1665 in England

Incumbents

• Monarch – Charles II
• Parliament – Cavalier

  Events

• 4 March – beginning of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
• 6 March – the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London begins publication, the first scientific journal in English and the oldest to be continuously published.
• March – 15-year-old Nell Gwyn makes her first definitely recorded appearance as an actress on the London stage, in John Dryden's heroic drama The Indian Emperour, having previously been a theatre orange-seller.
• 12 April – the first recorded victim of the Great Plague of London dies. Over the summer it is thought to have spread as far as Derby and on 6 September the first plague death takes place in the Derbyshire village of Eyam.
• 19 May – Great Fire of Newport, Shropshire.
• 3 June – Second Anglo-Dutch War: English naval victory at the Battle of Lowestoft.
• 12 June – the city of New Amsterdam in the Province of New York is reincorporated as New York, named after James, Duke of York, and the first Mayor appointed.
• 7 July – the King and court leave London to avoid the plague, moving first to Salisbury, then Oxford.
• 2 August – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Dutch naval victory at the Battle of Vågen.
• 21 September – consecration of new chapel at Pembroke College, Oxford, Christopher Wren's first completed work of architecture.
• 9 October – the Cavalier Parliament assembles in Oxford to avoid the Plague in London.
• 31 October – Parliament passes the Five Mile Act preventing non-conformist ministers from coming within five miles of incorporated towns or the place of their former livings.
• 7 November – The London Gazette begins publication as The Oxford Gazette.
• Royal Navy Dockyard established at Sheerness for storage and refitting.

  Publications

• John Bunyan's The Resurrection.
• Richard Head's The English Rogue.
• Robert Hooke's Micrographia.

  Births

• 6 February – Anne, Queen of Great Britain
• March – Sir William Strickland, 3rd Baronet, Member of Parliament
• 1 May – John Woodward, naturalist
• 27 August – John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, politician
• September – Sir Thomas Frankland, 2nd Baronet, Member of Parliament
• 5 November – Sir William Brownlow, 4th Baronet, Member of Parliament
• 28 December – George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, general
• William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor
• Charles Gildon, writer
• Benjamin Johnson, actor

  Deaths

• 9 March – Thomas Wentworth, 5th Baron Wentworth, soldier and politician
• 6 June – Charles Weston, 3rd Earl of Portland
• 18 July ' – Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield
• 11 July – Kenelm Digby, privateer
• 25 August – Charles Seymour, 2nd Baron Seymour of Trowbridge
• 17 November – John Earle, bishop
• 19 November ' – Elizabeth Cromwell, Lady Protectress
• Walter Acton, Member of Parliament