The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in Eighteen Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VIII. The Age of Dryden.

Table of Principal Dates.



c. 600 Ethelbert of Kent commits dooms of his folk to writing.
c. 1256 Bracton’s De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae.
1292 Year Books begin.
c. 1470 Fortescue’s De laudibus legum Angliae.
c. 1475 Littleton’s Tenures.
1523–30 Saint German’s Doctor and Student.
1532 Perkins’s Profitable Book.
1571 Plowden’s Law Reports.
1581 Lambarde’s Eirenarcha.
1585 Dyer’s Law Reports.
1594 John Cosin born (d. 1672).
1600–15 Coke’s Law Reports.
1609 Benjamin Whichcote born (d. 1683).
1610 Hardy’s Mariamne.
1610 D’Urfé’s Astrée.
1611 Robert Leighton born (d. 1684).
1612 Samuel Butler born (d. 1680).
1612 Thomas Killigrew born (d. 1683).
1614 Napier of Merchiston discovers logarithms.
1614 Henry More born (d. 1687).
1616 Joseph Beaumont born (d. 1699).
1617 Ralph Cudworth born (d. 1688).
1620 John Evelyn born (d. 1706).
1624 George Fox born (d. 1691).
1627 (?) John Wilson born (d. 1696).
1628 Harvey’s Exercitatio.
1628–44 Coke’s Institutes.
1630 Isaac Barrow born (d. 1677).
1630 Sir Richard Bulstrode born (d. 1711).
1630 John Tillotson born (d. 1694).
1631 Richard Cumberland, bp. of Peterborough, born (d. 1718).
1631 John Dryden born (d. 1700).
1632 Samuel Pepys born (d. 1703).
1633 (?) Wentworth Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon, born (d. 1685).
1634 Sir George Etherege born (d. 1691).
1634 Sir John Reresby born (d. 1689).
1634 Académie française founded.
1635 Edward Stillingfleet born (d. 1699).
1636 Joseph Glanvill born (d. 1680).
1636 Selden’s Mare Clausum.
1636 Corneille’s Cid.
1638 Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset, born (d. 1706).
1638 Corneille’s Cid acted in English.
1639 (?) Sir Charles Sedley born (d. 1701).
1640 Mrs. Aphra Behn born (d. 1689).
1640 William Wycherley born (d. 1716).
1641 Thomas Rymer born (d. 1713).
1641 Evelyn’s Diary begins (ptd. 1818).
1641 Shelton’s Tachygraphy.
1642 Closing of theatres.
1642 (?) Thomas Shadwell born (d. 1692).
1643 Gilbert Burnet born (d. 1715).
1644 William Penn born (d. 1718).
1646 (?) Anthony Hamilton born (d. 1720).
1647 John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester, born (d. 1680).
1647 Henry More’s Philosophicall Poems.
1647 Selden’s Fleta.
1648 Robert Barclay born (d. 1690).
1648 Elkanah Settle born (d. 1724).
1648 John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave, 1st duke of Buckinghamshire and Normanby, born (d. 1721).
1648 Death of lord Herbert of Cherbury.
1648 Joseph Beaumont’s Psyche.
1649 Execution of Charles I. Commonwealth.
1650 Madeleine de Scudéry’s Grand Cyrus.
1650 Glisson’s Tractatus de Rachitide.
1651 Hobbes’s Leviathan.
1651 D’Avenant’s Gondibert.
1652 Thomas Otway born (d. 1685).
1652 Culverwel’s Light of Nature.
1652–4 Dorothy Osborne’s Letters (ptd. 1888).
1653 Oliver Cromwell Protector.
1653 Thomas D’Urfey born (d. 1723).
1653 (?) Nathaniel Lee born (d. 1692).
1653 John Oldham born (d. 1683).
1653 Urquhart’s Rabelais, Books I, II (Book III 1693–4; Books IV, V, by Motteux, 1708).
1653–5 Scudéry’s Grand Cyrus in English.
1655 Wallis’s Arithmetica Infinitorum.
1656 D’Avenant’s Siege of Rhodes.
1656 Harrington’s Oceana.
1656 Osborne’s Advice to a Son.
1656 Pascal’s Lettres provinciales.
1657 John Dennis born (d. 1734).
1658 Death of Oliver Cromwell.
1658 Richard Cromwell Protector.
1659 Dryden’s Poem upon the death of Oliver, Lord Protector.
1659 More’s Immortality of the Soul.
1659 Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed.
