1690s

Events

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

1690

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 said to have been invented in Nuremberg, Germany.^[1]
• February 3 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony issues the first paper money in North America.
• May 20 – England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of the deposed James II.
• June 14 – King William III of England (William of Orange) 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.^[2]

Battle of the Boyne

• July 11 – Battle of the Boyne, north of Dublin. King William III of England (William of Orange) defeats the deposed James II who returns to exile in France.^[3][4][5] The rebellion in Ireland continues for a further year until the Orange army gains full control.
• July 26 – French landing party raids and burns Teignmouth in Devon, England. However, with the loss of James II's position in Ireland, any plans for a real invasion are soon shelved and Teignmouth is the last-ever French attack on England.
• August 24 – In India, the fort and trading settlement of Sutanuti - which later becomes Calcutta - is founded on the Hooghly River by the English East India Company following signing of an Anglo-Moghul treaty.^[4]
• 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.
• October 8 – Ottomans recapture Belgrade during Great Turkish War.
• November 17 – Barclays Is founded in London, England.
• 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 Ancona in the Papal States of Italy.

Date unknown

• Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic leads the first of the two Great Serbian Migrations into the Habsburg Empire, following Ottoman atrocities in Kosovo.
• The Hearth Tax is abolished in Scotland, one year after its abolition in England and Wales.
• French physicist Denis Papin, while in Leipzig and having observed the mechanical power of atmospheric pressure on his 'digester', builds a working model of a reciprocating steam engine for pumping water, the first of its kind, though not efficient.
• Giovanni Domenico Cassini observes differential rotation within Jupiter's atmosphere.
• Arcangelo Corelli publishes his Concerti Grossi.
• The Barrage Vauban, a defensive work in the city of Strasbourg (in present-day France) was completed
• Possible year of the disappearance of the western part of the island of Buise in St. Peter's Flood.

1691

January–June

• March 5 – Nine Years' War: French troops under Marshal Louis-Francois de Boufflers besiege the Spanish-held town of Mons.
• March 20 – Leisler's Rebellion: A new governor arrives in New York – Jacob Leisler surrenders after a standoff of several hours.^[6]
• March 29 – The Siege of Mons ends in the city’s surrender.
• April 9 – A fire at the Palace of Whitehall in London destroys its Stone Gallery.
• May 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.
• May 16 – Jacob Leisler is hanged for treason.
• June 23 – Ahmed II (1691–1695) succeeds Suleiman II (1687–1691) as emperor of the Ottoman Empire.

July–December

• July 12
  • Pope Innocent XII becomes the 242nd pope, succeeding Pope Alexander VIII.
  • Williamite War in Ireland: Battle of Aughrim: Protestant Williamite forces led by Godert de Ginkell decisively defeat Jacobites under the Marquis de St Ruth (who is killed).
• September 18 – Battle of Leuze: English and Dutch forces defeated by the French in the War of the Grand Alliance.
• October 3 – The Treaty of Limerick, ending the Williamite War in Ireland and guaranteeing civil rights to Roman Catholics, is signed. (It was broken "before the ink was dry") The Flight of the Wild Geese — the departure of the Jacobite army — follows.

Date unknown

• Michel Rolle invents Rolle's theorem, an essential theorem of mathematics.
• In New England the two separate colonies of Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony are united into a single entity by an act of the King and Queen of England.
• The Khalkha submit to the Manchu invaders, bringing most of modern-day Mongolia under the rule of the Qing dynasty.

• Textile factory Barnängens manufaktur is founded in Stockholm, Sweden.

1692

January–June

• February 13 – Massacre of Glencoe: The forces of Robert Campbell slaughter 38 members of the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in Scotland (from whom they have previously accepted hospitality) for a delay in signing 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.^[7]
• June 1–3 – The Battle of La Hogue is the decisive naval battle in the Nine Years' War, ending in an Anglo-Dutch victory.
• June 7 – Jamaica earthquake: An earthquake and related tsunami destroy Port Royal, capital of Jamaica, and submerge 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 trials investigations and convictions lead to several months of hangings, starting with Bridget Bishop who was killed on June 10th. By the end of September, 14 women and 5 men have been hanged. On September 19, another man, Giles Corey, is pressed to death in an attempt to coerce a plea from him to the accusation of witchcraft.

July–December

• September 8 – An earthquake in Brabant of scale 5.8 is felt across the Low Countries, Germany and England.^[8]
• 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.

• October 21 – In Barbados, a slave revolt is crushed.

