Events January–March January 1 – Anthony van Diemen takes office as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and will serve until his death in 1645. January 18 – The Duke's Mistress, the last play by James Shirley, is given its first performance. February 21 – Al Walid ben Zidan, Sultan of Morocco, is assassinated by French renegades. February 26 – Nimi a Lukeni a Nzenze a Ntumba is installed as King Alvaro VI of Kongo, in the area now occupied by the African nation of Angola, and rules until his death on February 22, 1641. March 5 (February 24 Old Style) – King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway gives an order, that all beggars that are able to work must be sent to Brinholmen, to build ships or to work as galley rowers. March 13 (March 3 Old Style) – A "great charter" to the University of Oxford establishes the Oxford University Press, as the second of the privileged presses in England. March 26 – Utrecht University is founded in the Dutch Republic. April–June April 30 – Eighty Years' War: The nine-month Siege of Schenkenschans ends, when forces of the Dutch Republic recapture the strategically important fort from the Spanish. May 14 – William Pynchon and his men establish the settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony (they will deed the land later that year, on July 15th). June 20 – Roger Williams and other Puritan settlers become founders of the colony of Providence Plantations, which later joins neighbouring territory to become the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The area today is the U.S. state of Rhode Island. June 22 – The Battle of Tornavento is fought in north-west Italy in the course of the Thirty Years' War, as France and Savoy respond to an attack by Spain. While the battle is a stalemate, the city of Castano Primo is heavily damaged. July–September July 10 – The Senate of the Venetian Republic votes, 82 to 4, in favor of renewing the charter of Jewish merchants to sell within the city, after a delay of almost six months. July 20 – The Pequot War begins in New England when John Oldham and several of his crew are killed when his ship is attacked and robbed, apparently by allies of the Narragansett Indians at Block Island. July 30 – In France, Cardinal Richelieu persuades King Louis XIII to