1659 Thomas Rugge’s Diurnall (unpublished) begins.
1659 Stillingfleet’s Irenicum.
1659 The Whole Duty of Man.
1659 Molière’s Précieuses Ridicules.
1660 Restoration.
1660 Dryden’s Astraea Redux.
1660 Pepys begins his Diary (ptd. 1825).
1660 John Smith’s Select Discourses.
1660 Thomas Southerne born (d. 1746).
1660 Madeleine de Scudéry’s Almahide.
1661 Boyle’s law of compressibility.
1661 Thomas Fuller died.
1661 Glanvill’s Vanity of Dogmatizing.
1661 Graunt’s Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality.
1662 Act of Uniformity.
1662 Royal Society’s charter.
1662 Richard Bentley born (d. 1742).
1662 Henry More’s prose works collected.
1662 Sir W. Petty’s Treatise of Taxes and Contributions.
1662 Stillingfleet’s Origines sacrae.
1662 Wilson’s Cheats.
1663 Butler’s Hudibras, Pt. I (Pt. II 1664; Pt. III 1678).
1663 Cowley’s Cutter of Coleman Street.
1663 Dryden’s Wild Gallant.
1663 Katherine Philips’s version of Corneille’s Pompée.
1663 Edward Somerset 2nd marquis of Worcester’s Century of Inventions.
1664 Sir John Vanbrugh born (d. 1726).
1664 Death of Sanderson.
1664 Cotton’s Scarronides.
1664 Dryden’s Rival-Ladies.
1664 Etherege’s Comical Revenge.
1664 Evelyn’s Sylva.
1664 Wilson’s Projectors.
1665 Plague of London.
1665 Head’s English Rogue.
1665 Sir R. Howard’s Foure New Plays.
1665 La Fontaine’s Contes.
1665 La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes.
1666 Fire of London.
1666 The London Gazette begins.
1666 Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.
1666 Dugdale’s Origines juridicales.
1666 Willis’s Anatome cerebri.
1667 Death of Cowley.
1667 Dryden’s Secret Love.
1667 Sprat’s History of the Royal Society.
1667 Molière’s Tartuffe.
1667 Racine’s Andromaque.
1668 Death of D’Avenant.
1668 Dryden’s An Evening’s Love.
1668 Dryden’s Essay of Dramatick Poesie.
1668 Sedley’s Mulberry Garden.
1668 La Fontaine’s Fables.
1668 Molière’s Avare.
1668 Racine’s Plaideurs.
1669 Pepys ends his Diary.
1669 Death of Sir John Denham.
1669 Penn’s No Cross No Crown.
1669 Katherine Philips’s Poems.
1669 Anthony à Wood’s Antiquities of Oxford.
1669–70 Dryden’s Conquest of Granada.
1670 William Congreve born (d. 1729).
1670 Dryden appointed poet laureate.
1670 Mayow’s experiments on respiration.
1670 Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
1670 Pascal’s Pensées.
1671 Colley Cibber born (d. 1757).
1671 The Rehearsal.
1671 Tillotson’s Sermons.
1672 Addison born (d. 1719).
1672 Cumberland’s De legibus Naturae.
1672 Dryden’s essay Of Heroick Plays.
1672 Puffendorf’s De jure naturae et gentium.
1673 Death of Molière.
1673 Settle’s The Empress of Morocco.
1674 Death of Milton.
1674 Nicholas Rowe born (d. 1718).
1674 Wycherley’s The Plain Dealer acted (ptd. 1677).
1674 Boileau’s Lutrin and Art Poétique.
1674 Delphin classics.
1675 Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe acted (ptd. 1676).
1675 Wycherley’s Country Wife.
1676 Etherege’s Man of Mode.
1676 Otway’s Don Carlos.
1676 Ray’s edition of Willughby’s Ornithologia.
1677 Crowne’s Destruction of Jerusalem.
1677 Lee’s Rival Queens.
1677 La Fayette’s Princesse de Clèves.
1678 The popish plot.
1678 Narcissus Luttrell’s Brief historical relation begins (ptd. 1857).
1678 George Farquhar born (d. 1707).
1678 Death of Andrew Marvell.
1678 Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe.
