Directory

1605 CE

Stephen Bocskai is elected Prince of Transylvania at the capital, Belugrad (modern-day Alba Iulia in Romania.). The 1605 Guangdong earthquake, of 7.5 magnitude, strikes China's Hainan Province causing widespread damage and thousands of deaths. Eighty Years' War: Spanish troops under Ambrogio Spinola, 1st Marquess of Los Balbases, Captain-General of the Army of Flanders (newly appointed a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece), occupy Wachtendonk after a 20-day siege.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • March 11 – A proclamation declares all people of Ireland to be the direct subjects of the British Crown and not of any local lord or chief.source
  • April 16 – Tokugawa Ieyasu abdicates as shogun of Japan, becoming Ogosho (retired shogun). His son Tokugawa Hidetada succeeds him to the office.source

Conflict & Security

  • February 25 – Admiral Steven van der Hagen leads a fleet of ships for the Dutch East India Company and makes the first capture of land for the Netherlands in what will become the Dutch East Indies, and later Indonesia. Hagen's men capture the Portuguese citadel of Forte Amboino and the rest of Ambon Island, and make it the capital of the Dutch possessions in Asia.source
  • June 1 – Russian troops in Moscow imprison Feodor II and his mother, later executing them.source
  • August 14 – A Spanish attack on the Moorish fortress of Hammamet, in Ottoman Tunisia, ends in a disaster for the Spaniards. Although Spanish troops had managed to scale the walls and open the gates, they are suddenly ordered to retreat and are massacred while waiting on the coast for the return of the ships that brought them.source
  • August 19 – Eighty Years' War: The siege of the Dutch city of Lingen, by 13,000 Spanish troops and 3,000 cavalry, ends with the surrender of Captain Maerten Cobben after nine days of defense. Although the Dutch Republic's stadtholder, Maurice, Prince of Orange, had proclaimed that Lingen must be held at all costs, Dutch troops failed to come to Cobben's aid and Don Ambrogio Spinola of Spain peacefully takes control of the city.source
  • September 27 – Swedish armies are decisively defeated by Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth cavalry in the Battle of Kircholm.source
  • October 28 – Eighty Years' War: Spanish troops under Ambrogio Spinola, 1st Marquess of Los Balbases, Captain-General of the Army of Flanders (newly appointed a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece), occupy Wachtendonk after a 20-day siege.source
  • November 3 – Jahangir, the fourth Mughal Emperor, begins his 22-year reign over the Mughal Empire in northern India.source
  • November 5 (O.S.) – The Gunpowder Plot, a scheme to bomb England's Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament, is foiled after Sir Thomas Knyvet is tipped off, and finds Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building. Knyvet orders a search of the area and 36 barrels of gunpowder are found. Fawkes is arrested for trying to assassinate King James I and the members who had been scheduled to sit together in Parliament the next day.source
  • November 6 – The Iranian Safavid ruler Abbas the Great leads the Persian troops to a victory over a larger force of Ottoman Empire troops in the Battle of Sufiyan, and captures Tabriz.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • December 21 – On behalf of Spain, Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós begins his expedition to the South Pacific Ocean with 160 men on three ships. Queiros departs from Callao in the Viceroyalty of Peru with his flagship, San Pedro y San Pablo, and San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes.source
  • Habitation at Port-Royal established by France under Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, the first European colonization of Nova Scotia in North America (at this time part of Acadia); the Gregorian calendar is adopted.source
  • Crew of the Olive become the first English visitors to Barbados.source
  • Refugee French Huguenot merchants begin to settle in Dublin and Waterford.source

Religion & Belief

  • March 14 – The March–April 1605 papal conclave of Roman Catholic cardinals to elect a successor to Pope Clement VIII opens at the Vatican in Rome, 11 days after Clement's death. Sixty-one of the 69 cardinals meet behind closed doors for the rest of the month. Discussion becomes heated, with shouting and jostling.source
  • April 1 – Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, the Bishop of Pistoia, is elected by the assembled 61 cardinals at the papal conclave after 17 days of balloting. He takes the regnal name of Pope Leo XI to become the 232nd pope, but serves for less than four weeks.source
  • May 8 – A group of 59 Roman Catholic cardinals assemble at Rome for another papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Leo XI. During the meeting, a fistfight breaks out among the cardinals over the two rival candidates, Antonio Sauli and Domenico Toschi, neither of whom receive the necessary 40 votes for a two-thirds election. In the fight, Cardinal Alfonso Visconti sustains several fractures.source
  • May 16 – Camillo Borghese, Cardinal Vicar of Rome and cardinal-priest of Sant'Eusebio is elected the 233rd pope, and takes the name of Pope Paul V. Another "Year of Three Popes" will not occur until 373 years later, in 1978. Borghese is elected as a compromise candidate after the physical disagreements during the conclave.source
  • July 4 – A proclamation commands all Roman Catholic seminary priests and Jesuits to leave Ireland by December 10 and directs the laity to attend Church of Ireland services.source
  • July 21 – Claiming to be Dmitriy, son of Ivan the Terrible, a pretender is officially crowned Tsar Dimitriy Ioannovich of Russia in Moscow by Patriarch Ignatius.source
  • The Priory of St. Gregory's is founded at Douai, Flanders, at this time in the Spanish Netherlands, by its first prior, John Roberts, and other exiles, thus becoming the first English Benedictine house to renew conventual life after the English Reformation. More than two centuries later the community will establish Downside Abbey back in England.source

