June - England signs a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire.
6 July - New building banned within three miles of the City of London.
7 July - Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion begin a Jesuit mission in an attempt to restore Roman Catholicism to England, having landed the previous month.
From about this date an informal College or Society of Antiquaries begins to meet.
1587
8 February - Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.
1 March - Sir Anthony Cope and Sir Peter Wentworth are imprisoned for attempting to bring forward Parliamentary legislation interfering with the Queen's ecclesiastical prerogative.
28–30 May - The Spanish Armada sets sail from the Tagus estuary for an attempted invasion of England.
19 July - The Armada is sighted off The Lizard in Cornwall; the news is relayed to London via a series of beacons built along the south coast.
21 July - The first engagement between the English and Spanish fleets, off Plymouth, results in an English victory. The English fleet is under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham with Sir Francis Drake as Vice Admiral.
23 July - The English and Spanish fleets meet again, off Portland; the English again have the better of it.
28 July - The English send fire ships into the French fleet, now anchored off Calais, breaking their formation.
29 July - The English fleet defeats the Armada at the Battle of Gravelines.
2 August - The fleeing Spanish fleet sails past the Firth of Forth and the English call off their pursuit. Much of the Spanish fleet will be destroyed by storms as it sails for home around Scotland and Ireland.
October–November - The Marprelate Controversy, a war of pamphlets between Presbyterians and supporters of the established church, breaks out with publication of the Epistle by "Martin Marprelate" on Robert Waldegrave's secret press at Molesey and Fawsley.
First record of marbles being played at Tinsley Green, West Sussex.
1588–1589 - Earliest probable date for the composition and first performance of Christopher Marlowe's The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus in London.
1589
13 April - An English Armada led by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys and largely financed by private investors sets sail to attack the Iberian Peninsula's Atlantic coast but fails to achieve any naval advantage.
Publication of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation begins.
