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7 September 1533, at Greenwich

Queen Anne Boleyn gave birth at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533 to a daughter, Elizabeth — the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne.

Anne had entered the customary royal confinement at Greenwich for the delivery of Henry's expected legitimate heir. Both of them had particularly hoped the child would be male.

The word that had to be changed

Official birth announcements had reportedly been prepared for a prince and were corrected from "Prince" to "Princess." Celebrations were noticeably muted, because Henry had expected a son.

A document calendared from 7 September records Anne informing Lord Cobham of the birth of a princess from Greenwich that same day.

Acknowledged, then baptized

The last-minute correction shows a boy was expected. It does not mean the newborn went unrecognized: she was formally acknowledged as a princess and treated by Henry's regime as heir presumptive.

Elizabeth was baptized three days later, on 10 September, with elaborate ceremony at the Observant Friars' church in Greenwich.

Parliament's statutory settlement explicitly excluding Mary and favouring Anne's issue came the following year, in 1534.

30 March 1534, at the close of the fifth session

At the close of the Reformation Parliament's fifth session on 30 March 1534, royal assent made 25 Henry VIII chapter 19 — the Submission of the Clergy Act — law.

In May 1532 the English clergy had submitted to Henry's demand that they neither meet nor legislate without royal permission. The statute converted that concession into parliamentary law.

The short title says "1533" because early statutes are conventionally assigned to their parliamentary session and regnal year. Royal assent came on 30 March 1534.

What Convocation lost

Convocation could now be assembled only by royal writ, and could not enact or execute new canons without the king's assent and licence.

It was also barred from making or enforcing canons contrary to the royal prerogative or to England's customs, laws and statutes, with the Crown's veto backed by fines and imprisonment.

The act further restrained appeals outside the realm in ecclesiastical causes. A commission of 32 people — 16 clergy and 16 temporal members — was proposed to review existing canon law.

Not the Act of Supremacy

This was a different statute from the Act of Supremacy, which came later in 1534. The Submission Act did not declare Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.

It is sometimes called the Submission of the Clergy and Restraint of Appeals, because its contents extended beyond canon-making.

What it did on 30 March was remove specific areas of clerical legislative and appellate independence — not create a new church in a day.

Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1534

On the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1534, Ignatius of Loyola and six University of Paris companions gathered in a small chapel associated with the martyrdom of Saint Denis at Montmartre.

Pierre Favre, the only priest among the seven, celebrated Mass and received the companions' vows.

Sources variously identify the site as a chapel, crypt or martyrium connected with Saint Denis and the Benedictine abbey. It should not be confidently equated with the present church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre.

What they actually promised

The companions committed themselves to evangelical poverty and chastity, and to travel together to Jerusalem. If the pilgrimage proved impossible, they would place themselves at the pope's disposal for mission.

That was not the later Jesuit vow of obedience to a superior, nor the special vow concerning papal missions.

No written formula of the Montmartre vows survives. Four retrospective accounts by early companions differ in details, so the exact wording and sequence cannot be reconstructed with certainty.

No order, no rule, no superior general

The seven left Montmartre personally bound to a shared Jerusalem-or-Rome plan, but with no corporate rule, official name or papal charter. They went back to their studies and later arranged to reunite at Venice.

The Society of Jesus was not legally founded that day. The decision to create a permanent order came through the companions' deliberations in 1539, and papal approval followed in 1540.

The group was not predominantly Castilian, as it is often described: the seven included a Basque, a Navarrese, a Savoyard and a Portuguese alongside three men from Castilian territories.

4 October 1535, per the colophon

The colophon records that production of Myles Coverdale's complete English Bible was finished on 4 October 1535.

The volume held the Old and New Testaments in English and was the first complete printed English Bible. Complete Wycliffite Bibles had circulated earlier in manuscript.

The imprint itself is anonymous. Older catalogues suggested Cologne or Marburg; Guido Latré's later bibliographical research argues for Martin de Keyser at Antwerp, which is now the best-supported attribution.

Not a collaboration

Coverdale compiled the text from his own work and existing translations — especially William Tyndale's New Testament and Pentateuch — along with German and Latin sources.

He and Tyndale were not jointly finishing one manuscript on 4 October. Coverdale incorporated translations Tyndale had produced earlier.

Jacobus van Meteren reportedly commissioned or financed the work.

Finished is not the same as on sale

The date marks completion as recorded by the printer's colophon — not publication, binding, or English retail availability.

Unbound sheets were subsequently taken to England, where the printer and bookseller James Nicolson had them bound and began selling copies in early 1536.

Nor was this the first complete Bible printed in England. London editions followed in 1537.

1541: Institution de la religion chrestienne

In 1541 an edition titled Institution de la religion chrestienne appeared in French, attributed by the surviving book to Jean Calvin as both Latin author and French translator.

Having enlarged his original 1536 Latin treatise in 1539, Calvin prepared a French version so that readers outside the Latin-educated elite could use the work.

