Timeline

1533 Born

1538 I went to "Petty School" to be taught to read and write English, learn the catechism and also learn lessons in behaviour.

1540 Was sent to Grammar school at Hadleigh. (Note: Sir William Clopton of Kentwell Hall received a piece of land called Church Croft together with a certain long house called Market House As part of his inheritance, in the town of Hadleigh. Sir William made the town a gift of the land, reserving for himself the use of Market House. The next year he rented Market House to the town at the annual rent of one red rose. The central two-story portion of Market House was used as a Guildhall. Somewhere between 1460 and 1470 Market House was enlarged by the addition of two wings. The old Hadleigh Grammar School occupied the west wing in the 16th Century. The earliest record of the grammar school is dated May 7, 1382 but it doubtless existed before then since Hadleigh men had taken degrees at Cambridge before 1370.)

1547 Apprenticed to my uncle Edmund Stile

1547 Henry VIII, King of England, dies

1547 Edward VI becomes King of England

1553 Edward VI dies

1553 Lady Jane Grey become Queen of England for 10 days.

1553 Sir Hugh Willoughby (d. 1554) was an early British Arctic voyager. He was sent out in 1553 as captain of the Bona Esperanza with two other vessels under the command of Richard Chancellor by a company of London merchants known as "the Mystery Company and Fellowship of Mechant Adventurers for the Discovery of Unknown Lands" later to be known as the "Russia Company" or the "Muscovy Company".

1553 Mary I becomes Queen of England

1554 End of my apprenticeship.

1554 Saturday becomes a fish day in addition to Friday. My Uncle buys several Yarmouth Herring boats. I am to organise the transportation of the catch each year for sale in London. I find this rather boring but will use the experience to my benefit later in life.

1554 Mary I, Queen of England, marries Prince Philip of Spain.

1554 The bodies of Sir Hugh Willoughby and the crew of the Bona Esperanza found frozen by Russian fishermen.

1554 Wyatt's rebellion.

1555 Henry II of Navarre (born 1503 and the grandfather of Henry IV of France ) dies.

1555 The Muscovy Company is formed. (the Russia Company) from "the Mystery Company and Fellowship of Mechant Adventurers for the Discovery of Unknown Lands."

1555 Rowland Taylor ( October 6 , 1510 - February 9 , 1555 ) He was an English Protestant martyr and was burnt at Hadleigh in Suffolk. At the time of his death he was Rector, or Anglican parish priest, of the parish of Hadleigh.

1555 I travel with Richard Chancellor, the famous navigator to Russia on his second visit. I am to be my uncles's factor in Muscovy. We learn of the grizzly fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his companions.

1555 Observations of whales by voyagers of the Muscovy Company lead to the opening by the English of a whale fishery at Spitsbergen.

1555 The czar of Muscovy Ivan IV (the Terrible) completes his conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan from the Tatars. His triumph opens the way for Russian expansion to the east and southeast.

1556 I start a small amount of trading on my own behalf in Russia.

1556 Philip II becomes King of Spain.

1556 Cranmer burnt at the stake.

1556 Richard Chancellor meets his death on the return voyage on his ship the "Edward" on reaching the Scottish coast was wrecked at Pitlago on the 7th of November . The ship I returned on was the "Phillip and Mary" which had successfully wintered in Trondheim in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway ruled by King Christian III.

1557 A 14-year Livonian War begins as Mucovite forces invade Poland, the Swedes take Estonia, and the Danes acquire part of Courland in a dispute over succession to the Baltic territories ruled by the Teutonic Knights.

1557 I arrived in London on board the the "Phillip and Mary" on April the 18th 1557.

1557 I am quickly made my uncle's agent in Hamburg to get me out of the country because of my extream protestant religion. A new bourse is being set up in competition with Antwerp.

1557  Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandry by Thomas Tusser, gives good advice on the making of cheese.

1557 War with France declared

1558 January 7, Calais lost to the French

1558 November 17, Mary I, Queen of England, dies

1558 Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.

