs Istanbul for Adrianople.
• October 19 – Kara Mustafa departs with the Ottoman army to Adrianople.
• October 27 – The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded by William Penn.
• October 31 – In the city of Bideford, Guenevere Damascus, her lover (name unknown) and their spiritual mentor are among the last to be burned at the stake for witchcraft in England. They had been accused of speaking in unknown languages as well as practicing knowledge beyond their natural abilities, and acting in peculiar manners.

Date unknown

• Celia Fiennes noble woman and traveller, begins her journeys across Britain, in a venture that would prove to be her life's work. Her aim was to chronicle the towns, cities and great houses of the country. Her travels continued until at least 1712, and would take her to every county in England, though the main body of her journal was not written until the year 1702.
• The first black slaves arrive in Germany.
• The Richard Wall House is built in Pennsylvania.

January–June

• April 10 – Charles V the Duke of Lorraine is appointed commander of the Imperial army.
• May 3 – Sultan Mehmed IV enters Belgrade.
• June 6 – The Ashmolean Museum opens as the world's first university museum.
• June 12 – The Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II of England is discovered.

July–December

• July 8 – The Qing Dynasty Chinese admiral Shi Lang 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 Qing.
• July 14 – A 140,000-man Ottoman force arrives at Vienna and starts to besiege the city.
• July 16 and July 17 – Battle of Penghu: Qing Chinese admiral Shi Lang defeats the naval forces of Zheng Keshuang in a decisive victory.
• September 5 – The Qing Chinese admiral Shi Lang receives the formal surrender of Zheng Keshuang, ushering in the collapse of the Kingdom of Tungning, which is then incorporated into the Qing Empire.
• September 12 – Battle of Vienna: The Ottoman siege of the city is broken with the arrival of a force of 70,000 Polish, Austrians and Germans under Polish-Lithuanian king Jan III Sobieski, whose cavalry turns their flank (considered to be the turning point in the Ottoman Empire's fortunes).
• October 3 – Shi Lang reaches Taiwan and occupies present day Kaohsiung.
• October 6 – Germantown, Pennsylvania is founded (in 1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan declares a 300th Year Celebration, and in 1987, it becomes an annual holiday, German-American Day).
• November 1 – The British crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.
• December – The River Thames freezes, allowing a frost fair to be held.

Date unknown

• Wild boars are hunted to extinction in Britain.

January–June

• January – Edmund Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion.
• January 5 – King Charles II of England gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn.
• January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice.
• March – End of the severe frost in Britain, starting the previous December, during which the Thames was frozen in London, and the sea as far as 2 miles (3.2 km) out from land freezes over. There was great loss of beast and of wildlife, especially birds. Similar reports from across Northern Europe.

July–December

• July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails from France, again, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• August 15 – France under Louis XIV makes the Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.
• October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
• December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

Date unknown

• Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to end the Ottoman Turkish rule in Europe.
• Japanese poet Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses.
• The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford.
• Smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.
• John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2.
• The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the River Thames frost fairs on the Thames in London.

January–June

• February 6 – James Stuart, Duke of York becomes James II of England and Ireland and King James VII of Scotland in succession to his brother Charles II (1630–1685), King of Great Britain since 1660. James II and VII reigns to 1688.
• February 18 – Fort St. Louis is established by a Frenchman at Matagorda Bay, thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
• February 20 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, intending to establish a colony near the mouth of the Mississippi River, lands with 200 surviving colonists at Matagorda Bay on the Texas coast, believing the Mississippi near (Texas Handbook).
• March – Louis XIV of France passes the "Code Noir", allowing the full use of slaves in the French colonies.
• May 11 – The Killing Time: Five Covenanters in Wigtown, Scotland, notably Margaret Wilson, are executed for refusing to swear an oath declaring King James of England, Scotland and Ireland as head of the church, becoming the 'Wigtown martyrs'.
• June 11 – 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 Netherlands to challenge his uncle, James II, for the Crown of England.
• June 20 – Monmouth Rebellion: James, Duke of Monmouth declares himself at Taunton to be King and heir to his father's Kingdoms as James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland.

July–December

• July 6 – Monmouth Rebellion – Battle of Sedgemoor: the armies of King James II of England defeat rebel forces under Monmouth and capture the Duke himself, shortly after the battle.
• July 15 – The Duke of Monmouth is executed at Tower Hill, London.
• August 25 – The Bloody Assizes begin in Winchester; over 1000 of Monmouth's rebels tried and condemned to death or transportation.
• September – The first organised street lighting was introduced in London with oil lamps to be lit outside every tenth house on moonless winter nights.
• October 18–October 19 – Louis XIV issues the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revokes the Edict of Nantes and declares Protestantism illegal, thereby depriving Huguenots of civil rights.