1693

January–June

• January 11 – 1693 Sicily earthquake: Mount Etna erupts, causing a devastating earthquake that affects parts of Sicily and Malta.
• February 8 – The College of William & 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, capital of the Electoral Palatinate.
• May 22 – Heidelberg is taken by invading French forces, and the castle is surrendered on May 23, after which the French blow up the towers of Heidelberg Castle using mines.
• June 27 – Nine Years' War: The French fleet defeats the joint Dutch and English fleet at the Battle of Lagos off Portugal.

July–December

• July 29 – Nine Years' War: The Dutch–English army led personally by King William III of England is defeated by the French (with Irish Jacobite mercenaries) at the Battle of Landen near Neerwinden in Flemish Brabant.
• October 11 – Charleroi falls to French forces.
• October – William Congreve's comedy stageplay The Double-Dealer is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.^[9][10]

Date unknown

• China concentrates all its foreign trade on Canton; European ships are taken apart and burned to help keep the lions warm.
• A religious schism takes place in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists led by Jakob Ammann. Those who follow Ammann become the Mennonite Amish sect.^[11]
• The Knights of the Apocalypse are formed in Italy.
• The Academia Operosorum Labacensium is established in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• Financier Richard Hoare relocates Hoare's Bank (founded 1672) from Cheapside to Fleet Street in London.
• John Locke publishes his influential book Some Thoughts Concerning Education.^[12]

• William Penn publishes his proposal for European federation, Essay on the Present and Future Peace of Europe.^[10]
• Dimitrie Cantemir presents his Kitâbu 'İlmi'l-Mûsiki alâ Vechi'l-Hurûfât (The Book of the Science of Music through Letters) to Sultan Ahmed II, which deals with melodic and rhythmic structure and practice of Ottoman music and contains the scores for around 350 works composed during and before his own time in an alphabetical notation system he invented.

1694

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 of Quilombo dos Palmares, Brazil, is destroyed.
• March 1 – The HMS Sussex treasure fleet of thirteen ships is wrecked in the Mediterranean 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 of England following a proposal by the Scottish merchant William Paterson to raise capital by offering safe and steady returns of interest guaranteed by future taxes. A total of £1.2 billion is raised for the war effort against Louis XIV of France by the end of the year to establish the first-ever government debt.
• September 5 – The Great Fire of Warwick in England.
• Autumn – A major windstorm spreads the Culbin Sands over a large area of farmland in Scotland.
• October 25 – Queen Mary II of England founds the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.^[13]
• December – Thomas Tenison is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
• December 3 – The Parliament of England passes the Triennial Act requiring general elections every three years.^[14]
• December 28 – Queen Mary II of England dies of smallpox aged 32, 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) as his official heiress.

Date unknown

• The Lao empire of Lan Xang unofficially ends.
• Notorious voyage of the English slave ship Hannibal in the Atlantic slave trade out of Benin, ending with the death of nearly half of the 692 slaves aboard.
• Rascians establish the settlement which will become Novi Sad on the Danube.
• The Académie française publishes the first complete edition of its Dictionnaire in Paris.

1695

January–June

• February 6 – Mustafa II (1695–1703) succeeds Ahmed II as Ottoman Emperor.
• April – The Parliament of England decides not to renew the Licensing Order of 1643 requiring press censorship.^[10]
• June 24 – Commission of Enquiry into the Massacre of Glencoe in Scotland in 1692 reports to the Parliament of England, blaming Sir John Dalrymple, Secretary of State over Scotland, and declares that a soldier should refuse to obey a "command against the law of nature".

July–December

• July 17 – The Bank of Scotland is founded by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland.
• August 8 – The Wren Building is started in Williamsburg, Virginia (completed in 1700).
• August 13–15 – Nine Years' War: Bombardment of Brussels by French troops.
• September 1 – Nine Years' War: France surrenders Namur in the Spanish Netherlands to forces of the Grand Alliance led by King William III of England following the 2-month Siege of Namur.^[15]
• September 7 – English pirate Henry Every perpetrates one of the most profitable 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.^[15] Some windows are bricked up to avoid it.

Date unknown

• Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
• English manufacturers call for an embargo on Indian cloth and silk weavers picket the House of Commons of England.
• 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.
• After many years of construction, the Potala Palace in Lhasa 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 guilder loan to the Holy Roman Emperor. From this date on, European leaders commonly take advantage of the low interest rates available in the Dutch Republic and borrow several hundred millions on the Dutch capital market.^[16]
• The Great Famine of 1695–1697 begin in Swedish Estonia and spread across Finland, Latvia, Norway and Sweden.

