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1652

year

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ6962
Source-derived summary

1652 (MDCLII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1652nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 652nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 52nd year of the 17th century, and the 3rd year of the 1650s decade. As of the start of 1652, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–March

January 8 – Michiel de Ruyter marries the widow Anna van Gelder and plans retirement, but months later becomes a vice-commodore in the First Anglo-Dutch War.

February 4 – At Edinburgh, the parliamentary commissioners of the Commonwealth of England proclaim the Tender of Union to be in force in Scotland, annexing the Scottish nation with the concession that Scotland would have 30 representatives in the parliament of the English Commonwealth.

February 12 – Oliver Cromwell, England's Lord Protector, announces that his Council of Scotland will regulate church affairs as part of the Terms of Incorporation of Scotland into England, and eliminates Presbyterianism as Scotland's state religion.

March 29 (April 8 New Style) – Total solar eclipse of April 8, 1652 ("Black Monday").

April–June

April 6 – Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope in modern-day South Africa, thus founding Cape Town.

May 18 – Rhode Island passes the first law in North America making slavery illegal.

May 19 (May 29, New Style) – First Anglo-Dutch War: Battle of Dover – The opening battle is fought off Dover between Lt.-Admiral Maarten Tromp's 42 Dutch ships and 21 English ships divided into two squadrons, one commanded by Robert Blake and the other by Nehemiah Bourne; the result is inconclusive.

June 13 – George Fox preaches to a large crowd on Firbank Fell in England, leading to the establishment of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1652” is year. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through year, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1652, 1923—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, year is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “year” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6962. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1652 and 1923.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1652”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1652 primary sources, 1652 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1652”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1652” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.