January 17 – Raphael Levy, a Jewish resident of the city of MetzinFrance, is burned at the stake after being accused of the September 25 abduction and ritual murder of a child who had disappeared from the village of Glatigny. The prosecutor applies to King Louis XIV for an order expelling all 95 Jewish families from Metz, but the king refuses.
February 4 – The Battle of Sinhagad takes place in India (in the modern-day Maharashtra state) as the Maratha Empire army, led by Tanaji Malusare, leads an assault on the Kondhana Fortress that had been captured by the Mughal Empire. Tanaji, called "The Lion" by his followers, captures the fortress by guiding the successful scaling of the walls of the fortress with ladders created from rope, but is killed in the battle. The Maratha emperor Shivaji orders the fortress named Sinhagad, the Marathi language words for "Lion's Fort".
March 7 – Oliver Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh since 1669, is allowed to return to Ireland for the first time in more than 22 years, after a new policy of tolerance of Catholicism is enacted in England. Plunkett had departed for Rome in 1647 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Later executed in 1681 on charges of plotting an invasion of Ireland, Plunkett is canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1975.
March 15 – The first English settlers arrive at the modern-day U.S. state of South Carolina, at this time the Province of Clarendon carved out of the Province of Carolina, and construct a settlement at Albemarle Point on the Ashley River.[1]
March 18 – Petar Zrinski, the Viceroy of Croatia within the Holy Roman Empire, issues a proclamation urging Croatians to rebel against the Habsburg rulers.[2] The uprising fails and Zrinski and his brother-in-law, Krsto Frankopan, are quickly arrested. Both are beheaded in Vienna on April 30, 1671.
March 31 – The British warship HMS Sapphire is wrecked beyond repair when her captain, John Pearce, orders the ship to be run aground at Sicily while fleeing what he believes to be four Algerian pirate ships, rather than attempting to fight. The ships turn out to have been friendly, and Pearce and his lieutenant, Andrew Logan, are court-martialed for their cowardice and executed on September 17.[3]
April 29 – After more than four months, the papal conclave to elect a successor to the late Pope Clement IX selects Cardinal Emilio Albieri with 56 of the 59 votes. Altieri, 79 years old at the time, remains the oldest person ever to be elected pope.[4] He announces that he will take the name of Pope Clement X in honor of Clement IX, who had made him a cardinal. He serves for six years until his death in 1676 shortly after his 86th birthday.[5]
June 1 – At Dover, England, Charles II of England and Louis XIV of France sign the Secret Treaty of Dover, ending hostilities between their kingdoms. Louis will give Charles 200,000 pounds annually. In return Charles will relax the laws against Catholics, gradually re-Catholicize England, support French policy against the Dutch Republic (leading England into the Third Anglo-Dutch War), and convert to Catholicism himself. The treaty is ratified three days later. The terms will not become public until the early 19th century.[6] Louis is represented in the negotiations by Charles' sister Princess Henrietta, Duchess of Orléans, who dies suddenly soon after returning to France.
June 9 – Taking advantage of a monsoon, the Maratha Empire's Shivaji orders an attack on areas that had been turned over to the Mughal Empire and its emperor Aurangazeb in 1665. Within 15 days, the cities of Pune, Baramati, Supi and Indapur, along with the Rohida fort, are recaptured by the Maratha Army.
June 10 – King Louis XIV of France issues an ordinance prohibiting the French colonies in the Americas from trading with any other nation except France.[7]
July 18 (July 8, O.S.) – The Treaty of Madrid, also known as the Godolphin Treaty, is signed between England and Spain to formally end hostilities left over from the Anglo-Spanish War, in the Caribbean, that ended ten years earlier. For the first time, Spain acknowledges that it is not entitled to all territory in the Americas west of Brazil, as provided by the 1493 line of demarcation decreed by Pope Alexander VI, and by the 1494Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal. Spain acknowledges that Jamaica and the Cayman Islands are English possessions.
August 17 – A joint fleet of warships from England (commanded by Commodore Richard Beach on HMS Hampshire) and from the Dutch Republic (led by Admiral Willem Joseph van Ghent on Spiegel) rescue 250 Christian slaves and then sink six Algerian pirate ships in a battle in the Mediterranean Sea off of the coast of MoroccoatCape Spartel.[9]
August 26 – The Parliament of France enacts a uniform criminal code for the nation with the passage of the Criminal Ordinance of 1670, which takes effect on January 1. The code remains in force until October 9, 1789, when it is abrogated during the French Revolution.
mid-August – Three Spanish frigates from Spanish Florida, sailing from St. Augustine and under the command of Juan Menendez Marques, arrive at Charleston harbor, preparing to attack the English settlement in South Carolina. The English settlers have been warned in advance by Indians who had found out about the invasion. Because of a storm, and the English preparations for a siege, Captain Menendez abandons the colony without attempting an attack.[10]
September 5 – William Penn and William Mead are found not guilty of violating the Conventicles Act 1670, after a five day jury trial in London. The two had been arrested on August 14 in front of a meeting house Gracechurch Street after preaching a Quaker sermon outside following a ban on preaching indoors. The defiance by the jury leads to the landmark English decision in Bushel's Case.
October 3 – In India, ChhatrapatiShivaji maharaj, the ruler of the Maratha Empire, leads an attack on the British settlement at Surat near Bombay. British Governor Gerald Aungier secures the British fortress at Surat and saves the lives and property of British citizens.
October 18 – The Battle of Kitombo takes place in southwest Africa in Angola, when colonial soldiers of the Army of Portugal invade Soyo, an independent BaKongo kingdom, with the intent of annexing it to Portuguese West Africa.[11] The 400 Portuguese troops, led by João Soares de Almeida, encounter a stiff resistance. Soyo's Estevao da Silva, whose army has the benefit of weapons supplied by the Dutch Republic, is joined in battle by troops from the neighboring Kingdom of Ngoyo on the other side of the Congo River. General Soares de Almeida is killed, and most of his troops die or are captured; Soyo's General da Silva is killed in the process of winning the battle. Because of the defeat, Portugal makes no further attempt to conquer Soyo or Ngoyo.
^"'Shaftesbury's Darling': British Settlement in the Carolinas at the Close of the Seventeenth Century", by Robert M. Weir, in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume I: The Origins of Empire (Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 380
^Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (Yale University Press, 2010)
^William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, A History from the Earliest Times to 1900 (Sampson, Low, Marston and Company Ltd., 1898) pp. 439-440
^Isidore Guët, Origines de la Martinique. Le colonel François de Collart et la Martinique de son temps; colonisation, sièges, révoltes et combats de 1625 à 1720 (Lafoye, 1893) p. 148
^Studi magrebini. Istituto Universitario Orientale. 1989. p. 98.
^"Intercolonial Friction (1660-1700)", in Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present, ed. by David Marley (ABC-CLIO, 1998) p. 173
^David Birmingham, Portugal and Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) p. 61
