Timeline
	YEAR MONARCH BRITAIN CANTERBURY 3000-2500 BC Later Neolithic bowl (found at Whitehall) made. 2400 BC Beginning of Bronze Age. 1400-1000 BC Canterbury's earliest Bronze-Age pot made (found at Christchurch College). 800 BC Beginning of Iron Age. c 100 BC Belgae from the continent build large hillfort at Bigbury, 1.4 miles west of Canterbury. c 50 BC Belgic tribe build settlement at a crossing point of the River Stour and name it Durovernon ('fort by the alder swamp') – the beginning of Canterbury. 55-4 BC   Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar visits the area briefly.  54 BC Julius Caesar returns. Probably fights a battle at Bigbury hillfort. AD 43   Beginning of conquest of Britain by Romans under Emperor Claudius. Certain client kingdoms recognised, including Iceni (present-day East Anglia). Invading Roman army rename Belgae in Kent, calling them the Cantiaci ('people who live in the corner [of Britain]'). The Romans build a fortification at Durovernum Cantiacorum (Canterbury), then cross the Stour and continue on to Colchester.  AD 48 Roman governor Ostorius Scapula disarms Iceni, who resist but are defeated. AD 60 Fortification briefly evacuated and rebuilt. AD 61 Rebellion of Boudicca and the Iceni. 69-71 Fortification abandoned by the Romans. c 70 Roman engineers begin to plan a new town. c 100 First large Roman public buildings constructed. 120 Romans drain fenland in East Anglia. 139 Hadrian's Wall completed. 220 Antonine Itinery lists Durovernum Cantiacorum. c 270 Romans build new city wall, excluding industrial suburb west of Stour but including south-eastern cemetery area and one burial mound. Walls remain in this position despite later rebuilding through centuries. 270-90 'Saxon Shore' forts of Reculver, Richborough, Dover and Lympne rebuilt. c 360 Roman bath house destroyed by fire. c 400 Most of the Roman garrison is withdrawn to the Continent. Family (mother, father, two daughters and dog) buried together within the Roman temple precinct. c 410 Romans abandon Britain. A silversmith buries a hoard of silver (now in the Heritage Museum) beside the London Gate. Following the Roman retreat from Britain, Canterbury slowly falls into ruin. c 480 First wave of continental refugees arrives. c 500 Continental trade links re-established. c 590 Cantwaraburh ('Kent people's stronghold' – ie Canterbury) is main residence of King Ethelbert of Kent. 597 St Augustine arrives in Canterbury with 40 priests. They use as their base St Martin's church, now considered England's earliest Christian church. By Christmas, Augustine is made bishop and over 10,000 English are baptised. 598-613 Augustine's monks create the abbey church of St Peter & St Paul. 601 Saintly relics and missionary reinforcements arrive from Rome. Augustine made archbishop. 630 Gold coins are being struck at the Canterbury mint. 669 Theodore of Tarsus becomes archbishop of Canterbury and begins Christian transformation of the city. 672 Synod of Hertford gives see of Canterbury authority over entire English Church. 766 Canterbury officially mints Offa's silver pennies. 792 From this date, all archbishops of Canterbury are buried in the cathedral. 814 Canterbury is elevated to borough status. 835-55 Kent suffers attacks by Danes (Vikings). 842 'Great slaughter' in Canterbury by the Danes, repeated in 851. 927 Athelstan of Wessex   930 Canterbury has seven mints to London's eight. 939 Edmund I   946 Eadred     955 Eadwig     959 Edgar I     975 Edward 'The Martyr'     978 Ethelred 'The Unready'   St Dunstan refounds in the city the original and sole surviving East Kent abbey, calling it St Augustine's (not to be confused with the cathedral). 991-1012 Kent suffers a second wave of virtually annual Danish attacks. 1009 Kent pays Danes £3,000 to go elsewhere. 1011 Danes demand that Archbishop Alphege surrender the cathedral treasures. The city, under siege, holds out for 20 days; then the archbishop, king's reeve and other important persons are captured, the cathedral and most of the city are burned and the population (estimated at 8,000) is killed, ransomed or enslaved. Alphege, forbidding his people to raise additional ransom, is killed with oxbones during a drunken feast at Greenwich. 1013 Swein Forkbeard Danes conquer England   1014 Ethelred 'The Unready'   1016 Edmund II Ironsides (Apr) Cnut (Nov)     1023    A contrite Cnut, with his entire court, returns Alphege's bones to a cathedral shrine, accompanied by rich gifts and land grants. 1037 Harold I 'Harefoot'     1040 Harthacnut     1042 Edward 'The Confessor'     1055 1066 Harold II 'Godwinson' (Jan) William I of Normandy (Dec) Norman Conquest The inhabitants of Canterbury, remembering the destruction caused by the Danes, refuse to resist William the Conqueror, despite the urgings of the abbot of St Augustine's. William orders the building of a motte-and-bailey castle on top of a Roman burial mound (Dane John). 1067 Fire destroys the cathedral. 1070 Lanfranc consecrated as archbishop of Canterbury. 1072 Accord of Winchester: Archbishop of York concedes the right of the archbishop of Canterbury to be 'Primate of All England'. 