January 4 – Anne of Brittany announces that all those who ally themselves with the king of France will be considered guilty of the crime of Lèse-majesté.
February 5 – Robert Lyle, 2nd Lord Lyle, is restored by Scotland’s King James IV to his previous title of Scottish nobility that had been forfeited on July 4, the previous year when he had sided against King James III in the fighting against the current monarch, King James IV.[2]
February 15 – The Scottish Parliament passes an Act to restore lands forfeited by the losers in the war between the supporters of the late King James III against his son, the reigning King James IV, and nullifying transfers of land made to new owners after the forfeitures.[3]
March or April – 1490 Qingyang event, a presumed meteor shower or air burst over Qingyang in the Gansu province in Ming dynasty China. Some later accounts lists casualties of more than 10,000 people.[4] The only date given for the Qingyang event is that it was in “the third lunar month” on the Chinese lunar calendar coinciding with a period beginning on March 12 and ending on April 19, 1490.
July 4 – John Corvinus, son of the late King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and a claimant to the throne, is defeated by the Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Bonefield.
July 15 – King Vladislaus of Bohemia is proclaimed as the new King of Hungary by a majority of the Hungarian nobility, prompting the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian to plan an invasion and conquest of the Hungarian Kingddom.
August 10 – The Scottish Admiral Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, commanding the warships Flower and Yellow Carrel, successfully repels an attempted ambush by three armed English merchant ships at the Firth of Forth. Wood captures the three ships, carries them up the Dundee river and presents them and their crews to King James IV. After a “an earnest remonstrance” to England’s King Henry VII about allowing the Englishmen to attempt a battle, King James sets the prisoners free and returns them to England.[9]
October 21 – The Massacre of Monzievaird takes place in Scotland at the county Perthshire, with 20 members of Clan Murray being killed when members of Clan Drummond and Clan Campbell set fire to the church where the Murrays have assembled.[11]
^Wood’s Edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland; Containing an Historical and Genealogical Account of the Nobility of that Kingdom, Volume 5 (D. Douglas Publishing, 1904) pp.553-554
^A. W. C. Lindsay, Report of the speeches of council, and of the lord chancellor and lord St Leonards (S. Murray, 1855) p. xxiv
