8 April - Winthrop Fleet: The ship named Teresa Arbella and three others set sail from the Solent with 400 passengers under the leadership of John Winthrop headed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America as part of the Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640); seven more, with another 300 aboard, follow in the next few weeks. The colonists begin to land at Salem in June and go on to found Boston.
June - Scottish-born Presbyterian Alexander Leighton is brought before ArchbishopWilliam Laud's Star Chamber court for publishing the seditious pamphlet An Appeale to the Parliament, or, Sions Plea Against the Prelacy (printed in the Netherlands, 1628). He is sentenced to be pilloried and whipped, have his ears cropped, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with "SS" (for "sower of sedition"), to be imprisoned, and be degraded from holy orders.
The central square of Covent Garden in London is laid out and a market begins to develop there.
1631
14 May - Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, and attainted for sodomy and for assisting in the rape of his wife following a leading case which admits the right of a spouse claiming to be injured to testify against her husband.
Poor harvest for second year in a row causes widespread social unrest.
20 June - Royal charter issued for the foundation of Maryland colony; Lord Baltimore appointed as the first governor.
July - Portraitist Anthony van Dyck, newly returned to London, is knighted and granted a pension as principalle Paynter in ordinary to their majesties.
17 October - The Court of Star Chamber prohibits all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austriandiplomats that coverage in England of the Thirty Years' War is unfair.
5 May - A royal proclamation confines flying of the Union Flag (the first recorded reference to it by this name) to the king's ships; English merchant vessels are to fly the flag of England.
7 May - William Prynne sentenced by the Star Chamber to a £5,000 fine, life imprisonment, pillorying and the loss of part of his ears when his Histriomastix is viewed as an attack on King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria.
20 October - King Charles I issues writs to raise ship money from coastal ports to finance the Royal Navy.
18 February - Eighty Years' War: Battle off Lizard Point: Off the coast of Cornwall, a Spanish fleet intercepts an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
30 April - King Charles issues a proclamation attempting to stem emigration to the North American colonies.
27 June - English merchants led by captain John Weddell establish the first trading settlement at Canton.
30 June - William Prynne is branded as a seditious libeller, and sentenced to pillorying and mutilation.
Member of Parliament John Hampden continues to refuse to pay ship money although a 7-5 majority verdict among a group of judges supports its legality.
1638
18 April - Flogging of John Lilburne for refusing to swear an oath when brought before the court of Star Chamber for distributing Puritan publications.
12 June - Trial of John Hampden for non-payment of ship money concludes.