1558 Astrologer and mathematician John Dee succeeds Robert Recorde as technical adviser to the Muscovy Company and invents two compasses for master pilots.

1558 I return to England to run my uncle's business in Suffolk and Essex, buying butter and cheese to sell in London and returning with coal, salt, dried fruits, spices and exotic items from around the world. One of my suppliers of Butter and Cheese is Thomas Tusser who lives in Cattiwade just across the River Stuor from Manytre. He has just had published a book called "Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandrie".

1559 Henry II of France dies

1559 Francis II King of France

1560 Francis II King of France dies

1560 Charles IX King of France

1561 My father, Humphrey Stile dies and my mother moves to London to live with my family. With our inheritance, my mother, myself and my three brothers buy a sixth share in a ship in the Yarmouth herring fleet to share in the bonanza created by the extra fish day.

1561 August 19 - Mary, Queen of Scots is denied passage through England after returning from France . She arrives at Leith , Scotland.

1561 Anthony Jenkinson of England's Muscovy Company reaches Isfahan through Russia and opens trade with Persia (see 1555). Anglo-Persian trade will continue until 1581.

1561 Parliament acts to aid the employment of England's poor as it did in 1551, but at the same time it raises the price level at which wheat, barley, and malt may be exported, thus making food and drink more costly at home and enriching the landed gentry at the expense of the lower classes.

1561 Elizabeth I, Royal Progress into Essex/Suffolk

1562 Parliament enacts a Statute of Artificers that regulates trade and employment contracts, gives justices of the peace responsibility for fixing wages in their counties, and sets women's wages at one-third to one-half those of men, even though the women work the same number of hours and often perform tasks just as difficult.

1562 An official English document is published under the title "Arguments in favour of establishing Wednesday as an additional fish day," based on the need "for the restoring of the Navye for England to have more fish eaten and therefor one daye more in the weeke ordeyned to be a fysshe daye, and that to be Wednesdaye, rather than any other". Spurred on by Queen Elizabeth's desire to assist the nation's shipbuilding industry, develop a fishing fleet from which to draw naval recruits, and drive down the price of meat, Parliament enacts legislation giving England more meatless days (Fridays and Saturdays as well as Wednesdays) than any other country in Europe. Violations of the new law are punishable by 3 months' imprisonment or a £3 fine. Eating meat during Lent is also forbidden. A London woman is pilloried for having meat in her tavern during Lent.

1562 Wednesdays are also designated a fish day in addition to Friday and Saturday. I buy another sixth of a vessel in the Yarmouth Herring fleet.

1562 Sir John Hawkins by some accounts brings the potato to England aboard one of his slave ships returning from New Castile, but the potato from Bogotá may be a sweet potato. Farmers plant the tubers to end England's reliance on imports for her sweet potato pies.

1562 Massacre of Huguenots at Vassy March 1 begins a series of French civil wars

1562 English navigator John Hawkins, 30, hijacks a Portuguese ship carrying African slaves to Brazil, trades 300 slaves at Hispaniola for ginger, pearls, and sugar, and makes a huge profit. His enterprise marks the beginning of English participation in the slave trade.

1562 September 20 - English forces under Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick, land in Newhaven (Le Havre) to aid the Huguenots.

1562 A sixth (and final) epidemic of the sweating sickness devastates London, killing more than 17,000 in a population of 66,000. Most believe the mysterious plague to be God's punishment for man's sins.

1562 My mother, Alys Stile nee Clotworthy dies of the Sweat..

1562 France has a famine that pushes up the price of wheat. Coastal ships with no cocket (license) to export wheat are suddenly blown off course and have to land in France.

1563 July 28 - The English surrender Le Havre to the French after a siege.

1564 The horse-drawn coach is introduced from Holland to England.

1564 Modern pencil becomes common in England.

1564 My Uncle and employer dies and leaves £100 to be shared between myself and my three brothers.

1564 I start my own business, trading full time in my own right.I buy my first 10 ton lighter (barge) to navigate the river Stour on the borders of Essex and Suffolk and use my inheritance to buy a quarter share in a seagoing Barque, along with my three brothers, to run the coastal trade to Newcastle, London and Yarmouth.

