← Fame through time1500-1599
The 16th century
Whose working lives fell in the 16th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 16th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
William Shakespeare22 decades - 2
Mary, Queen of Scots22 decades - 3
Anne Boleyn22 decades - 4
Mary I of England22 decades - 5
Henry VIII of England13 decades - 6
Elizabeth I of England6 decades - 7
Francis Drake22 decades - 8
Lady Jane Grey22 decades - 9
Christopher Marlowe22 decades - 10
Catherine Howard22 decades - 11
Francis Bacon22 decades - 12
Walter Raleigh22 decades - 13
Catherine Parr22 decades - 14
Edward VI of England0 decades - 15
Elizabeth of Yorknot measured- - 16
Thomas Cromwell22 decades - 17
Thomas Wolsey21 decades - 18
John Knox22 decades - 19
Thomas Cranmer22 decades - 20
James V of Scotland1 decades - 21
William Tyndale21 decades - 22
Arthur, Prince of Wales5 decades - 23
Mary Boleyn8 decades - 24
James IV of Scotland7 decades - 25
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley0 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.