1638 in England

Events from the year 1638 in England.

Incumbents

 * Monarch – Charles I
 * Secretary of State – Sir John Coke

Events

 * 18 April – flogging of John Lilburne for refusing to swear an oath when brought before the court of Star Chamber for distributing Puritan publications.
 * 12 June – trial of John Hampden for non-payment of ship money concludes: a narrow majority of judges find the tax to be legal.
 * 21 October – The Great Thunderstorm at Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Devon: 4 are killed and around 60 injured when probable ball lightning strikes the parish church.
 * The Queen's House at Greenwich, designed by Inigo Jones in 1616 as the first major example of classical architecture in the country, is completed for Henrietta Maria.
 * John Milton's elegy "Lycidas" is published.

Births

 * 24 January – Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, poet and courtier (died 1706)
 * 6 March– Henry Capell, 1st Baron Capell, First Lord of the British Admiralty (died 1696)
 * 2 June – Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, politician (died 1709)
 * 24 December – Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu, diplomat (died 1709)
 * William Sacheverell, statesman (died 1691)

Deaths

 * 14 September – John Harvard, clergyman and colonist (born 1607)