• The "False Dmitri" surfaces in Poland, claiming to be the son of Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible, and begins rounding up support for an invasion of Russia.
• As part of a string of legislation attempting to ameliorate the poverty caused by the English enclosure movement, the Elizabethan Poor Law charges parishes with providing for the needy.
• Spanish troops invade Ireland in support of the rebellion by the Earl of Tyrone, capturing the town of Kinsale and holding it for 10 weeks before they are expelled the following year by Lord Mountjoy.
• In the Treaty of Lyons, Duke of Savoy Charles Emmanuel I trades the towns of Bresse, Bugey, Gex, and Pinerolo to the French in exchange for Saluzzo.
• Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate, in search of the mythical land of Quivira, leads an expedition through what is now Oklahoma and Kansas.
• The first voyage of the British East India Company, commanded by James Lancaster leaves London for the East Indies. The mission would establish trading posts at Atjeh on Sumatra and at Bantam on Java.
• English poet John Donne's court career is ruined by the discovery of his marriaged to Anne More, niece to his patron Sir Thomas Egerton's second wife, for which he is briefly imprisoned. Hereafter his formerly frivolous poetry would become much more serious and contemplative.
• In The Poetaster, English playwright Ben Jonson satirizes several of his fellow playwrights, especially his archrival John Marston.
• William Shakespeare's love elegy, The Phoenix and the Turtle, is first published.

These people were born in 1601:

• Louis XIII, future king of France.
• French mathematician Pierre de Fermat.
• Anne of Austria, future queen of France.
• French playwright and poet François Tristan L'Hermite.
• Baltasar Gracián, Spanish Jesuit philosopher and writer.
• Alonso Cano, Spanish painter, sculptor, and architect.
• Flemish painter Jacob van Oost.
• William Coddington, one of the founders of Rhode Island.

These people died in 1601:

• Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.
• Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, assassinated at the order of Hungarian general George Basta.
• English nobleman Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, executed for treason.
• English satirist Thomas Nashe.

1600 - 1601 - 1602

17th century