1564 The Customs Orders, the organisations of the collection of Customs at Ports is reorganised by the Marquess of Winchester to tighten up on fraud by customs officials and smuggling and duty avoidance by merchants. Costal certificates are introduced whereby a merchant who trades between English ports has to give a bond, along with a fellow bondman, as "a verie good sueritie" that the cargo is not landed in a foreign port. This had been a major way of avoiding paying export duty. Previously ships were often "blown off course" and then had to land their cargo abroad thus avoiding the payment of duty. By the navigation acts the coasting trade was reserved exclusively for Englishmen.

1565 July 29, Mary, Queen of Scots, now 22, is married to her Yorkshire-born cousin, Henry Stuart, 18, Lord Darnley, whom she has created earl of Ross (a rank previously reserved for a son of a Scottish king) and, more recently, duke of Albany.

1565 Initially called the "Bourse", the London Royal Exchange is formed by Sir William Gresham

1565 The first picture of lead pencil appears in a book on fossil collecting by Konrad Gesner, whose woodcut shows an ornately turned tube of wood holding a tapered piece of the "lead." English shepherds in Cumberland found a large deposit in the past decade of a black sooty material that according to legend was revealed when a strong gale toppled an ancient tree; the material in the tree's gnarled roots was pure "wadd," or "black lead," or "plumbago" (it will be called graphite beginning in 1789), and the shepherds have been using it to mark their sheep; Borrowdale lead, mined near Keswick, will be a crown monopoly and the world's chief source for 2 centuries. Konrad von Gesner says that the pencil is formed of wood and "English antimony."

1565 June 19, Prince James (King James VI of Scotland/James I of England) born to Mary Queen of Scots.

1565 The first potatoes arrive in Spain from America.

1565 Religious rioting in the Netherlands signifies the beginning of the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands.

1565 John Hawkins introduces tobacco into England from Florida and writes, "The Floridians when they travell have a kinde of herbe dried, who with a cane and an earthen cap in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, doe sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live foure or five dayes without meat or drinke . . ." .

1565 Europe has poor harvests. France's queen mother Catherine de' Medici decrees that meals shall be limited to three courses.

1566 February 10, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, is found murdered at Kirk o'Field, Edinburgh, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is suspected of complicity in her 21-year-old husband's death

1566 Mary, Queen of Scots is kidnapped, April 24, by James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, who forces himself upon her and then on May 15 marries her in a Protestant church at Edinburgh . Mary's adviser John Leslie, 39, a Roman Catholic bishop, accuses Bothwell of having seduced the queen, and the marriage provokes a rebellion by Scottish noblemen, who desert the queen at Carberry Hill in June, force her to dismiss Bothwell, and make her sign an abdication in favor of her 13-month-old son.

1566 July 24, James VI of Scotland proclaimed King of Scotland. The young king will be raised at Stirling Castle by the earl and countess of Mar.

1566 Spain's Felipe II sends 20,000 troops to the Lowlands. Led by Fernando, duque de Alva, they capture Antwerp as the Lowlanders prepare for a struggle to gain independence from Spain.

1566 Antwerp's sugar refining industry moves to Amsterdam following the capture of Antwerp by Fernando, duque de Alva.

1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from captivity in May after charming her jailer but is defeated at Langside May 13 and placed in confinement after fleeing to England. Queen Elizabeth convenes a board of inquiry at York October 4, and Mary is defended by the Roman Catholic bishop John Leslie, who next year will be named Mary's accredited representative at Elizabeth's court.

1569-73 The Antwerp Mart is disrupted.

