1672
year
1672 (MDCLXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1672nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 672nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 72nd year of the 17th century, and the 3rd year of the 1670s decade. As of the start of 1672, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January–March
January 2 – After the government of England is unable to pay the nation's debts, King Charles II decrees the Stop of the Exchequer, the suspension of payments for one year "upon any warrant, securities or orders, whether registered or not registered therein, and payable within that time, excepting only such payments as shall grow due upon orders on the subsidy, according to the Act of Parliament, and orders and securities upon the fee farm rents, both which are to be proceeded upon as if such a stop had never been made." The money saved by not paying debts is redirected toward the expenses of the upcoming war with the Dutch Republic, but the effect is for the halt by banks for extending further credit to the Crown. Before the end of the year, the suspension of payments is extended from December 31 to May 31, and then to January 31, 1674.
January 11 – The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, national science academy for England, elects Isaac Newton to its membership, and then demonstrates Newton's reflecting telescope to King Charles II.
January 13 – Pope Clement X issues regulations for the prerequisites of removing relics of Roman Catholic saints from sacred cemeteries, requiring advance approval from the Cardinal Vicar in Rome before the remains of the saint can be allowed for view. The Cardinal Vicar is directed to bar regular persons from viewing remains, and to limit inspection to high prelates and to princes.
January 25 – The Theatre Royal, located at the time on Bridges Street in London, burns down. A replacement structure is built on Drury Lane in 1674.
February 16 (February 6, 1671 O.S.) – Isaac Newton sends a paper for publication regarding his experiments on the refraction of light through glass prisms and makes the first identification of the "primary colors" of visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum, reporting that "The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations."
February 25 – Willem, Prince of Orange, the 21-year-old Stadtholder of Gelderland and Utrecht, is approved by the States General of the Dutch Republic to command the Dutch States Army for the impending war with England.
March 12 – Action of 12 March 1672, a 2-day naval engagement between an English coastal patrol and a Dutch Smyrna convoy off the south coast of England.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1672” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7614. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1672, 1923, 1674 and 1671.
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This entry incorporates text from “1672” 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.