The edition kept his prefatory address to Francis I of France, offering the book as a confession of faith.

Based on the 1539 Latin, not traced from it

Calvin worked principally from the much-enlarged Latin text of 1539, reworking it rather than mechanically reproducing it word for word.

The result runs to 17 main chapters across 822 numbered pages in quarto, with 44 preliminary pages and 2 at the end.

What the book does not tell you

The surviving edition names neither its place nor its printer. Modern cataloguing assigns it to Geneva and to Michel du Bois.

No exact day or month of publication is established by the consulted catalogue; only the year is secure.

A 1536 letter indicates Calvin had already begun French translation work, and scholars have debated whether a lost French version existed before this one. The 1541 volume remains the earliest surviving French edition.

13 December 1545, at Trent

On 13 December 1545 the Council of Trent held its solemn opening session under Pope Paul III, who had authorized it but did not attend in person.

The opening decree formally asked the assembled fathers whether the sacred and general council should begin. They assented, thereby constituting the council in session.

Three papal legates — Giovanni Maria del Monte, Marcello Cervini and Reginald Pole — presided over the first period on Paul III's behalf.

Who was actually in the room

Modern scholarship counts 26 to 30 archbishops and bishops at the solemn opening, along with 5 superior-generals of mendicant orders and 3 Benedictine abbots.

Forty-two theologians were present — more than the bishops.

Attendance totals vary because sources count the categories differently, so a sourced range is safer than a single number.

A ceremony, not a settlement

The opening was predominantly ceremonial and promulgated no doctrinal settlement. Nothing disputed was decided that day.

Trent had been chosen as a compromise location: on the Italian side of the Alps, but politically inside the Holy Roman Empire.

The council fixed its next public session for 7 January 1546, and early deliberations concentrated on procedure.

16 January 1547, Dormition Cathedral

On 16 January 1547, in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, Metropolitan Macarius conducted the formal coronation of the sixteen-year-old Ivan IV as tsar.

A surviving coronation order regulates his installation and proclamation and the transfer to him of the symbols of tsarist authority.

The date is the Julian one then used in Muscovy. The Presidential Library renders its modern Gregorian equivalent as 26 January.

Four pieces of regalia, then the chrismation

Macarius invested Ivan with a cross, a gold chain, the barmas — a ceremonial shoulder collar — and the Cap of Monomakh. Chrismation gave the ceremony an explicitly sacred character.

Ivan and Macarius had sought to turn a teenage grand prince's accession into a formal, sacral, imperial-style inauguration asserting hereditary legitimacy.

The nearer Muscovite ceremonial precedent was the 1498 coronation of Ivan III's grandson Dmitrii, supplemented with adapted Byzantine material. Ivan III himself was never crowned tsar.

The title Moscow settled and Europe argued over

Ivan became the first Russian ruler formally crowned as tsar. He was not necessarily the first Muscovite ruler to use the word — earlier rulers, Ivan III among them, had employed it selectively.

The rite produced no immediate international acceptance. Whether foreign rulers would recognize the tsarist title became a continuing diplomatic problem.

2 October 1552, after more than forty days

On 2 October 1552 in the Julian calendar, after Kazan's garrison refused a demand to surrender, Ivan IV's army began its general assault on the fortified city. On a modern Gregorian calendar the date is 12 October.

The assault came after more than forty days of siege, mounted from the Muscovite base at Sviyazhsk.

Kazan's anti-Moscow leadership had expelled Shah Ali and the Russian-backed regime, refused Ivan's proposed direct rule, and invited Yadegar Muhammad to the throne.

The mines, and a midday collapse

Muscovite siege engineers had blown up parts of Kazan's water-supply system and undermined sections of the walls. The final mines opened the breaches for the assault.

By the middle of the day the attacking army had broken organized resistance and captured the city. Yadegar Muhammad was taken when it fell.

The engineer credited with the decisive mining survives in the chronicles only as Razmysl or Rozmysl. He has been variously identified as English, German, Lithuanian, Danish or Italian; the claim that he was an Englishman named Butler is not established.

The numbers that do not hold up

The often-repeated Muscovite army figure of 150,000 is traced by modern source criticism to a possible error or editorial alteration in an eighteenth-century chronicle, and is not accepted as a secure contemporary count.

A Tatar historical synthesis describes the defence as 3,000 Nogai horsemen and 10,000 irregulars inside the city, plus 5,000 cavalry operating behind the Muscovite army.

The fall of the capital ended the khanate's independent central government, not resistance across its former territory: revolts continued into 1556–1557.

25 September 1555, at Augsburg

At Augsburg on 25 September 1555, King Ferdinand publicly promulgated the imperial recess containing the Religious Peace, in Emperor Charles V's name and under delegated imperial authority.

Ferdinand and vice-chancellor Jakob Jonas signed the recess, and representatives of the imperial estates affixed seals for the electors, princes, prelates, counts, lords and imperial cities. Charles V did not personally sign it.