Date unknown

• The Chinese army of the Qing Dynasty attacks a Russian post at Albazin, during the reigns of the Kangxi Emperor and the dual Russian rulers Ivan V of Russia and Peter I of Russia. The events lead to the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
• Adam Baldridge finds a pirate base at Île Sainte-Marie in Madagascar.

January–June

• May 4 – The Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines.

July–December

• July 22 – New York City and Albany, New York are granted city charters by the colonial governor.
• September 2 – The forces of the Holy League of 1684 liberate Buda from Ottoman Turkish rule (leading to the end of Turkish rule in Hungary during the subsequent years).

Date unknown

• The historian and naturalist, Robert Plot, publishes his Natural history of Staffordshire, a collection of illustrations and texts detailing the history of the county. It was the first document known to mention crop circles and the double sunset over the Cheshire Plain.
• James VII of Scotland and James II of England tries to persuade Parliament to repeal the Test Acts, which bar Catholics from public office. Having failed, he issues a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspends penal laws against both Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Suspicions about James' intentions grow as he systematically places Catholics in key positions.
• A group of conspirators meet at Charborough House in Dorset to plan the overthrow of King James and replace him with the Protestant Dutch Stadtholder, William III of Orange-Nassau.
• The League of Augsburg is founded in response to claims made by Louis XIV of France on the Palatinate in western Germany. It comprises the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain and the electors of Bavaria, Saxony and the Palatinate.
• Russia, Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria join the Holy League against the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Imperial forces under Austrian leadership invade Ottoman-occupied Hungary and advance on Budapest.
• In Greece, Ottoman-occupied Morea (i.e., the Peloponnese) falls to the Venetians.
• A hurricane saves Charleston, South Carolina, from attack by Spanish vessels.
• The Dominion of New England is formed.

January–June

• March 19 – The men under explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle murder him while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• April 4 – King James II of England issues the Declaration of Indulgence, aka the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience, suspending laws against Catholics and non-conformists. It extends toleration of all religions in England.
• May 6 – Emperor Higashiyama succeeds Emperor Reigen on the throne of Japan.

July–December

• July 5 – Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, ushering in a tidal wave of changes in thought that would significantly accelerate the already ongoing scientific revolution by giving it tools that produced technologically valuable results, which had theretofore been otherwise unobtainable. See also Writing of Principia Mathematica.
• August 12 – Battle of Mohács (1687): imperial army under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine defeats the Ottoman Turks and enables Austria to conquer most of Ottoman-occupied Hungary.
• September – The Venetian navy raids the Dalmatian coast and attacks Turkish strongholds in Greece. On 28 September, the Parthenon in Athens is badly damaged when Venetian mortar fire explodes a Turkish powder magazine housed in the building.
• November 8 – Suleiman II (1687–1691) succeeds the deposed Mehmed IV as Ottoman Emperor.
• December 31 – In response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a group of Huguenots set sail from France and settle in the recently established Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope where, using their native skills, they establish the first South African vineyards.

January–June

• March – William Dampier makes the first recorded visit to Christmas Island.
• March 1 – Great fire devastates Bungay in England.
• Spring – James VII and II orders his Declaration of Indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics, to be read from every Anglican pulpit in England. The Church of England and its staunchest supporters, the peers and gentry, are outraged.
• April 18 (Julian calendar) – The Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery is drafted by four Germantown Quakers.
• April 29 – Death of Friedrich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg-Prussia. Friedrich III becomes Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia until 1701, when he becomes the first King of Prussia as Friedrich I.
• June 10 – The birth of King James' heir, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766; later to become known as the "Old Pretender") increases public disquiet about a Catholic dynasty. The fears are confirmed when the baby is baptised into the Catholic faith.
• June 30 – A high-powered conspiracy of notables (the Immortal Seven) invite Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange and Princess Mary to "defend the liberties of England" and depose King James VII and II.

July–December

• July – Phetracha stages a coup d'état and becomes king of Ayutthaya.
• October 27 – King James II of England dismisses minister Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland.
• November 1 – The Glorious Revolution: William III of Orange sets sail a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to take over England, Scotland and Ireland from King James II of England before the Glorious Revolution.
• November 5 – The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Torbay in England with a multinational force of 15,000 mercenaries. He makes no claim to the English Crown, saying only that he has come to save Protestantism and to maintain English liberty, and begins a march on London.
• November 9 – William of Orange captures Exeter after the magistrates flee the city.
• 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.
• November 26 – Hearing that William of Orange has landed in England, Louis XIV declares war on the Netherlands. Perhaps revealingly, he does not attack the Netherlands but instead strikes at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire with about 100,000 soldiers. The Nine Years' War begins in Europe and America.
• December 11 – Having led his army to Salisbury and been deserted by his troops, James VII and II attempts to flee to France.
• December 18 – William of Orange enters London.

