1647 in England

Events from the year 1647 in England.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Charles I

• 30 January – Scots hand over King Charles I to England in return for £40,000 of army back-pay.^[1] Thomas Fairfax meets the King beyond Nottingham and escorts him to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire.
• March – folk dancing and bear-baiting banned.^[1]
• 10 March – set aside by Parliament as a day of public humiliation under terms of February's "An Ordinance, concerning the growth and spreading of Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies, and for setting apart a day of Publike Humiliation, to seeke Gods assistance for the suppressing and preventing the same."^[2]
• 15 March – Harlech surrenders; the last Royalist castle to do so.^[1]
• 18 May – the
  House of Commons decides to disband the Army.^[3]
• 4 June – King Charles I taken to Newmarket as a prisoner of the New Model Army.^[3]
• June – the Long Parliament passes an ordinance confirming abolition of the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, though making the second Tuesday in each month a secular holiday.^[4]
• 15 July – the King is allowed (at the request of Fairfax) to meet his children (
  James, Duke of York, Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester, and Princess Elizabeth) for what will be the last time, at the Greyhound Inn, Maidenhead.^[5]
• 2 August – the King rejects the proposals set out in the Heads of Proposals.^[3]
• 7 August –
  MPs to raise the City of London having been unsuccessful.^[3]
• 8 August – Irish Confederate Wars: An English Parliamentary army defeats the Irish Confederate's Leinster army.^[3]
• 20 August – Parliament passes the Null and Void Ordinance.^[6]
• October – the
  Agreement of the People.^[3]
• 28 October–11 November – Putney Debates between the New Model Army and Levellers concerning a new national constitution.^[6]
• 11 November – the King attempts to escape captivity but is captured and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.^[3]
• 15 November – Corkbush Field mutiny: two regiments of the New Model Army threaten to mutiny.^[6]
• 24 December – Parliament presents the King with new demands which he rejects.^[3]
• 25 December – rioting in Canterbury and elsewhere over the celebration of Christmas.^[7]
• 26 December – the King signs a secret treaty with Scotland in which he promises to impose Presbyterianism in England in return for military assistance.^[8]

Undated

• Anglican professors are dismissed from the University of Oxford.^[3]

Births

• 1 April – John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, poet (died 1680)
• 3 April – Sir Thomas Littleton, 3rd Baronet, statesman (died 1709)
• 2 July – Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham, privy councillor (died 1730)
• 8 July – Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, courtier (died 1702)
• date unknown – Henry Aldrich, theologian and philosopher (died 1710)

Deaths

• 29 January – Francis Meres, writer (born 1565)
• 12 March –
  Sir Matthew Boynton, 1st Baronet
  , Member of Parliament (born 1591)
• 29 March – Charls Butler, beekeeper and philologist (born 1560)
• 20 April – Sir John Hobart, 2nd Baronet, politician (born 1593)
• 24 May – Ferdinando Gorges, colonial entrepreneur (born 1565)
• 9 June – Leonard Calvert, colonial governor (born 1606; died in Maryland)
• 12 June – Thomas Farnaby, grammarian (born c. 1575)
• 7 July – Thomas Hooker, religious and colonial leader (born 1586)
• 1 August – Degory Wheare, historian (born 1573)
• 12 August – Matthew Hopkins, "witchfinder general" (born c. 1620)
• 24 August – Nicholas Stone, sculptor and architect (born 1586)
• 8 October – Thomas Habington, antiquarian (born 1550)
• c. 8 October – Lady Anne Stanley, noblewoman, possible heiress to the throne (born 1580)
• 11 December – John Saltmarsh, chaplain, radical preacher (born c 1610)
• Elizabeth Raleigh, widow of Walter Raleigh (born 1565)

References