Health & Medicine

  • December 6 – In England, Thomas Bonham petitions to become a member of the College of Physicians in order for his practice to be legal, and is rejected. Dr. Bonham continues to practice, and is eventually imprisoned on November 13, 1606, leading to the landmark decision in Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610.source
  • Central Mexico's Amerindian population reaches one million.source

Climate & Environment

  • February 3 – The 1605 Keichō earthquake, of estimated 7.9 magnitude, strikes Japan south of the island of Honshu, and triggers a tsunami that washes away hundreds of houses and kills thousands of people.source
  • July 13 – The 1605 Guangdong earthquake, of 7.5 magnitude, strikes China's Hainan Province causing widespread damage and thousands of deaths.source

Culture & Society

  • January 1 – William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, copyrighted 1600, is given its earliest recorded performance, and witnessed by the Viscount Dorchester.source
  • January 7 – Shakespeare's play Henry V, copyrighted 1600, is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the Lord Chamberlain's Men for King James I of England.source
  • January 15 – Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost, copyrighted 1598, is given its second recorded performance, probably presented at the home of the Earl of Southampton for Queen Anne, wife of King James I of England.source
  • January 16 – The first part of Miguel de Cervantes' satire on the theme of chivalry, Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha"), is published in Madrid. One of the first significant novels in the western literary tradition, it becomes a global bestseller almost at once.source
  • February 10 – Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is given its earliest recorded performance, presented by the King's Men players at the Palace of Whitehall for King James I of England. A second performance is given on February 12, Shrove Tuesday, at the King's request.source
  • February 21 – Stephen Bocskai is elected Prince of Transylvania at the capital, Belugrad (modern-day Alba Iulia in Romania.)source
  • April 16 – In England, John Winthrop, later governor of the future Massachusetts Bay Colony, marries his first wife (of 4), Mary Forth, daughter of John Forth, of Great Stambridge, Essex.source
  • June 20 – Pretender Dmitriy and his supporters, including troops of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, march to Moscow.source
  • December 11 – King Sigismund III of Poland marries his former sister-in-law, Constance, daughter of Charles II, Archduke of Austria, after Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor refuses to permit the King to marry Anna of Tyrol. King Sigismund, a widow, had previously been married to Constance's older sister, Anne.source
  • The Irish College in Paris is co-founded by John Lee, an Irish priest, and John de l'Escalopier, President of the Parlement.source
  • The first issue of Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg (Holy Roman Empire), generally regarded as the world's first newspaper, is published. De Nieuwe Tijdinghen, a Dutch proto-newspaper, is also published this year.source
  • Francis Bacon's Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human is published in London.source

Births

  • January 16 – Shahryar, fifth and youngest son of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (d. 1628)source
  • February 1 – Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, Portuguese Sephardic rabbi (d. 1693)source
  • July 29 – Simon Dach, Prussian German lyrical poet and writer of hymns (d. 1659)source
  • August 6 – Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Archbishop-Elector of Mainz (1647– (d. 1673)source
  • August 6 – Bulstrode Whitelocke, English lawyer (d. 1675)source
  • August 8 – Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, first Proprietor and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland (d. 1675)source
  • August 25 – Philipp Moritz, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg, German noble (d. 1638)source
  • September 12 – William Dugdale, English antiquary and herald (d. 1686)source
  • September 14 – Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Icelandic bishop and scholar (d. 1675)source
  • October 15 – Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier, French princess (d. 1627)source
  • October 16 – Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, French writer and composer (d. 1677)source
  • October 19 – Sir Thomas Browne, English physician and philosopher (d. 1682)source
  • October 22 – Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, prince of the independent principality of Sedan (d. 1652)source
  • November 5 – Thomas Shepard, American Puritan minister and a significant figure in early colonial New England (d. 1649)source

Deaths

  • April 6 – John Stow, English historian and antiquarian (b. 1525)source
  • April 13 – Tsar Boris Godunov dies; Feodor II accedes to the Russian throne.source
  • April 13 – Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia (b. 1551)source
  • April 25 – Naresuan, Siamese King of Ayutthaya kingdom (b. c. 1555)source
  • July 26 – Rev. Fr. Miguel de Benavides, O.P., Spanish clergyman and sinologist (b. 1552)source
  • August 2 – Richard Leveson, English admiral (b. c. 1570)source
  • August 4 – Charles I, Duke of Elbeuf, French duke and nobleman (b. 1556)source
  • September 19 – Edward Lewknor, English politician (b. 1542)source
  • October 13 – Theodore Beza, French theologian (b. 1519)source
  • October 27 – Akbar The Great, Mughal emperor (b. 1542)source
  • October 27 – The 3rd Mughal Emperor, Akbar "the Great", dies of dysentery at Fatehpur Sikri in India.source
  • November 8 – Robert Catesby, English conspirator (b. 1573)source
  • November 9 – Handan Sultan, Valide Sultan, mother of Ahmed I of Ottoman Empire (b.1568)source
  • December – Francis Tresham, English conspirator (b. 1567)source