1690s

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	16th century – 17th century – 18th century
Decades:	1660s 1670s 1680s – 1690s – 1700s 1710s 1720s
Years:	1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699
Categories:	Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments

1690s: events by year

Contents: 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699

January–June

• January 6 – Joseph, son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, becomes King of the Romans.
• January 7 – The first recorded full peal is rung, at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, marking a new era in change ringing.
• January 14 – The clarinet is invented in Nuremberg, Germany.
• February 3 – The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in America.
• May 20 – England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
• June – William III lands in Ireland to confront James II.
• June 8 – Siddi general Yadi Sakat, razes the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai.

July–December

• July 10 – Anglo-Dutch navy defeated by the French in the Battle of Beachy Head (also known as the Battle of Bévéziers), giving rise to fears of a Jacobite invasion of England.
• July 12 – Battle of the Boyne, north of Dublin. James VII & II is defeated and sails back to France. The rebellion in Ireland continues for a further year until the Orange army gains control.
• July 26 – French landing party raids and burns Teignmouth in Devon. However, with the loss of James VII & II's position in Ireland, any plans for a real invasion are soon shelved and Teignmouth is the last-ever French attack on England.
• September 25 – The only issue of Publick Occurrences is published in Boston, Massachusetts, before being suppressed by the colonial authorities.
• October 6–12 October – Massachusetts Puritans led by Sir William Phips besiege the city of Quebec. The siege ends in failure.
• December – Earliest recorded sighting of the planet Uranus, by John Flamsteed, who mistakenly catalogues it as the star 34 Tauri.
• December 29 – An earthquake hits Anconer in the Papal States, Italy.

Date unknown

• Arsenije III Carnojevic, Patriarch of Serbia, leads the first of the two Great Serbian Migrations into the Habsburg Empire, following Ottoman atrocities in Kosovo.
• Belgrade recaptured by Ottoman Turks from the Austrians.
• Earliest type of piston steam engine patented by French physicist Denis Papin. It is used for pumping water but is not efficient.
• Arcangelo Corelli publishes the Concerti Grossi.
• Giovanni Domenico Cassini observes differential rotation within Jupiter's atmosphere.
• The Hearth Tax is abolished in Scotland, one year after its abolition in England and Wales.
• An Anglo-Moghul treaty allows the British East India Company to establish a fort and trading settlement on the Hooghly River, which becomes Calcutta.
• Possible year of the disappearance of the island Buise in St. Peter's Flood.

January–June

• February 13 – Massacre of Glencoe: The forces of Robert Campbell slaughter 38 members of the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe for allegedly refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to King William III of England.
• March 1 – The Salem witch trials begin in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony, with the charging of 3 women with witchcraft.
• March 22 – The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty issues the Edict of Toleration recognizing all the Roman Catholic Church, not just the Jesuits, and legalizing missions and their conversion of Chinese people.
• June 1–June 3 – The Battle of La Hougue is the decisive naval battle in the Nine Years' War, ending in an Anglo-Dutch victory.
• June 7 – An earthquake and related tsunami destroy Port Royal, capital of Jamaica and submerges a major part of it – an estimated 2,000 are immediately killed, 2,300 injured, and a probable additional 2,000 die from the diseases which ravage the island in the following months.
• June 8 – During a famine in Mexico City, an angry mob torches the Viceroy's palace and ignites the archives: most of the documents and some paintings are saved by royal geographer Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.
• June 10 – Salem witch trial investigations and convictions lead to several months of hangings. By the end of September, 14 women including Bridget Bishop and 5 men had been hanged. Another man, Giles Corey was tortured to death in an attempt to coerce a guilty plea from him by crushing him with rocks.

July–December

• September 8 – An earthquake in Brabant of scale 5.8 is felt across the Low Countries, Germany and England.
• September 14 – Diego de Vargas leads Spanish colonists in retaking the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a 12-year exile following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

January–June

• January 11 – Mount Etna erupts, causing a devastating earthquake that affects parts of Sicily and Malta.
• February 8 – The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a Royal charter from King William III and Queen Mary II of England.
• May 18 – Forces of Louis XIV of France attack Heidelberg (now Germany), the Palatine capital.
• May 22 – The town of Heidelberg is taken by invading French forces, and the castle is surrendered on May 23.
• May – After the castle is surrendered, French forces blow up the towers of Heidelberg Castle using mines.

July–December

• July 29 – The Battle of Landen
• October 11 – Charleroi falls to the French forces

Date unknown

• China concentrates all its foreign trade on Canton; European ships are forbidden to land anywhere else.
• The Mennonite Amish sect is formed.
• The Knights of the Apocalypse are formed in Italy.
• The Academia operosorum Labacensis is established in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• Financier Richard Hoare relocates Hoare's Bank (founded 1672) from Cheapside to Fleet Street in London.
• The Royal Hospital School is founded in Greenwich, London.
• The Dodo becomes extinct.
• John Locke publishes his influential book Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

January–June

• February 5 – The ship Ridderschap van Holland is lost at sea after it departs the Cape of Good Hope, but does not arrive at Batavia.
• February 6 – The colony Quilombo dos Palmares, Brazil is destroyed.
• March 1 – The HMS Sussex treasure fleet (13 ships) is shipwrecked off Gibraltar with the loss of approximately 1,200 lives.

