Events

• The Long Parliament passes a series of legislation designed to contain Charles I's absolutist tendencies.
• August 10 – Charles I of England flees London for the north
• Irish Rebellion of 1641 - revolt of the Gaelic Irish in Ulster against the English settlers
• The Dutch found a trading colony on Dejima, near Nagasaki, Japan.
• Portugal is ousted from Malacca by the Dutch.
• Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is first performed.
• Moses Amyraut's De l'elevation de la foy et de l'abaissement de la raison en la creance des mysteres de la religion is published.
• The Norwegian city of Kristiansand was founded by King Christian IV

Births

• March - Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester
• August 5 - John Hathorne, magistrate († 1717)
• October 5 - Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan, mistress of *Louis XIV of France
• Pierre Allix, French Protestant clergyman
• Janez Vajkard Valvasor, Slovenian nobleman and polymath

Deaths

• January 3 - Jeremiah Horrocks, English astronomer (* c.1619)
• May 12 - Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
• December 9 - Sir Anthony van Dyck, painter