979. Ethelred II, crowned at Kingston by the famous Dunstan, then archbishop of Canterbury. This was the first king in England who took a coronation oath, and the first it is said to institute trial by jury. In this reign priests were forbidden to marry.
1040. Harold I (Harefoot), king of England, died. He was succeeded by his brother Hardicanute, whose first act was to order the body of Harold to be dug up and thrown into the Thames.
1293. Naval engagement in the British channel, between the French and English fleets, by mutual agreement, with the whole of their respective forces. The English, under Edward I, were victorious, carrying off more than 250 sail of their opponents.
1293. The mariners of Portsmouth and the Cinque Ports captured the Norman fleet, of 200 ships, off Brittany, and massacred the crews.
1322. Fitz-Simeon and Hugh the illuminator, two friars of Dublin, commenced their pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre.
1345. Richard Aungerville, an English scholar and statesman, died; better known as Richard de Bury. He may be classed as the first bibliomaniac upon record in England. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of the Abbot of St. Albans, for fifty pounds weight of silver; and so enamored was he of his collection, which became very large for that period, that he expressly composed a treatise on the love of books, entitled Philobiblon.
1471. Battle of Barnet, between Edward IV and the great earl of Warwick, in which the latter was defeated and slain, together with his brother and 10,000 men. Margaret (the queen of Henry VI, who was confined in the tower,) landed from France on the same day with troops, only to hear the tidings of the disaster which had befallen her cause.
1558. Marriage of the dauphin of France with Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, to whom he had been affianced ten years.
1619. John van Oldenbarneveldt, a statesman in the time of Elizabeth, beheaded for his praiseworthy attempts to limit the power of the stadtholder Maurice, which were construed into crimes. His noble lady, who witnessed his death without emotion, was afterwards solicitous for the pardon of a son, telling the astonished Maurice that she did not ask pardon for her husband for he was innocent, but she entreated for her son for he was guilty.
1662. William Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, died. He was a troublesome subject under Charles I and Cromwell; but became tractable under Charles II (as he had been under James I), and was promoted, instead of others who had been more devoted to the royal cause.