July–December

• July 27 – The Bank of England is founded through Royal Charter by the Whig-dominated Parliament to raise capital by offering safe and steady returns of interest guaranteed by future taxes. A total of £1.2 million is raised for the war effort against Louis XIV by the end of the year to establish the first-ever National Debt.
• September 5 – The Great Fire of Warwick.
• December – Thomas Tenison becomes Archbishop of Canterbury
• December 22 – The Triennial Bill becomes law.
• December 28 – Queen Mary II of England (1662–1694) dies of smallpox, leaving her husband King William III to rule alone but without an heir. Since he is also without a royal hostess, Mary's sister Princess Anne is summoned back to court. Having been banished after an unseemly row with the queen, she is now nominated as the official heiress.

Date unknown

• The Lao empire of Lan Xang unofficially ends.
• Notorious voyage of the slaver Hannibal (ship), ending with the death of nearly half of the 692 slaves aboard.

January–June

• February 6 – Mustafa II (1695–1703) succeeds Ahmed II as Ottoman Emperor.

July–December

• July 17 – The Bank of Scotland is founded by an Act of Parliament of the old Scottish Parliament.
• August 8 – The Wren Building is started in Williamsburg, Virginia (completed in 1700).
• August – Bombardment of Brussels
• September – Henry Every perpetrates one of the most profitable pirate raids in history with the capture of the Grand Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai. In response, Emperor Aurangzeb threatens to put an end to all English trading in India.
• December 31 – A window tax is imposed in England, causing many shopkeepers to brick up their windows to avoid it.

Date unknown

• Russia declares war on Turkey.
• A £2 fine is imposed for swearing in England.
• After 23 years of construction, Spain completes Castillo de San Marcos to protect St. Augustine, Florida from foreign threats.
• English manufacturers call for an embargo on Indian cloth and silk weavers picket the House of Commons.
• In England, Parliament decides against a renewal of the Licensing Act, putting an end to royal censorship of printing presses and so clearing the way for a free press on the Act's expiry in 1696.
• After many years of construction, the Potala Palace is completed.
• Gold is discovered in Brazil.
• In Amsterdam, the bank Wed. Jean Deutz & Sn. floats the first sovereign bonds on the local market. The scheme is designed to fund a 1.5 million guilders loan to the Emperor. From that date on, European leaders commonly took advantage of the low interest rates available in the Republic and borrow several hundred millions on the Dutch capital market.

January–June

• January
  • The Parliament of England passes the Recoinage Act.
  • Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is performed at the Theatre Royal.
• January 27 – In England, the ship HMS Royal Sovereign (formerly HMS Sovereign of the Seas 1638) catches fire and burns at Chatham, after 57 years of service.
• January 29 (O.S.) – Peter the Great becomes sole tsar of Russia, upon the death of Tsar Ivan V.
• January 31 – In the Netherlands, undertakers revolt after funeral reforms in Amsterdam.
• March 7 – King William III of England departs from the Netherlands.
• April – Fire destroys the Gra Bet (or Left Quarter) of Gondar, the capital of Ethiopia.
• May 31 – John Salomonsz is elected chief of Saint-Eustatius.

July–December

• July 18 – The fleet of Tsar Peter I of Russia occupies Azov at the mouth of the Don River.
• July 29 – French king Louis XIV and Victor Amadeus van Savoye sign a peace treaty.
• August 13 – The State of Drenthe announces Willem III as mayor.
• August 22 – Forces of Venice and Turkish troops clash near Molino.
• October 29 – Fuller Baptist Church is founded in Kettering, England.
• November 21 – John Vanbrugh's Relapse or Virtue in Danger premieres in London.
• December 7 – Connecticut Route 108, one of Connecticut's oldest highways is laid-out to Trumbull.
• December 19 – Jean-Francois Regnard's "Le Joueur" premieres in Paris.
• December 24 – The Inquisition burns a number of Marrano Jews in Evora, Portugal.

Date unknown

• Freedom of the press is granted by the British government which had already relaxed censorship following the Bill of Rights in 1689. Technically, freedom of the press came about because Parliament decided not to renew its Licensing Act in 1695. It is from this time that sport is increasingly reported.
• Lloyd's News, forerunner of Lloyd's List is founded.
• Polish replaces Ruthenian as an official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
• A famine wipes out almost a third of the population of Finland and a fifth of the population of Estonia.
• Abington, Pennsylvania is settled.
• William Penn offers an elaborate plan for intercolonial cooperation largely in trade, defense, and criminal matters.
• The Second Pueblo Revolt occurs.
• Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville captures and destroys St. John's, Newfoundland.