1696

January–June

• January –
  • Great Recoinage of 1696: The Parliament of England passes the Recoinage Act in England.
  • Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in England.
• 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 Sint Eustatius.

July–December

• July 18 – The fleet of Tsar Peter The Great occupies Azov at the mouth of the Don River.
• July 29 – King Louis XIV of France and Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, sign a peace treaty.
• August 13 – The Dutch state of Drenthe makes William III of Orange its Stadtholder.
• August 22 – Forces of the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire clash near Andros.
• November 21 – John Vanbrugh's play The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane 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 Évora, Portugal.

Date unknown

• Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville captures and destroys St. John's, Newfoundland.
• 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.
• Edward Lloyd (coffeehouse owner) probably begins publication of Lloyd's News, a predecessor of Lloyd's List, in London.

1697

January–June

• January – French writer Charles Perrault publishes Histoires ou contes du temps passé ("Mother Goose tales") in Paris, a collection of popular fairy tales, including Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Red Riding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard.
• January 8 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Great Britain to be executed for blasphemy when he is hanged outside Edinburgh.
• March 9 – Peter the Great of Russia sets out to travel in Europe officially incognito as "Artilleryman Pjotr Mikhailov".
• March 13 – The Spanish conquest of Petén, and of Yucatán, is completed with the fall of Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya Kingdom, the last independent indigenous peoples of the Americas.
• March 22 – Charles II of Spain issued a Royal Cedula extending to the indigenous nobles of the Spanish Crown colonies, as well as to their descendants, the preeminence and honors customarily attributed to the Hidalgos of Castile.^[17]
• April 5 – Charles XII, the "Swedish Meteor", becomes king of Sweden upon the death of his father, Charles XI.
• May 7 – The 13th century royal Tre Kronor ("Three Crowns") castle in Stockholm burns to the ground. A large portion of the royal library is destroyed.
• June 1 – Augustus II the Strong becomes king of Poland.
• June 30 – The earliest known first-class cricket match takes place in Sussex (England).

July–December

Battle of Senta

• September 5 – Battle of Hudson's Bay (Nine Years' War): French warsship Pélican captures York Factory, a trading post of the English Hudson's Bay Company in modern-day Manitoba (Canada).
• 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

• The Manchus of the Qing dynasty conquers Outer Mongolia.
• The Royal African Company loses its monopoly on the slave trade.
• Christopher Polhem starts Sweden's first technical school.
• The use of palanquins increases in Europe.

1698

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, England 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.^[18]
• August 25 – Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow: General Patrick Gordon has already crushed the Streltsy Uprising, 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.^[19]
• November – Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kōchi) 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.^[20]
• 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.

1699

January–June

• January 19 – The Parliament of England (under Tory dominance) limits the size of the country's standing army to 7,000 'native born' men.^[21] King William III's Dutch Blue Guards hence cannot serve in the line. By Act of February 1, it also requires disbandment of foreign troops in Ireland.^[22]
• January 26 – Treaty of Karlowitz is concluded. The Republic of Venice, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Holy Roman Empire 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 Temeswar. The Peloponnese and Dalmatia are ceded to Venice. Large parts of the Ukraine are ceded to Poland. The treaty marks a major geopolitical shift as the Ottoman Empire subsequently abandoned its expansionism and adopted a defensive posture.
• February 4 – 350 rebellious Streltsy are executed in Moscow.
• March 2 – The Edinburgh Gazette is first published.
• 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).
• June 11 – England, France and the Dutch Republic agree on the terms of the Second Partition Treaty for Spain.
• June 14 – Thomas Savery demonstrates his first steam pump to the Royal Society of London.

July–December

• July 6 – Pirate Captain William Kidd is arrested and imprisoned in Boston, Massachusetts.
• July 26 – William Dampier's expedition to New Holland (Australia) in HMS Roebuck reaches Dirk Hartog Island at the mouth of what he calls Shark Bay in Western Australia and begins producing the first known detailed record of Australian flora and fauna.^[23]
• August 25 – Death of Christian V, King of Denmark–Norway since 1670. He is succeeded by his son Frederick IV (to 1730).
• September 22
  • Citizens of Rotterdam in the Netherlands strike over the high price of butter.
  • Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye calls for the partition of the Swedish Empire between the Tsardom of Russia, Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, Electorate of Saxony and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• 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.

Undated

• Billingsgate Fish Market in London is sanctioned as a permanent institution by Act of Parliament.

In fiction

• May 4 – The beginning of Gulliver's Travels (1726).

References