1607

Updated on Oct 09, 2024

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1607 (MDCVII) was a common year starting on Monday (dominical letter G) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday (dominical letter D) of the Julian calendar, the 1607th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 607th year of the 2nd millennium, the 7th year of the 17th century, and the 8th year of the 1600s decade. As of the start of 1607, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

January–June

January 13 – The Bank of Genoa fails after the announcement of national bankruptcy in Spain.

January 19 – San Agustin Church, Manila, is officially completed; by the 21st century it will be the oldest church in the Philippines

January 30 – A massive wave sweeps along the Bristol Channel, possibly a tsunami, killing 2,000 people.

February 24 – Première of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, the earliest fully developed opera in the modern-day repertoire, at the Ducal Palace of Mantua.

March 10 – Susenyos defeats the combined armies of Yaqob and Abuna Petros II at the Battle of Gol in Gojjam, which makes him Emperor of Ethiopia.

April 25 – Battle of Gibraltar: A Dutch fleet destroys a Spanish fleet anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar.

April 26 – English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, later moving up the James River.

May 14 – Jamestown, Virginia, is established as the first permanent English settlement in North America (the modern-day United States), beginning the American frontier.

May 15 – Jamestown: Christopher Newport, George Percy, Gabriel Archer, and others travel 6 days exploring along the James River up to the falls and Powhatan's village.

May 26

Jamestown: The president directs the fort to be strengthened and armed against the many attacks of the natives: "Hereupon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed, the ordinance mounted, his men armed and exercised, for many were the assaults and Ambuscadoes of the Savages ..." [John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964)]

200 armed Indians attack the Jamestown settlement, killing 2 and wounding 10.

May 28 – Jamestown: The Fort is pallisadoed: "we laboured, pallozadoing our fort" [Gabriel Archer (Arber)].

June 5 – John Hall marries Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare.

June 8 – Newton rebellion: The Tresham landowners family kills 40–50 peasants during protests against the enclosure of common land in Newton, Northamptonshire, England, at the culmination of the Midland Revolt.

June 10 – Jamestown: Captain John Smith is released from arrest and sworn in as a member of the colony Council.

June 15 – Jamestown: The triangular fort is completed and armed: "The fifteenth of June we had built and finished our Fort, which was triangle wise, having three Bulwarkes, at every corner, like a halfe Moone, and foure or five pieces of Artillerie mounted in them. We had made our selves sufficiently strong for these Savages. We had also sowne most of our Corne on two Mountaines." [George Percy (Tyler 1952:19)]

June 22 – Christopher Newport sails back to England.

June 27 – Jamestown: The colony bears extreme toil in strengthening the fort [from John Smith, Proceedings (Barbour 1964:210)].

July–December

August 13 – The ship Gift of God of the Plymouth Company arrives at the mouth of the modern-day Kennebec River in Maine. English colonists establish Fort St. George, also known as the Popham Colony. The settlement lasts little more than a year, before residents return to England in the first oceangoing ship built in the New World, a 30-ton pinnace called The Virginia.

September 5 – Hamlet is performed aboard the East India Company ship Red Dragon, under the command of Capt. William Keeling, anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone, the first known performance of a Shakespeare play outside England in English, and the first by amateurs.

September 10 – Jamestown President Edward Maria Wingfield is deposed and John Ratcliffe elected.

September 14 – Flight of the Earls: Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rudhraighe Ó Domhnail, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, flee Ireland for Spain with ninety followers to avoid capture by the English crown, never to return.

December (early) – Captain John Smith of the Jamestown Colony is captured by Opchancanough and then sent to Chief Powhatan for execution; Pocahontas rescues him.