January–June

• March
  • Peter the Great sets out to travel in Europe officially incognito as "Artilleryman Pjotr Mikhailov".
  • The Spanish conquest of the Yucatan is complete with the fall of the Itza Kingdom.
• April 5 – Karl XII becomes king of Sweden upon the death of his father, Karl XI. Karl XII is known as the "Swedish Meteor".
• May 7 – The royal castle "Tre Kronor" ("Three Crowns") in Stockholm burns to the ground. A large portion of the royal library is destroyed.
• June 30 – The earliest known first-class cricket match took place in Sussex.

July–December

• September 11 – Battle of Zenta – Prince Eugene of Savoy crushes the Ottoman army of Mustafa II and effectively ends Turkish hopes of recovering lost ground in Hungary.
• September 20 – The Treaty of Ryswick signed by France and the Grand Alliance to end both the Nine Years' War and King William's War. The conflict having been inconclusive, the treaty is proposed because the combatants have exhausted their national treasuries. Louis XIV recognises William III as King of England & Scotland and both sides return territories they have taken in battle. In North America, the treaty returns Port Royal (Nova Scotia) to France. In practice, the treaty is little more than a truce; it does not resolve any of the fundamental colonial problems and the peace lasts only five years.
• December 2 – St Paul's Cathedral is opened in London.
• December 14 – Charles XII of Sweden is crowned king at the age of 15.

Date unknown

• French writer Charles Perrault publishes a collection of favourite fairy tales, including Red Riding Hood and The Sleeping Beauty.
• The use of palanquins increases in Europe.
• Christopher Polhem starts Sweden's first technical school.
• Tayasal, capital of the Itza Maya in the Petén Basin, the last independent Maya polity, is conquered by Spain.
• The Manchus of the Qing Dynasty conquers Outer Mongolia.
• The Royal African Company loses its monopoly on the slave trade.

January–June

• January 1 – The Abenaki tribe and the Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty ending the conflict in New England.
• January 4 – The Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.
• January 23 – George Louis (who in 1714 will become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.

July–December

• July 14 – Darien scheme: The first Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama.
• July 25 – English engineer Thomas Savery obtains a patent for a steam pump.
• August 25 – Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow: General Patrick Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion, with 341 rebels sentenced to be decapitated (tradition holds that tsar Peter decapitated some of them himself).
• September 5 – In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards: all men except priests and peasants are required to pay a tax of 100 rubles a year; commoners are required to pay one kopeck each.
• October 24 – Iberville and Bienville sail from Brest to the Gulf of Mexico to defend the southern borders of New France; they will eventually found three capitals of Louisiana (New France), as the future American cities: Mobile, Biloxi & New Orleans.
• November – Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid meteor shower, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
• November 14 – First Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth, England, illuminated.
• November 16 – A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.

Date unknown

• The Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping.
• Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
• John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough is reinstated in the English army after a period in disgrace.
• Bucharest becomes the capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
• In Africa, Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.
• Since the establishment of its presidencies in 1689, the British East India Company has been under constant pressure from traders who are not members of the company and are not licensed by the Crown to trade. Under a parliamentary ruling in favour of free trade, these private newcomers are able to set up a new company, called the New Company or English Company.

January–June

• January 26 – Treaty of Karlowitz is concluded. The Republic of Venice, Poland and Austria sign a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks cede to Austria all their former territories in Transylvania, Slavonia, Croatia and the whole of Hungary except for the Banat of Temesvar. The Peloponnese and Dalmatia are ceded to Venice. Large parts of the Ukraine are ceded to Poland. The treaty marks a significant stage in the decline of the Ottoman Empire that has dominated eastern Europe since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
• February 4 – 350 rebellious Streltsi are executed in Moscow.
• March 4 – Jews are expelled from Lübeck, Germany.
• April 13 – The 10th Sikh Master, Guru Gobind Singh, creates the Khalsa.
• May 1 – Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville founds the first European settlement in the Mississippi River Valley, at Fort Maurepas (Ocean Springs, Mississippi).
• May 4 – The beginning of the fictional Gulliver's Travels (1726).
• June 11 – England, France and the Netherlands agree on the Treaty of London (also known as the Second Partition Treaty of Spain).
• June 14 – Thomas Savery demonstrates his first steam engine to the Royal Society.

July–December

• July 6 – Pirate Capt. William Kidd is captured in Boston.
• August 25 – Death of Christian V, King of Denmark and Norway since 1670. He is succeeded by Frederick IV (to 1730).
• September 22
  • Citizens of Rotterdam strike over the high price of butter.
  • Treaty of Preobrasjensku: Denmark/Russia/Saksen/Poland divide Sweden.
• December 3 – Baron Jacob Hop is appointed as the treasurer-general of The Hague.
• December 20 – Peter the Great orders the Russian New Year changed from 1 September to 1 January.

Date unknown

• William Dampier explores the northwest coast of Australia.
• The Edinburgh Gazette is founded.
• England's Tory government reduces the standing army to 7,000 men who must all be British by birth. This causes friction between Parliament and the King, whose Dutch Blue Guards are deported.
• Billingsgate Fish Market is sanctioned as a permanent institution by Act of Parliament.