1631 in England

• Monarch – Charles I
• Lord Chancellor – Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry

• 5 February – Puritan minister and theologian Roger Williams emigrates to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• 20 February – A fire breaks out in Westminster Hall, but is put out before it can cause serious destruction.{{cite book|chapter=Fires, Great|title=The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance|editor=Walford, Cornelius|publisher=C. and E. Layton|year=1876|page=29}}
• 14 May – Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, and attainted for sodomy and for assisting in the rape of his wife following a leading case which admits the right of a spouse claiming to be injured to testify against her husband.{{cite web|first=Cynthia B.|last=Herrup|author-link=Cynthia Herrup|title=Touchet, Mervin, second earl of Castlehaven (1593–1631)|work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|edition=Online|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66794|access-date=2014-01-17|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/66794}} {{ODNBsub}}
• 28 May – William Claiborne sails from England to establish a trading post on Kent Island, the first English settlement in Maryland.
• December – The Holland's Leguer, a notorious brothel in Southwark (London), is ordered closed and besieged for a month before this can be carried out.
• Poor harvest for second year in a row causes widespread social unrest.{{cite book|last=Palmer|first=Alan|last2=Palmer |first2=Veronica|year=1992|title=The Chronology of British History|publisher=Century Ltd|location=London|pages=177–178|isbn=0-7126-5616-2}}
• Worshipful Company of Clockmakers established in London.
• Publication of the "Wicked Bible" by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, an edition of the King James Version of the Bible in which a typesetting erratum leaves the seventh of the Ten Commandments ({{bibleverse|Exodus||20:14|KJV}}) with the word not omitted from the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery". Copies are withdrawn and about a year later the publishers are called to the Star Chamber, fined £300 and have their licence to print revoked.
• William Oughtred publishes Clavis Mathematicae, introducing the multiplication sign (×) and proportion sign (::).{{cite book|title=A History of Mathematics|author-link=Florian Cajori|first=Florian|last=Cajori|year=1919|publisher=Macmillan|url=https://archive.org/details/ahistorymathema02cajogoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/ahistorymathema02cajogoog/page/n169 157]|quote=cajori william-oughtred multiplication.}}{{cite book|first=Helena Mary|last=Pycior|author-link=Helena Pycior|title=Symbols, Impossible Numbers, and Geometric Entanglements: British Algebra through the Commentaries on Newton's Universal Arithmetick|url=https://archive.org/details/symbolsimpossibl00pyci|url-access=limited|year=1997|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/symbolsimpossibl00pyci/page/n61 48]|isbn=0-521-48124-4}}
• Thomas Hobbes is employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family, to teach the future Earl of Devonshire.{{cite web|url=http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Hobbes.html|last1=O'Connor|first1=J. J.|last2=Robertson|first2=E. F.|author-link1=John J. O'Connor (mathematician)|author-link2=Edmund F. Robertson|title=Thomas Hobbes|publisher=University of St Andrews|date=November 2002|access-date=2019-05-07}}

• 9 January – The masque Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, written by Ben Jonson with music by Nicholas Lanier and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace.
• 11 January – The Master of the Revels refuses to license Philip Massinger's new play, Believe as You List, because of its seditious content; it is first performed in a revised version on 7 May.

• 1 January – Katherine Philips, poet (died 1664)
• 6 February – Edward Abney, politician (died 1727)
• 20 February – Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, statesman (died 1712)
• 15 April – Walter Vincent, English politician (died 1680)
• 29 April – Joseph Bridger, Colonial Governor of Virginia (died 1686)
• 4 May – William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton, politician (died 1680)
• 29 May – Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth, politician (died 1683)
• 4 July – John Roettiers, engraver (died 1703)
• 15 July – Richard Cumberland, philosopher (died 1718)
• 7 August – Nicholas Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet, (died 1679)
• 19 August – John Dryden, writer (died 1700)
• 24 August – Philip Henry, nonconformist minister (died 1696)
• 6 September – Charles Porter, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (died 1696)
• 29 September – Richard Edlin, astrologer (died 1677)
• 12 October – George Saunderson, 5th Viscount Castleton, politician (died 1714)
• 13 October – Richard Hampden, politician (died 1695)
• 18 October – Michael Wigglesworth, Puritan minister, doctor and poet in New England (died 1705)
• 4 November – Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange (died 1660)
• 10 November – Daniel Harvey, merchant, diplomat and politician (died 1672)
• 14 December – Lady Anne Finch Conway, philosopher (died 1679)
• John Barret, Presbyterian minister and religious controversialist (died 1713)
• Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, statesman, implicated in Rye House Plot (suicide 1683)
• Joan Dant, Quaker merchant and philanthropist (died 1715)
• Richard Lower, physician who performs the first direct blood transfusion (died 1691)
• John Phillips, satirist (died 1706)
• approx. date – William Ball, astronomer (died 1690)

• 1 January – Thomas Hobson, carrier and origin of the phrase "Hobson's choice" (born 1544)
• 7 February – Gabriel Harvey, writer (born c. 1552)
• 31 March – John Donne, poet and Dean of St Paul's (born 1572)
• 6 May – Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington, politician and antiquarian (born 1571)
• 25 May – Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York and religious writer (born 1561)
• 18 June – Sir Robert Payne, politician (born 1573)
• 21 June – John Smith, soldier and colonist (born 1580)
• 28 October – Sir Richard Beaumont, 1st Baronet, politician (born 1574)
• 23 December – Michael Drayton, poet (born 1563)

{{Year in Europe|1631}}

{{England year nav}}

{{reflist}}

Category:Years of the 17th century in England