22 March – a fire breaks out in Newmarket, Suffolk, consuming half the town and spreading into sections of surrounding Cambridgeshire. Historian Laurence Echard describes it later as "A Providential Fire", noting that King Charles II "by the approach of the fury of the flames was immediately driven out of his own palace", and, after moving to safety in another section of town, was forced to flee again "when the wind, as conducted by an invisible power, suddenly changed about, and blew the smoke and cinders directly on his new lodgings, and in a moment made them as untenable as the other."[2]
6 May – while on passage from Portsmouth to Scotland, HMS Gloucester(1654) runs aground on a sandbank off the Norfolk coast and sinks. The Duke of York (the future King James II) and John Churchill (the future 1st Duke of Marlborough) are among those saved but at least 120 drown.[3]
25 August – following the Bideford witch trial, three women become (probably) the penultimate known to be hanged for witchcraft in England, at Exeter.[4]
Celia Fiennes, noblewoman and traveller, begins her journeys across Britain in a venture that will prove to be her life's work. Her aim is to chronicle the towns, cities and great houses of the country. Her travels continue until at least 1712, and will take her to every county in England, though the main body of her journal is not written until 1702.
^Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^Walford, Cornelius, ed. (1876). "Fires, Great". The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance. C. & E. Layton. p. 44.
^Gent, Frank J. (1982). The Trial of the Bideford Witches. Bideford.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Another woman was sentenced to be hanged for witchcraft in Exeter in 1685 although there is no surviving confirmation that the sentence was carried out. "The Devon "Witches"". Exeter Civic Society. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
^ abPalmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 194–196. ISBN0-7126-5616-2.