On April 15, the second Globe Theatre is demolished by the Puritan government to make room for new housing.
With the London theatres closed by the Puritan regime, playwriting activity shifts to closet drama. The 1644 publication of an anonymous satire against Archbishop William Laud, titled Canterbury His Change of Diet, is one mark of the shift.
The publication of The Bloody Tenet of Persecution marks the start of a major controversy between Roger Williams and John Cotton on religious tolerance in a Calvinist context. The controversy plays out through a series of works issued by both men in the coming years, down to Williams' The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody (1652).