1630 in literature

Events

• April 10 – English literature, drama, and education lose a major patron and benefactor when William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain of England, dies at Baynard's Castle in London.
• June – Scottish-born Presbyterian Alexander Leighton is brought before Archbishop William Laud's Star Chamber court in England for publishing the seditious pamphlet An Appeale to the Parliament, or, Sions Plea Against the Prelacy. He is sentenced to be pilloried and whipped, have his ears cropped, one side of his nose slit, and his face branded with "SS", to be imprisoned, and be degraded from holy orders.

  New books

Prose

• Johann Heinrich Alsted – Encyclopaedia
• Thomas Dekker – London Look Back
• Thomas Randolph – Aristippus, or The Jovial Philosopher and The Conceited Pedlar

  Drama

• Anonymous – Pathomachia
• John Clavell – The Soddered Citizen
• Sir William Davenant – The Cruel Brother and The Just Italian
• Lope de Vega – El amor enamorado
• Thomas Dekker – The Honest Whore, Part 2
• Philip Massinger – The Picture and The Renegado
• Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza – Cada loco con su tema o el montañés indiano
• Thomas Middleton – A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
• Thomas Randolph
• *Aristippus
• *Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry

  Poetry

• Lope de Vega – El laurel de Apolo
• Diana Primrose – A Chaine of Pearle; or a memoriall of the peerless graces, and heroick vertues of Queene Elizabeth
• John Taylor – All the Workes of John Taylor the Water-Poet

  Births

• January 19 – Noel Alexandre, French theologian
• February 8 – Pierre Daniel Huet, French scholar and bishop
• February 28 – Matthias Tanner, Bohemian theologian and polymath
• September 13 – Olaus Rudbeck, Swedish scientist and author
• October 31 – John Spencer, English scholar and cleric
• October – Isaac Barrow, English theologian and mathematician
• November 24 – Étienne Baluze, French scholar
• December 17 – Kaibara Ekken, Japanese philosopher and botanist
• Unknown date – Thomas Tanner, English writer and cleric
• Probable year of birth
• *Vincent Alsop, English Nonconformist religious writer and wit
• *Dorothy White, English Quaker pamphleteer

  Deaths

• February 5 – Michael Rabbet, English Bible translator and cleric
• March 16 – Sylvester Norris, English priest and controversialist
• April 29 – Agrippa d'Aubigné, French Protestant poet and dramatist
• July 3 – Sigismondo Boldoni, Italian writer, poet, and physician
• August 11 – Thomas Walsingham, English courtier and literary patron
• October 10 – John Heminges, English actor and co-editor of the First Folio
• November 5 – Charles Malapert, Jesuit writer from Spanish Netherlands
• December 30 – Matthias Martinius, German Calvinist theologian
• Approximate dates – Samuel Rowlands, English pamphleteer