1558 Accession of Queen Elizabeth
1588 Spanish Armada
1595 Spanish raid on Penzance
1602 Richard Carew publishes his Survey of Cornwall
1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth 1619 John Killigrew's lighthouse at the Lizard
1642 Civil War begins
1643 Battles of Bradock Down, Stratton, Lansdown and Roundway Down Royalists take Bristol.
1644 Royalists defeat Essex at Lostwithiel
1646 Parliamentary army under Fairfax invades Cornwall. John Arundell surrenders Pendennis Castle. End of Civil War.
1651 John Grenville and Royalists driven out of Scilly.
1660 Restoration of Charles II. 1688 Imprisonment and acquittal of Bishop Trelawny
1702-10 Earl of Godolphin's ministry
1707 Sir Cloudesley Shovel wrecked on the Scilly Isles
c. 1710 First steam pump in Cornwall, and capitalist development of tin and copper mining.
1743 John Wesley's first visit to Cornwall
1754 William Borlase publishes his Antiquities of Cornwall
1777 James Watt erects his first steam engine in Cornwall
1787 Riots at Poldice mine owing to copper depression
1789 Wesley's last visit to Cornwall
1800-40 Rapid development of mining after Richard Trevithick's high pressure engine
1818 Royal Institution of Cornwall founded
1832 Reform Act: Cornish M.P.s reduced from 42 to 12
1834 Bodmin-Wadebridge Railway
1837 Discovery of copper at Caradon
1838 Abolition of tin coinage
1842 Man engine installed at Tresavean mine
1847 Plymouth-Falmouth railway begun
1852 West Cornwall Railway (Penzance-Truro) completed
1856 Maximum copper production of 209,000 tons of ore
1859 Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash completed
1864 Mines Commission
1866 Financial crisis, collapse of copper mining, and emigration of miners
1876 Diocese of Cornwall revived with see at Truro
c. 1890 Decline in tin mining and fisheries, and expansion of china clay and tourist industries