1638 in England

Incumbents

• Monarch – Charles I
• Secretary of State – Sir John Coke

Events

• 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: a narrow majority of judges find the tax to be legal.
• 21 October – The Great Thunderstorm at Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Devon: 4 are killed and around 60 injured when probable ball lightning strikes the parish church.
• The Queen's House at Greenwich, designed by Inigo Jones in 1616 as the first major example of classical architecture in the country, is completed for Henrietta Maria.
• John Milton's elegy "Lycidas" is published.

Births

• 24 January – Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, poet and courtier (died 1706)
• 6 March– Henry Capell, 1st Baron Capell, First Lord of the British Admiralty (died 1696)
• 2 June – Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, politician (died 1709)
• 24 December – Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu, diplomat (died 1709)
• William Sacheverell, statesman (died 1691)

Deaths

• 14 September – John Harvard, clergyman and colonist (born 1607)

References

References

1. "''1638'', British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate 1638–60".
2. Display captions at house, October 2016.
3. Palmer, Alan. (1992). "The Chronology of British History". Century Ltd.