1569 Roman Catholic earls in the far north rebel against England's Queen Elizabeth in January and sack Durham Cathedral, but Walter Devereux, 27, Viscount Hereford, takes command as "high marshal in the field." Lands belonging to Ireland's O'Neill family are declared forfeit, as are those even of loyal Irish lords (see 1562). Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd earl of Sussex, is appointed lord lieutenant of the north of England, and with Hereford's help the rebellion is easily suppressed. John Leslie is implicated in the revolt, and although he wins acquittal he enters into a conspiracy for a more ambitious rebellion

1569 January 11-May 6 - First recorded lottery in England performed nonstop at the west door of the St. Paul's Cathedral. Each share costs 10 shillings and proceeds are used to repair the harbors and for other public works.

1569 With the price of shipping falling due to the disruption of the Antwerp Mart I manage to buy an extra one-sixth share in two ships.

1569 The Mercator projection map of the world published by Flemish instrument-maker Gerhardus Mercator (Gerhard Kremer), 57, represents the meridians of longitude by equally spaced parallel lines and gradually spaces out latitude lines toward the polar regions to exaggerate degrees of latitude in exactly the same proportion as degrees of longitude. Mercator has studied under the late Gemma Frisius his map enormously simplifies the job of charting a course (the course of a ship on a constant compass bearing always appears as a straight line), and the map will contribute to the accuracy of navigation charts everywhere.

1569 London bans the sale of fresh fruit in the streets lest it spread disease. Fruit pies and tarts, especially apple tarts, are English favorites, but uncooked fruit is regarded with suspicion.

1569 Jacques Besson [b. Colombières, France, c. 1530, d. Orléans, France, 1573] publishes his Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum ("theater of instruments and machines"), based largely on the work of Francesco di Giorgio, which pictures a large number of mechanisms and mechanical devices with short captions. Of most importance, he describes and illustrates a lathe he has designed for woodworking and what may be the first workable screw-cutting machine.

1570 Pope Pius V issues a bull February 25 excommunicating and deposing England's Queen Elizabeth, who is considered by Roman Catholics to be an illegitimate daughter of the late Henry VIII.

1570 A loose collection of maps called Theatrum orbis terrum is produced by Abraham Ortelius [b. Antwerp (Belgium), April 14, 1527, d. Antwerp, July 5, 1598]; it is the first atlas to be published.

1570 January 23 - The assassination of regent James Stewart, Earl of Moray throws Scotland into civil war.

1570 English authorities at Dover arrest Roman Catholic courier Charles Baillie in April and find that he is carrying letters from Florentine conspirator Roberto Ridolfi, 39, who has hatched a scheme to murder Elizabeth, finance a Spanish invasion of England, and supplant Elizabeth with her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, who is then to be married to Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Suffolk. Employed as a merchant banker by the English government, Ridolfi has left England in March to seek help from Pope Pius V, Spain's Felipe II, and Fernando, duque de Alva; he returns to his native Florence after the discovery of his plot and will become a Florentine senator in 1600. Norfolk is arrested, Scottish bishop John Leslie confesses his involvement in the conspiracy late in the year.

1571 English Catholics continue their conspiracies to dethrone Queen Elizabeth, but the "Rising of the North" is suppressed (see 1570). Thomas Howard, 36, 4th duke of Norfolk, is beheaded at York August 22 for having conspired with John Leslie, Roberto Ridolfi, and the Spanish to invade England and free Mary, Queen of Scots. Also beheaded is Thomas Percy, 44, 7th earl of Northumberland. Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, is named 1st earl of Essex.

1571 A new London Royal Exchange building opened and renamed from the Bourse.

1572 an expedition to raid Spanish shipping in the Caribbean, but as he prepares to seize a large pile of silver ignots he sustains a severe wound and has to withdraw.

1572 April 1 - The Sea Beggars, Netherlandish Calvinist rebels, capture the port city of Brielle. This leads to a wave of uprisings in Holland and Zealand, leaving most of those provinces (with the exception of Amsterdam), under rebel control.

