April 25–Battle of Gibraltar: A Dutch fleet of 26 warships, led by Admiral Jacob van Heemskerck, stages a surprise attack on a Spanish fleet anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar. In the battle that ensues, Spain loses as many as 10 galleons and 12 smaller ships, and at least 300 men are killed. The disaster causes Spain to go into bankruptcy by October. [4]
May 26– At Jamestown, the president of the governing council, Edward Wingfield, 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 ..."[5] 200 armed Indians attack the Jamestown settlement, killing two people and wounding 10.
May 28– A wooden defensive wall (palisade) is built by settlers around the Fort at Jamestown. Gabriel Archer writes in his journal, "we laboured, pallozadoing our fort".
June 8– Newton rebellion: The Tresham landowning family kills more than 40 peasants during protests against the enclosure of common land in Newton, Northamptonshire, England, at the culmination of the Midland Revolt.
June 10– In Jamestown, Captain John Smith is released from arrest and sworn in as a member of the colony Council.
June 15– At 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."[6] The colony reportedly bears extreme toil in strengthening the fort.[7]
June 22– Christopher Newport sails back to England.
July–September
July 2–Luis de Velasco returns to office as the Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, which at this time includes Mexico, parts of the future United States and much of Central America. Velasco had previously been Viceroy from 1590 to 1595, then served as Viceroy of Peru (encompassing much of South America) from 1596 to 1604. He serves as New Spain's viceroy until 1611.
July 17– In the (modern-day) South Kalimantan province of Indonesia, Sultan Mustain Billah of Banjar orders the massacre of the crew of a Netherlands East India Company ship visiting the capital at Banjarmasin.
July 20– The second "False Dmitry", one of three people claiming to be Dmitry Ivanovich, son of the late Tsar Ivan the Terrible, appears at the Russian town of Starodub and persuades residents that he is the rightful heir to the Russian throne.
August 3– After Catholics and Protestants clash in Donauwörth, emperor Rudolph II declares an imperial ban over the city and orders Bavarian duke Maximilian I to execute the ban leading to the occupation of the city by a force of 15,000 in December. This in turn leads to the creation of the Protestant Union in 1608.
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.
October 4–Flight of the Earls: The Earl of Tyrone and the Earl of Tyrconnell, along with their followers, reach the European continent, landing on St. Francis' Day at Quilleboeuf in France with 99 people.[8] after having departed Rathmullan in Ireland on September 12.
November 7– A Dutch warship commanded by Admiral Cornelis Matelief de Jonge arrives at the Malay Peninsula to attempt opening trade with the Pahang Sultanate, and get Pahang's assistance in the Dutch Navy's fight against the Portuguese Navy in Asian trade. Sultan Abdul Ghafur agrees to assistance in return for Dutch technical assistance.[9]
November 9– King Philip III of Spain announces that his government had run out of money and that it is suspending payments on its foreign debts.[10] effectively declaring the state bankrupt. The decision in the wake of the destruction of most of the ships of Spain's Navy at the April 25 Battle of Gibraltar.
November 15–Flight of the Earls: After the departure from Ireland of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, along with 90 of their followers, King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland issues a proclamation "that the flight of the Earles of Tyrone and Tyrconell, with some others of their fellowes out of the North parts of our Realme of Ireland; these men's corruption and falshood, whose hainous offences remaine so fresh in memorie since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only whithdraw themselues from their personall obedience to their Soveraigne, but were content to sell over their Native Countrey to those that stood at that time in the highest termes of hostilitie with the two Crownes of England and Ireland... we doe hereby professe in the worde of a King, that... notwithstanding all that they can claime, must be acknowledged to proceed from meere Grace upon their submission after their great and unnaturall Treasons", and must forfeit their rights and possessions as nobles. [11]
December 10– Captain John Smith and nine men depart the Jamestown Colony on a barge in order to get more corn for the English fort. Sailing up the Chickahominy River, the boat reaches a settlement of the Appomattoc tribe at Apocant. While Smith, Jehu Robinson and Thomas Emery are further upstream in a canoe, George Casson is captured at Apocant by Opchanacanough, brother of Chief Powhatan. Robinson and Emery are killed while Smith is away from their camp, and Smith is soon taken prisoner by Opchancanough and, on January 5, is delivered to Powhatan at Werowocomoco for execution. After an intervention by Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, Smith is released a month after his capture.[12]
December 22– A fleet of 13 Dutch warships under the command of Admiral Pieter Verhoeff departs the Netherlands on an expedition to the Indian Ocean to open trade with Asian nations and to fight hostile resistance. Verhoeff never returns, and he and many of his crew will be ambushed and killed on May 22 at the Banda Islands in Indonesia.
