"Good people, I...warn you and exhort you to beware of these seditious preachers, and teachers of new doctrine, which pretend to preach God’s word...they know not today what they would have tomorrow, there is no stay in their teaching & doctrine, they open the book, but they cannot shut it again. Take heed how you enter into strange opinions or new doctrine, which hath done no small hurt in this realm, and hath justly procured the ire and wrath of God upon us, as well may appear who so list to call to remembrance the manyfold plagues that this realm hath been touched with all since we dissevered ourselves from the Catholic church of Christ....I verily believe that all the plagues that have chanced to this realm of late years since afore the death of King Henry the Eighth hath justly fallen upon us, for that we have divided ourself from the rest of Christendom whereof we be but as a spark in comparison: have we not had war, famine, pestilence, the death of our king, rebellion, sedition among ourselves, conspiracies? Have we not had sundry erroneous opinions sprung up among us in this realm, since we have forsaken the unity of the Catholic Church? And what other plagues be there that we have not yet felt?"
- Speech made from the gallows by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland,
dramatically renouncing Protestantism to the more than 10,000 people gathered to watch his beheading,
August 23, 1553.
In the year AD 1553...
- As it becomes clear that 15-year-old English king Edward VI will soon die of his illness, Edward's chief advisor, John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, concocts a scheme to secure his own family's permanent control of the English monarchy that will ultimately lead to the extinction of himself and his heir.
- First, Northumberland arranges for his 18-year-old son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to marry Edward's 16-year-old first cousin Lady Jane Grey.
- Then, he contrives to have King Edward hand write "My Devise for the Succession" from his death bed, and coerces more than 100 prominent judges and nobles into co-signing it. This document contravenes British law and the express will of Parliament by bypassing Edward's half sisters Mary and Elizabeth to hand the throne to Lady Jane Grey and her heirs (and thus Northumberland's own heirs).
- Edward dies on July 6, and Lady Jane Grey is duly crowned Queen of England, a position she will hold for only nine days.
- Mary sends a letter to Privy Council demanding to be made queen, raises an army, and marches on London. Northumberland countermarches to meet her, but the Council switches sides and orders him to surrender, which he does.
- Mary triumphantly parades into London on August 3, accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth and more than 800 nobles, and is crowned Queen Mary I of England.
- Northumberland is arrested, tried, and beheaded for treason. His son Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey are also tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death, but Mary decides enough blood has been shed and spares their lives for the time being, on the grounds that they had been mere pawns in Northumberland's schemes.
- Mary immediately begins the process of returning England to Catholicism, and launches the Marian Persecutions against English Protestants who will not re-convert, thereby earning herself the sobriquet "Bloody Mary."
- Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent signs a peace treaty with Austria, thereby freeing his forces to launch an invasion of Safavid Persia. Suleiman's forces make rapid progress, capturing Baghdad by the end of the year and thereby incorporating what is now Iraq into the Ottoman Empire.
- The last of the numerous Italian Wars continues between France and Spain for control of Italy.
- The Siege of Metz by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ends in failure, with Charles forced to withdraw after having lost more than two thirds of his his original force of 20,000 men, mostly due to death from diseases such as typhus, dysentery, and scurvy.
- Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, signs a secret treaty with Charles V granting him permission to conquer the Republic of Siena and bring it back into the Holy Roman Empire. This will lead to the Siege of Siena the following year.
- Sensing the danger to Siena, the French launch a preemptive invasion of Tuscany.
- In the Mapuche Uprising of 1553 the Mapuche people of Chile revolt against Spanish rule, with Mapuche forces led by Lautaro wiping out Spanish conquistadores led by Pedro de Valdivia at the Battle of Tucapel. Valdivia is captured alive and later executed.
- The first of five Battles of Kawanakajima takes place on the Kawanakajima plain in northern Shinano province between archrival warlords Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. After a jockeying for position for two months, the two warlords engage in a brief skirmish and then withdraw.
- English explorer Richard Chancellor becomes the first Englishman to penetrate the White Sea, reaching Russia, meeting Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and thereby opening up direct trade between England and Russia for the first time.
- French fencing theorist Camillo Agrippa revolutionizes fencing forever by publishing his Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue, which comprehensively updates European fencing theory to account for the rise of the rapier.
- The concept of the Vigenère cipher, aka le chiffrage indéchiffrable ("the indecipherable cipher" in French), is described for the first time by Italian cryptologist Giovan Battista Bellaso. The cypher will not be broken until 1863, more than three centuries later.
- The words dollar, panache, revolt and scheme appear in the English language for the first time.
These people were born in 1553:
These people died in 1553:
1552 - 1553 - 1554
16th century
How they were made