1640 in England

Incumbents

• Monarch – Charles I
• Parliament – Short, Royalist Long

  Events

• 12 January – Thomas Wentworth becomes Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Earl of Strafford.
• 17 January – John Finch becomes Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.
• 13 April – King Charles I summons the Short Parliament in an attempt to fund the Second Bishops' War against the Scottish Covenanters.
• 17 April – John Pym makes a speech attacking the King in Parliament.
• 4 May – Oliver St John calls on Parliament to outlaw ship money.
• 5 May – the King dismisses the Short Parliament and prepares to attack Scotland.
• 6 May – the Earl of Warwick, Lord Brooke, Lord Saye, John Pym, John Hampden, and Sir Walter Earle arrested.
• 20 August – a Scottish Covenanter army invades Northumberland.
• 28 August – Battle of Newburn: the Covenanter army defeats the English army.
• 26 October – Treaty of Ripon signed between the King and the Covenanters.
• 3 November – the Long Parliament is summoned; it will not be dissolved for 20 years.
• 25 November – the Earl of Strafford imprisoned in the Tower of London.
• 18 December – Archbishop Laud impeached for treason.
• undated – Habeas Corpus Act passed, abolishing the Star Chamber.

  Births

• 25 January – William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, soldier and statesman
• 30 March – John Trenchard, statesman
• 7 December – Fabian Stedman, pioneer of change ringing
• 17 November – Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, née Villiers, a mistress of King Charles II
• 13 December – Robert Plot, naturalist
• 14 December – Aphra Behn, author

  Deaths

• 14 January – Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, lawyer and judge
• 25 January – Robert Burton, scholar
• 17 March – Philip Massinger, dramatist
• 22 March – Thomas Carew, poet
• 28 April – William Alabaster, poet and playwright
• 3 June – Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, politician
• 20 October – John Ball, Puritan clergyman
• 8 December – Princess Anne, daughter of King Charles I
• possible – John Ford, dramatist