1572 Henry III of Navarre becomes King of Navarre

1573 Richard Grafton dies, a member of the Grocers' Company, was King's Printer under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Publisher of the Matthew Bible and the Great Bible which was the first authorised edition of the Bible in English, authorised by King Henry VIII of England to be read aloud in the church services of the Church of England. The Great Bible was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Sir Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to Henry VIII and Vicar General. In 1538, Cromwell directed the clergy to provide: "…one book of the bible of the largest volume in English, and the same set up in some convenient place within the said church that ye have care of, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it."

1573 Sea captain Francis Drake returns to Plymouth August 9 with a small fleet of frigates and the biggest haul in the history of piracy . Helped by Indians and blacks, he has attacked a mule train at Nombre de Dios and captured the annual shipment of Spanish silver from the Potosí mines in Peru being being carried across the isthmus of Panama to be loaded aboard Spanish galleons—£20,000 worth of silver and gold plus treasures plundered from Spanish ships in the Caribbean

1573 By this date Humphry Cole supposedly invents the ship's log for keeping track of the speed of a ship with respect to the water. The first printed reference, from this year, is to the log-and-line, in which a float attached to a line is paid out for a specified time and the length of the line is used to measure the speed.

1574 Leyden's burgomeister Pieter Andriaanszoon collects all of the town's coins and other metal to melt down for arms manufacture, issuing small scraps of paper to be used in place of specie

1574 Charles IX King of France dies

1574 Henry III becomes King of France

1576 March 5 , "The Spanish Fury" erupts in November following the death of the governor-general, Luis de Requesens y Zuñiga at Brussels at age 47. Left unpaid and without food, Spanish garrisons in the Lowlands mutiny and vent their rage. At Antwerp they massacre 6,000 men, women, and children, burn 800 houses, and wreak havoc on the city's commerce.

1576 Robert Norman [b. Bristol, England, c. 1550] shows that a compass needle, when allowed freedom to swing in any direction, will point below the horizon.

1576 August 11, English navigator Martin Frobisher, on his search for the Northwest Passage, enters the bay now named after him.

1576 An early example of autobiography is written in English by Thomas Wythorne.

1577 Sir Martin Frobisher explores the Atlantic Coast of North America, having obtained royal backing His attempts to establish a settlement at Frobisher Bay will be unsuccessful

1577 December 13, Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth with a fleet of six ships and sails down the African coast en route for South America (see crime, 1573). His 18-gun, 100-ton flagship Pelican is 102 feet in length overall and carries nine "gentlemen" in addition to a crew of 80 (which includes 40 men-at-arms, a tailor, a shoemaker, an apothecary, and Drake's personal trumpeter) on his round-the-world voyage.

1577 The use of the Dutchman's log for measuring the speed of a ship is known. Unlike the log-and-line, it uses marks on the side of the ship. The interval between the first and last mark passing a floating object indicates the measure of the ship's speed.

1577 March 17 - formation of the Cathay Company to send Martin Frobisher back to the New World for more gold.

1578 Queen Elizabeth grants a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 39, to "inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not in the actual possession of any Christian prince." Gilbert crosses the Atlantic in search of a Northwest Passage to the Indies.

1578 Elizabeth I, Royal Progress into Essex/Suffolk/Norfolk

1578 Merchant-financier Sir Thomas Gresham dies at his native London November 21 at age 60, leaving enough money to establish eight alms houses.

1579 Francis Drake captures the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion March 1, her captain San Juan de Anton sustains an arrow wound, her crew surrenders with almost no bloodshed, and Drake takes command of her cargo—400,000 pesos worth of gold, silver, flour, and other goods

1580 September 26, Francis Drake enters Plymouth harbor after the first circumnavigation of the world by an Englishman. He has left Java March 26, rounded the Cape of Good Hope June 15 with only three casks of water for his 57 men aboard the Golden Hinde, watered on the Guinea coast a month later, and completed his round-the-world voyage in roughly 34 months. Elizabeth I awards Francis Drake £10,000 for his accomplishment, the Spanish gold, silver, and gemstones he has brought back are worth as much as the crown's total revenue for a year (see crime, 1579), investors in his venture receive a 4,700 percent return on their money, but half the 1 million silver coins sent to London by mule train have been stolen before the shipment can reach London