1678 Dryden’s All for Love.
1678 Otway’s Friendship in Fashion.
1678 Rymer’s Tragedies of the Last Age.
1678 South’s Sermons.
1679 Death of Hobbes.
1679 Dryden’s Preface concerning the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy (with Troilus and Cressida).
1679 Oldham’s Satyrs upon the Jesuits.
1679 Collected edition of the Year Books.
1680 Burnett’s Some passages in the Life and Death of the Earl of Rochester.
1680 Lee’s Theodosius.
1680 Otway’s Orphan.
1680 Temple’s Miscellanea. Pt. I (Pt. II, 1690; Pt. III, 1701).
1681 Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I.
1681 Dryden’s Spanish Fryar.
1681 Glanvill’s Sadducismus triumphatus.
1681 Hobbes’s Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Law ptd.
1682 Death of Sir Thomas Browne.
1682 Advocates’ library founded.
1682 Banks’s Unhappy Favourite and Vertue Betray’d.
1682 Dryden’s The Medal and Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. II.
1682 Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe and Religio Laici.
1682 Otway’s Venice Preserv’d.
1682 Petty’s Political Arithmetic.
1682 Ray’s Methodus plantarum.
1683 Crowne’s City Politiques.
1684 Death of Corneille.
1684 The Turkish Spy.
1685 Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice.
1685–8 James II.
1686 Willughby and Ray’s Historia piscium.
1687 Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther.
1687 Newton’s Principia.
1687 La Bryuère’s Caractères.
1688 Pope born.
1688 Halifax’s Character of a Trimmer.
1688 Shadwell’s Squire of Alsatia.
1689 Locke’s first letter on Toleration. (2nd letter 1690; 3rd 1692.)
1689 Selden’s Table-Talk.
1689 Shadwell’s Bury Fair.
1689–94 William and Mary.
1690 Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Essay concerning Human Understanding.
1691 Boyle lectures founded.
1691 Sherlock’s Practical Discourse concerning a Future Judgment.
1691 Racine’s Athalie.
1692 Rymer’s Short View of Tragedy (dated 1693).
1692 Temple’s Memoirs.
1693 Congreve’s Old Bachelor; Double-Dealer.
1693 Dryden’s Discourse concerning Satire.
1693 Hacket’s Life of Bishop Williams.
1693 Leslie’s Short and easy method with the Deists.
1693 Penn’s Some Fruits of Solitude.
1693 Ray’s Synopsis animalium.
1694 Burthogge’s Essay upon reason.
1694 George Fox’s Journal.
1694 Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage.
1695–1702 William III.
1695 Congreve’s Love for Love.
1696 Baxter’s Autobiography.
1696 Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift.
1696 Southerne’s Oroonoko.
1696 Tate and Brady’s new version of the Psalms.
1696 Toland’s Christianity not mysterious.
1697 Congreve’s Mourning Bride.
1697 Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast.
1697 Vanbrugh’s Relapse and Provok’d Wife.
1698 Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the immorality of the English Stage.
1698 Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle.
1699 Farquhar’s The Constant Couple.
1699 Death of Racine.
1700 Congreve’s Way of the World.
1700 Dryden’s Fables.
1700 Halifax’s Miscellanies.
1700 Cottonian library presented to the nation.
1700–3 Temple’s Letters (ed. Swift).
1701 Farquhar’s Sir Harry Wildair.
1701 Norris’s Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, Pt. I (Pt. II, 1704).
1702–14 Anne.
1703 Rowe’s Fair Penitent.
1704 Robert Nelson’s Companion for the Festivals and Fasts.
1705 Vanbrugh’s Confederacy.
1706 Farquhar’s Recruiting Officer.
1707 Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem.
1712 Philips’s Distrest Mother.
1713 Mémoires de la vie du Comte de Gramont.
1714 Rowe’s Tragedy of Jane Shore.
1715 Rowe’s Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray.
1720 Hughes’s Siege of Damascus.
1731 Cudworth’s Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (publ. posthumously).
1740 Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber.
1764 Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Autobiography ptd.