Events
- 2 January – cash payments by the Exchequer suspended for a year, due to fears of imminent bankruptcy. [1]
- 11 January – Isaac Newton is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London [2] and it then demonstrates his reflecting telescope to the King.
- 25 January – the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street in London burns down, forcing the King's Company to relocate to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre while the Theatre Royal is rebuilt in Drury Lane. [3]
- 6 February – Isaac Newton sends for publication a paper regarding his experiments on the refraction of light through glass prisms and makes the first identification of the primary colours. [4]
- 25 February – Willem, Prince of Orange, the 21-year-old Stadtholder of Gelderland and Utrecht and future King William III of England, is approved by the States General of the Dutch Republic to command the Dutch States Army for the impending war with England. On 4 July he is appointed Stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland.
- 12 March – Action of 12 March 1672: A 2-day naval engagement between an English coastal patrol and a Dutch convoy off Beachy Head. The English fleet suffers severe damage while most of the Dutch convoy escapes, although one of the Dutch commanders (De Haaze) is killed and one warship taken as a prize ( Klein Hollandia ) sinks; the latter will be rediscovered in 2019. [5]
- 15 March – King Charles II issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, suspending execution of Penal Laws against Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics in his realms. [6]
- 17 March – Third Anglo-Dutch War: England declares war on the Dutch Republic. [6]
- 28 May (7 June New Style) – the first naval battle of the Third Anglo-Dutch War is fought at the Battle of Solebay off Southwold; indecisive. [1]
- August – farthing and halfpenny coins, machine pressed at the Royal Mint, are introduced by royal decree, the first official issue of copper coinage. The reverse portrays Britannia, thought to have been modelled by Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond. [7]
- 13 September – John Bunyan released after a 12-year imprisonment for preaching without a licence. [8]
- 16 September – the Board of Trade is created by a merger of the Council of Trade and the Council of Foreign Plantations and the Earl of Shaftesbury is appointed as the first Lord of Trade.
- 28 November – after more than five years of administration of the Treasury by a five-member commission, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, one of the members, becomes the Lord High Treasurer of England.
- December – John Dryden's play Marriage à la Mode first performed in London by the King's Company. [9]
- 18 December – an English invasion force captures the Caribbean island of Tobago from Dutch colonists and destroys the settlement.
- 30 December – first commercial public concert series in Europe begins; organised by John Banister at Whitefriars, near Fleet Street in London. [1]
Undated
- The bankrupt Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa is restructured into the new Royal African Company with a new, broader charter to trade into West Africa.
- Rebuilding begins of St Stephen Walbrook church in the City of London, designed by Christopher Wren. [6]
- Rebuilding of Temple Bar, London, designed by Christopher Wren.
- Richard Hoare becomes a partner in the London goldsmith's business which, as private banking house C. Hoare & Co., will survive through to the 21st century. [10]
- The Fulham Pottery is established in London by John Dwight, the earliest certainly known native stoneware manufacturer in England; it will survive until the second half of the 20th century. [11]