1582 Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America by Oxford clergyman-geographer Richard Hakluyt, 30, is published in England

1582 A new Gregorian calendar instituted by Pope Gregory XIII abolishes the ancient Julian calendar because its error of one day in every 128 years has moved the vernal equinox to March 11. Gregory restores the vernal equinox to March 21. The late Neapolitan astronomer-physician Aloysius Lilius (Luigi Lilio Ghiraldi) and Collegio Romano mathematician Christopher Clavius have devised the new dating system in an effort to bring the sun and the calendar back into harmony. It takes effect in Europe's Roman Catholic countries October 5 (which becomes October 15), Protestant countries will adhere to the old style Julian calendar of 45 B.C. until 1700 or later.

1582 Dutchman Peter Morice installs a water turbine in London that powers a pump that supplies the city with water from the Thames River.

1583 Another plot to overthrow England's Queen Elizabeth comes to light following the return from the Continent of Roman Catholic conspirator Francis Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), 29, who has conspired with exiles to have Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd duc de Guise, lead a French invasion force which would release Mary, Queen of Scots, and restore papal authority. Sir Francis Walsingham uncovers the conspiracy, Throckmorton is arrested in November, and when tortured on the rack he makes full confession.

1583 Dutch forces from the seven United Provinces sympathetic to Spain occupy the mouth of the Scheldt River, blocking Protestant-held Antwerp from sea trade (see 1581; 1584).

1583 Humphrey Gilbert takes possession of Newfoundland in the name of Elizabeth August 5 (see 1578). He tries to make the first English settlement in the New World but is lost on his return voyage. The colonists he has left behind in Newfoundland will disappear

1583 England's minister to Turkey, William Harborne, trades English woolens, tin, mercury, and amber for spices, cotton goods, silks, and dyes.

1583 The first life insurance policy of record is issued January 18 on the life of "William Gybbons, citizen and salter of London." The annual premium is £32, and when Gybbons dies within the year his beneficiaries will collect £400.

1583 An English manual says, "Picke not thy teeth with a forkette," but few people eat with forks

1584 The Virginia colony planted on Roanoke Island by English navigator-courtier Walter Raleigh, 32, takes its names from that of England's virgin queen, who knights Raleigh for his services. Raleigh has secured the renewal of the patent on colonization granted in 1578 to his late half brother Humphrey Gilbert. He has sent out an expedition in April under the command of captains Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, both 34. They have sailed by way of the Canary Islands to Florida and thence up the coast in search of a suitable site for an English plantation in the New World, and have come to an inlet between Albemarle and Pamlico sounds

1584 Dutchman Humphrey Bradley is brought to England to help design and construct a harbor for Dover.

1584 Visit to Kentwell Hall with my products.

1585 Antwerp surrenders August 17 to Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, who sacks Europe's chief commercial center, exiles its Protestants, and secures the southern Netherlands, Flanders, and Brabant for Spain. The Treaty of Nonsuch in August allies England with the Protestant United Provinces as Elizabeth breaks with Spain. Felipe II seizes all English ships in Spanish ports; Elizabeth sends Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, now 53, with a 6,000-man army to aid the Lowlanders, but Leicester will prove incompetent both as a military leader and a diplomat

1585 Sir Walter Raleigh sends a new expedition to Virginia under the command of his cousin Sir Richard Grenville, 44, and Sir Ralph Lane. Chesapeake Bay is discovered by Sir Ralph Lane, who remains in the New World as governor of Raleigh's Roanoke Island colony. Oxford graduate Thomas Harriot, 25, accompanies the second expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to Virginia and makes scientific observations that will be published in 1588.

1585 Jamaican ginger reaches Europe on a ship from the West Indies. It is the first Oriental spice to have been grown successfully in the New World.

1588 Spanish Armada.

1589 Henry III, King of France, dies

1589 Henry IV becomes King of France (Henry III of Navarre)

1598 Philip II, King of Spain, dies.

1598 Philip III becomes King of Spain

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