1077 Completion of rebuilding of cathedral by Lanfranc. 1087 William II 'Rufus'     1089 Some monks at St Augustine's organise a sit-down strike at St Mildred's church on behalf of brothers imprisoned for opposing Lanfranc's new Abbot Wydo. Hunger forces them to give up. 1091 First Saxon church is destroyed and relics of St Augustine and St Mildred are moved to St Augustine's abbey. 1100 Henry I     1135 Stephen of Blois     1140 Prior Wibert maps the water system he has had installed in Canterbury. 1149-1200 12 goldsmiths are at work in Canterbury. 1154 Henry II   1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket is murdered in the cathedral by Henry II's knights. 1174 Henry II in sackcloth does penance at Becket's tomb. Fire in the cathedral guts the choir but spares the now sainted Becket in the crypt. 1188-9 Monks are sequestered in the precincts of Christchurch priory during a dispute with Archbishop Baldwin over his plans for a college of secular canons. Local Jews smuggle in food. Richard I has to come in person to tell the archbishop to abandon his plans. 1189 Richard I     1199 John     c 1200 The chronicler Gervase of Canterbury, a monk of Christchurch, writes a detailed description of the rebuilding of the cathedral after the fire of 1174. 1216 Henry III     1220 The remains of St Thomas Becket are moved to his shrine in the Trinity chapel of the cathedral. 1224 The Franciscans (Greyfriars) arrive in Canterbury, first lodging at the Poor Priests' Hospital (now the Heritage Museum). 1236 The Dominicans (Blackfriars) found their 11th house in England at Canterbury. 1267 The Franciscans move into their preaching church on Binnewith Island. 1272 Edward I     1312 Edward II 1327 Edward III     1340-1453   Hundred Years' War 1348-9   Black Death The Black Death hits Canterbury hard: the population of 10,000 drops to 5,000. 1363 Commission of Inquiry finds that existing Roman wall has become eroded through disrepair, stone-robbing and ditch-filling over 1,100 years. Rebuilding begins; wall (with new towers) is complete by 1402. 1377 Richard II   1381 Peasants' Revolt: Wat Tyler leads his followers unopposed into Canterbury. They sack the castle, empty the jail, burn the county records and loot the archbishop's palace. Three 'traitors' are dragged into street and beheaded. After Tyler and his rebels leave for London (where they behead Archbishop Sudbury), East Kent recruits rampage through city so extensively that Canterbury is excluded from general amnesty afterwards. Sudbury is still remembered annually by the Christmas mayoral procession to his tomb. 1392-5 Cheker of Hope pilgrim inn – setting for Chaucer's 'Tale of Beryn' – is built by Christchurch priory. 1399 Henry IV   1413 Henry V   Henry IV is buried in the cathedral. 1422 Henry VI   1448 Canterbury given city charter. 1450 (January) Mayor Clifton arrests 'Blewbeard' Cheyne, leader of a rising that attacked St Radegund's hospice, near Northgate. (June) Jack Cade and 4,000 followers, rising against Lancastrian misrule, wait three hours outside Westgate before the mayor (backed by residents) denies them entry. 1451 Hangings in Canterbury, part of punitive court sessions called the 'harvest of heads'. 1455-85   Wars of the Roses 1461 Edward IV   Canterbury made a county borough 'for ever' (but see 1974). 1466 Market cross erected in Buttermarket. 1471   Battle of Tewkesbury Edward IV has Mayor Faunt hanged in the Buttermarket for aiding the pro-Henry VI Fauconberg rising. 1483 Edward V (April) Richard III (June)   1485 Henry VII     1498 The Franciscans number about 35 friars. c 1500 Canterbury population: 3,000. 1504 Bell Harry tower is completed, ending 400 years of cathedral building. 1509 Henry VIII     1520 Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V pay homage to St Thomas Becket at his shrine. 1534 Elizabeth Barton ('The Nun of Kent'), a Benedictine nun in Canterbury, hanged at London's Tyburn for prophesying against Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn. The Greyfriars warden is executed and the friars themselves endure house arrest for four years until the friary is dissolved in 1538. 1535 Margaret Roper brings the head of her father, Sir Thomas More, to St Dunstan's church for interment. 1536-9 Dissolution of the monasteries 1537   St Augustine's abbey (14th richest in England) is surrendered to the Crown and virtually levelled. 1538 A herald blows a trumpet for 30 days at Becket's shrine to summon the saint to face treason charges in London. In the saint's 'absence', the attorney-general declares his 'goods' forfeit. The shrine is demolished and all the gold, silver and jewels are removed to the Tower of London. Blackfriars is dissolved, its prior having fled abroad after preaching against Henry VIII's breach with Rome. 1539 Whitefriars' prior John Stone imprisoned in London and Canterbury, then barbarously executed at Dane John. Anne of Cleves lodges for one night in the royal palace (vastly rebuilt and augmented for the occasion) at St Augustine's abbey on her way to meet her betrothed, Henry VIII. 1540 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer surrenders Christchurch priory to the Crown. 