This was not a bilateral treaty with the Schmalkaldic League, which had disbanded in 1547.

Two confessions, and no others

The settlement prohibited Catholic and Augsburg-Confession estates from waging war on or coercing one another because of religion, giving Lutheran imperial estates legal protection alongside Catholic ones.

It protected only those two. Section 17 excluded all other confessions from the peace without naming them individually, and prescribed no death penalty for them.

Under section 24, dissenting subjects could leave with their spouses and children and sell their possessions. People under servile obligations had to pay customary release charges and arrears rather than being categorically denied emigration.

The slogan that is not in the text

The maxim cuius regio, eius religio summarizes part of the settlement accurately, but does not occur in the 1555 text; the Latin formulation was coined later.

The recess preserved both Catholic and Lutheran worship in imperial cities where both were already practised, and required the two communities to leave one another undisturbed.

A separate document, the Declaratio Ferdinandea, had been issued the day before, on 24 September. It was not printed with the recess, and its legal force was contested after 1555.

14 February 1556, at Kalanaur

Akbar was officially proclaimed emperor at Kalanaur in Punjab on 14 February 1556, following the death of his father Humayun.

The enthronement was conducted on a masonry platform now called Takht-i-Akbar, roughly 22 km from Gurdaspur and maintained as a protected archaeological site.

Humayun had died in Delhi in January 1556 while Akbar and Bairam Khan were in Punjab confronting the surviving Sur challenge. A prompt proclamation was necessary to prevent a contested succession.

An emperor without the empire in hand

Bairam Khan enthroned the young Akbar, assumed the regency, and became the effective head of government.

The proclamation transferred the Mughal imperial title but not secure possession of northern India. Sikandar Sur still threatened Punjab, and other Afghan leaders held much of the Gangetic plain.

Thirteen, not fourteen

By elapsed age Akbar was 13 years and about 3 months old. Contemporary age conventions sometimes call him fourteen because he had entered his fourteenth year.

Modern authorities agree on 14 February 1556, although consulted sources differ by a day when expressing the corresponding Islamic-calendar date.

Sources use "accession," "enthronement," "proclamation" and "coronation" somewhat interchangeably. "Proclaimed emperor" is the least misleading description of the day's act.

5 November 1556, north of Delhi

On 5 November 1556 — 2 Muharram 964 AH — Mughal forces supporting the thirteen-year-old Emperor Akbar met Hemu's army at Panipat, north of Delhi.

Hemu had driven Mughal forces from Agra and Delhi and assumed royal power. Akbar and Bairam Khan chose to advance from Punjab rather than retreat to Kabul.

Before the principal battle, an advance Mughal cavalry force under Ali Quli Khan Shaibani captured Hemu's poorly protected artillery train.

One arrow, and a collapse of command

Hemu led his army personally from a war elephant named Hawai — "the Wind." His elephant attacks threw Mughal formations into disorder.

Then an arrow struck him in the eye and left him unconscious. Once he disappeared from view in the howdah, command cohesion broke down and his forces fled.

Shah Quli Khan Mahram captured the elephant carrying the wounded commander.

Who killed Hemu is not settled

Hemu was taken to the Mughal camp and executed. Accounts disagree over whether Akbar struck him, merely touched him with a sword, refused to strike him, or whether Bairam Khan performed the beheading.

Published figures conflict sharply as well. The Panipat district administration's account gives Hemu 30,000 cavalry and 1,500 war elephants, while another standard narrative describes a leading formation of 500 elephants.

Mughal troops regained Delhi within days, reversing Hemu's October victory. Sikandar Sur and other Afghan resistance remained.

15 January 1559, Westminster Abbey

Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 15 January 1559 by Owen Oglethorpe, Bishop of Carlisle.

The procession moved from Westminster Hall to the Abbey over cloth laid along the route, accompanied by bishops, the Chapel Royal, heralds, peers, trumpeters and royal officers bearing regalia. Spectators cut away pieces of the cloth as she passed.

The separate public procession had taken place the day before, on 14 January.

Latin and English in the same service

Inside the Abbey, Elizabeth was presented and acclaimed as queen at four locations, took the coronation oath, changed into ceremonial clothing, and was anointed.

Oglethorpe crowned her and invested her with a ring and sceptre. The peers and bishops then knelt and performed homage.

The service combined traditional Latin with English: an eyewitness states that the Epistle and Gospel were each read first in Latin and then in English.

The crown did not begin the reign

Elizabeth had succeeded automatically on Mary I's death on 17 November 1558. The coronation supplied sacred and public confirmation rather than accession itself.

Nor was the Elizabethan Religious Settlement enacted that day. Its Supremacy and Uniformity legislation received royal assent in May 1559.

After the service Elizabeth returned to Westminster Hall carrying the sceptre and orb, and attended the coronation feast.