Timeline
This simple timeline may be of interest while you are looking through our genealogy files - it covers approximately the same period as those files.
- 1509 - Henry VIII succeeds Richard III
- 1547 - Edward VI succeeds Henry VIII
- 1553 - Mary I succeeds Edward VI
- 1558 - Elizabeth I succeeds Mary I
- 1601 - first Poor Law requires each parish to care for aged, helpless or poor people and to fund this by a "poor rate" on parish inhabitants.
- 1603 - James I succeeds Elizabeth I
- 1625 - Charles I succeeds James I
- 1649 - Charles I beheaded; England then governed by a commonwealth or protectorate until 1660
- 1660 - Charles II crowned
- 1662 - Settlement Act allows parishes to remove to their place of settlement (usually birthplace) newcomers deemed likely to be chargeable to parish poor-law rates.
- 1685 - James II succeeds Charles II
- 1689 - William and Mary succeed James II
- 1687 - Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, his greatest work, which contains the law of gravitation and his three laws of motion.
- 1694 - William III succeeds William and Mary
- 1702 - Queen Anne succeeds William III
- 1709 - Gabriel David Fahrenheit invents the thermometer
- 1714 - George I succeeds Queen Anne
- 1722 - Workhouse Test Act allows for the setting up of workhouses by parishes.
- 1727 - George II succeeds George I
- 1727 - Thomas Gainsborough born
- 1750 - Johann Sebastian Bach dies in Leipzig
- 1752 - Britain changes from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, thus losing 11 days - the day after 2nd September 1752 was 14 September.
- 1760 - George III succeeds George II
- 1774 - James Watt and Matthew Boulton start commercial production of steam engines.
- 1776 - John Constable (the artist) born
- 1791 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna
- 1796 - Edward Jenner inoculates a small boy with cowpox, thus protecting him against smallpox infection
- 1811 - The Luddites start their campaign against the use of stocking frames by factories in Nottingham.
- 1812 - Luddite attacks on steam looms in Lancashire and food riots in Manchester, Oldham, Ashton, Rochdale, Stockport and Macclesfield.
- 1816 - J.M.W.Turner paints scenes with red skies (which resulted from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia)
- 1820 - George IV succeeds George III
- 1821 - Michael Faraday reports his invention of the electric motor.
- 1827 - Ludwig van Beethoven dies
- 1830 - William IV succeeds George IV
- 1831 - Charles Darwin embarks on his voyage on HMS Beagle
- 1834 - Poor Law Amendment Act sets up Poor Law Unions but is widely criticised, particularly in Lancashire.
- 1837 - Queen Victoria succeeds William IV
- 1841 - First census of England and Wales
- 1847 - Ignaz Philip Semmelweis suggests handwashing for doctors between patients to prevent the spread of childbed fever - but is largely ignored.
- 1845 - Doctor John Snow removes the handle from the water pump in Soho after realising that it was the source of a Cholera outbreak.
- 1849 - Frederic Chopin died
- 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
- 1861-65 - "Cotton famine" due to American civil war results in unemployment and starvation among many Lancashire cotton mill workers (A notable
exception being the employees of John Whittaker who owned the Hurst mills in Ashton-under-Lyne and refused to cut his worker's wages)
- 1883 - Krakatoa erupts and explodes
- 1901 - Edward VII succeeds Queen Victoria
- 1893 - Royal Commission appointed to investigate the causes of the agricultural depression in Britain
- 1905 - Royal Commission on the Poor Law and the Unemployed appointed, whose report eventually resulted in the abolition of workhouses.
- 1910 - George V succeeds Edward VII
- 1936 - Edward VIII succeeds George V but abdicates 11 months later; George VI succeeds him
- 1946 - National Health Service set up to provide medical care to all (and incidentally finally replace the last poor law workhouses).
- 1952 - Elizabeth II succeeds George VI