1547 Edward VI   1549 The minting of coins at Canterbury ends. 1553 Jane (July) Mary I (July)     1555 John Bland, vicar of Adisham, is burned at the stake with three others, near the Deanery where Cranmer is under house arrest. 42 other martyrs are later (1555-8) burned on the same spot, and 5 more in the castle. 1558 Elizabeth I     1560s Census shows that under-18s form 45% of inhabitants of poor parishes. 1564 Future dramatist Christopher Marlowe is born in St George's parish. 1567 First wave of French-speaking Protestant (Huguenots) arrive from the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) and then France; immigration ended c 1700. 1573 Elizabeth I celebrates her 40th birthday in the city. 1578-80 Christopher Marlowe is a scholar at the King's School. 1588   Spanish Armada c 1600 Population: 5,000 (2,000 of whom are Huguenots). 1603 James I   1605   Gunpowder Plot 1625 Charles I (executed 1649)   Charles I and Henrietta Maria honeymoon at the royal palace in St Augustine's abbey. 1642 Colonel Sandys' Parliamentarian troops vandalise the cathedral, light their pipes from torn service books and attack statue of Christ in Christchurch Gate. 1641-6 English Civil War 1643   Puritan minister, 'Blue Dick' Culmer, spends three days creating Parliament-sanctioned iconoclastic havoc, including breaking the stained glass in the cathedral. 1645 Market cross in Buttermarket removed by Puritan mayor, who coins farthings from its lead roof. 1647 When church services are banned on Christmas Day, riots break out: the mayor is assaulted, the prisons emptied and free drink enjoyed by footballers in the High Street. The populace declares city for 'God, King Charles and Kent'. County Trained Bands arrive and force their capitulation. 1648 Rioters of 1647 are tried by juries who refuse to convict, bringing about the rising of the Kent gentry and the second civil war. Following the capitulation of Maidstone to the Parliamentarians, Canterbury surrenders peacefully, giving up 3,000 weapons and 300 horses at the cathedral. 1649   England proclaimed a Commonwealth     LORD PROTECTORS     1653 Oliver Cromwell     1658 Richard Cromwell       MONARCHS     1660 Charles II Restoration Charles II processes from St Augustine's abbey to the cathedral in celebration of his restoration. 1665-6   Great Plague   1670s Greyfriars acquired by Presbyterians. 1676 Silk weaving begins to outstrip wool. 1685 James II Monmouth's Rebellion   1689 William III & Mary II     1702 Anne     1714 George I     1727 George II   1745-7   Jacobite Rebellion   1756-63   Seven Years' War   1760 George III     1768 Kentish Gazette founded. c 1787 All the city gates except Westgate (the city jail), seen as impediments to new coach travel, are demolished. 1794-1811 5,000 troops housed in barracks in the north of the city. 1801   General Enclosure Act 1803-15   Napoleonic Wars       Slave trade abolished   1820 George IV   Silk weaving industry destroyed by imports of cheaper Indian muslin. 1830 William IV   Canterbury-to-Whitstable railway opens, with trains pulled by Robert Stephenson's Invicta locomotive (now in Heritage Museum). Population: 14,000. 1837 Victoria   1844 British Archaeological Association chooses Canterbury as the venue for its first meeting. 1853 Parliamentary borough disenfranchised for corruption. (This happens again in 1880.) 1854-6   Crimean War   1861-5   American Civil War   1865 Two-thirds of Cheker of Hope inn are destroyed by fire. 1867   2nd Reform Act enfranchises virtually all men in towns & extends franchise in country but excludes poorer agricultural labourers   1884   3rd Reform Act: uniform male suffrage in town & country; some 2 million farm workers get vote   1899-1902   Boer War   1901 Edward VII   1910 George V     1914-18   World War I 1918   Women win right to vote (at 30). School-leaving age raised to 14   1931 Broad Street car park opened. 1936 Edward VIII (January)       George VI (December)     1939-45   World War II World War II: in 135 air raids, 10,445 bombs kill 115 people and destroy 731 homes and 296 other buildings. 1942 (1 June) 100 high-explosive and thousands of incendiary bombs rain down on Canterbury, many drifting away from the cathedral and flattening the eastern half of the city. The Corn Exchange, Longmarket, two churches, the grammar school and the cathedral library are destroyed; 48 people die. 1945 Holden Plan published: city would buy 75 acres in the centre of the city and, through widespread demolition, would obliterate ancient boundaries, secure open vistas of the cathedral and bisect the city with a relief road. Anti-Holden Citizens' Defence Association wins municipal elections and only 35 acres are redeveloped. 1950s Population: 31,000. 1952 Elizabeth II   1965 University of Kent at Canterbury opens. 1974 Canterbury swallowed up by Kent, losing its status as England's smallest county borough. New Canterbury District Council incorporates countryside and coastal towns with the city. 1975 Canterbury Archaeological Trust established. 1982 Canterbury bypass finished; Dover traffic now diverted from city walls.
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