Date unknown

• The Austrians incite a rebellion against the Ottomans in Bulgaria.
• Fall of Belgrade to the Austrians as the Ottoman Empire continues to lose ground in Europe.
• The Ottoman Turks besiege Vienna.
• Edward Lloyd opens the London coffee house that soon becomes a popular meeting place for shipowners, merchants, insurance brokers and underwriters. In time the business association they form will outgrow the coffee house premises and become Lloyd's of London.
• Neuruppin becomes a Prussian garrison town.
• Francesco Morosini becomes Doge of Venice.
• Janez Vajkard Valvasor becomes a member of the Royal Society.
• Antonio Verrio begins work on the Heaven Room at Burghley House.
• Earliest known mention of the balalaika.

January–June

• January 11 – Glorious Revolution: The Parliament of England declares King James II of England deposed.
• February 13 – William III and Mary II are proclaimed co-rulers of England, Scotland and Ireland.
• March – With French support, the former King James lands in Ireland, where there is a Catholic majority, hoping to use it as the base for a counter-coup. However, many Irish Catholics see him as an agent of Louis XIV of France and refuse to support him.
• March 2 – Nine Years' War: As French forces leave, they set fire to Heidelberg Castle and the nearby town of Heidelberg.
• April 11 – William III and Mary II are crowned as King and Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. Ireland does not recognise them yet, while the Estates of Scotland declare King James VII of Scotland deposed.
• April 18 – Boston Revolt: Unpopular Dominion of New England governor Sir Edmund Andros and other officials are overthrown by a "mob" of Bostonians. Andros, an appointee of James II, was disliked for his support of the Church of England and revocation of various colonial charters.
• May 12 – Nine Years' War: with both now ruled by William III, England and the Netherlands join the League of Augsburg, thus escalating the conflict.
• May 24 – The Bill of Rights 1689 establishes constitutional monarchy in England but with Roman Catholics barred from the throne. Parliament also passes the Act of Toleration protecting Protestants with Roman Catholics intentionally excluded. This effectively concludes the Glorious Revolution.
• May 25 – The last Hearth Tax is collected in England and Wales. It is abolished by William III of England.
• May 31 – Leisler's Rebellion – Calvinist Jacob Leisler deposes lieutenant governor Francis Nicholson and assumes control of the Province of New York.

July–December

• July 25 – Abolition of Council of Wales and the Marches.
• July 27 – Battle of Killiecrankie, near Pitlochry in Perthshire, is won by the Highland supporters of King James but their leader Viscount Dundee is killed and the Scottish rebellion fades away.
• August 2 – Boston Revolt: Sir Edmund Andros, former governor of the Dominion of New England, escapes from Boston to Connecticut, but is recaptured.
• August 5 – A force of 1,500 Iroquois attacks the village of Lachine, in New France.
• August 12 – Death of Innocent XI (Benedetto Odescalchi; 1611–1689), Pope since 1676. A man of integrity who has been described as the greatest Pope of the 17th century, he played a major part in founding both the League of Augsburg, against Louis XIV; and the Holy League, against the Ottoman Empire.
• August 21 – Battle of Dunkeld: English Orange Royalists defeat the Jacobite Royalists in Scotland.
• August 27 – China and Russia sign the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
• October 6 – Pope Alexander VIII succeeds Innocent XI as the 241st pope.
• November 22 – The Tsar decrees the construction of the Great Siberian Road to China.
• December 16 – The English Bill of Rights is officially declared in force.

Date unknown

• Beginning of King William's War (1689–1697) which is the first of four North American Wars until 1763 between English and French colonists, both sides allied to Native American tribes. The nature of the fighting is a series of raids on each other's settlements across the Canadian and New England borders. The English capture Port Royal in Nova Scotia but otherwise there are no real territorial gains: each side would attack, destroy and withdraw.
• The British East India Company expands its influence with the establishment of administrative districts called presidencies in the Indian provinces of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, the effective beginning of the company's long rule in India.
• Supporters of William of Orange seize Liverpool Castle.
• In Russia, Peter the Great seizes power from his half-sister Sophia.
• Valvasor's The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola is printed in Nuremberg.