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Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice exploration, colonization science religion literature environment food and drink |
England's Henry VIII has his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, beheaded February 13 on charges of adultery. She has admitted to having had premarital intimacies with her cousin Thomas Culpepper and with Francis Dereham; she has held clandestine meetings with both since her marriage to the king, and they have been beheaded earlier. Her death weakens the power of her uncle Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk.
Henry VIII makes Ireland a kingdom. The Irish summon a parliament in June and six Gaelic chiefs approve the act that makes Henry king of Ireland.
Henry VIII sends an army into Scotland in October. His Lord High Admiral William Fitzwilliam, earl of Southampton, dies on the march at age 52 (approximate), but the Battle of Solway Moss November 25 gives Henry a victory over Scotland's James V; James dies at Falkland, Fife, December 14 at age 30 and is succeeded by his 6-day-old daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who was born to his second wife, Mary of Guise, as he lay dying.
Concubines of China's Ming dynasty emperor Jiajing conspire to strangle him in his sleep, but one of them alerts the empress. The conspirators are executed. Mongol tribesmen conduct raids into the country. The government has not given its regiments in the interior sufficient pay or rations. Deaths and desertions have reduced the regiments' strength to no more than 10 percent of their prescribed numbers. Many new recruits are unwilling to risk their lives in combat, and in 1 month alone the Mongols kill more than 200,000 people by some accounts, stealing cattle and horses as they burn villages (see 1550).
Spain's Carlos I (the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) establishes the viceroyalty of Peru, comprising Spanish South America and Panama except for what later will be Venezuela.
"A Brief Report on the Destruction of Indians" ("Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias") by Bartolomé de Las Casas says in part, "The reason why the Christians have killed and destroyed such an infinite number of souls is that they have been moved by their wish for gold and their desire to enrich themselves in a very short time" (see 1520). Spain's Carlos I (the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) signs laws that limit the powers of the royal land grants (encomiendas) over the subject tribesmen and forbid colonists in America to enslave Indians; while the New Laws for the Indies do not abolish Indian slavery (and say nothing about enslaving blacks) they require owners to free their Indian slaves after a single generation (see 1544; papal bull, 1537).
A Geneva diocesan court admonishes a lumberjack who has beaten his wife so savagely as to put out one of her eyes; the judges tell the man to be more gentle, but it also orders his wife to obey her husband and not provoke him. Teenagers have been allowed since the Middle Ages to marry if the boy was at least 14 and the girl 12; the only formalities required for marriage until death have been an exchange of promises followed by sexual intercourse, and while Henry VIII may have divorced his first wife neither adultery nor aggravated assault is sufficient ground for ordinary people in most places. The divorce rate will remain below 1/10 of 1 percent through this century and the next even in the Protestant states (see human rights, 1792).
Some 150 Spanish colonists led by Alvar Cabeza de Vaca travel 600 miles inland from the coast of southern Brazil and settle at Asunción (see 1536; 1537).
Hernándo De Soto dies May 21 at age 46 after having spent the winter on the Ouachita River and is buried in the Mississippi River that he discovered last year. De Soto's men descend the Mississippi under the command of Luis Moscoso de Alvarado from a point near the junction of the Arkansas River.
Francisco de Orellana reaches the mouth of the Amazon River August 24 after a 16-month journey (see 1541). He proceeds to Trinidad and thence to Spain, where he tells of having reached the river's headwaters and been attacked en route by native women like those in Greek mythology, armed with bows and arrows. He has named the river accordingly, and he embellishes his accounts with stories of gold and cinnamon (see 1546).
Portuguese explorer Juan (João) Rodriguez Cabrillo probes the coast of California in the service of Spain. A veteran of the unsuccessful 1520 punitive expedition against Hernándo Cortéz who thereafter conquered much of Central America, he has embarked from Navidad in New Spain in June, sails past Point Loma September 28, and enters a large bay at what later will be San Diego. Passing the coastal plain that will become Los Angeles, he sees a dark haze from Gabrieleno Indian campfires hovering over the mountain-ringed basin and christens it the Bay of Smokes (see 1769). His pilot, Bartolome Ferrelo, nearly reaches the mouth of the Columbia River (see Drake, 1579; Gray, 1791).
San Miguel de Allende has its beginnings in New Spain (later Mexico), where the Franciscan monk Juan de San Miguel founds the first settlement in what will become Guanajuato state; it is situated at an altitude of 6,135 feet (1,870 meters) above sea level and will be named for San Miguel (a benefactor of the local Native Americans); the rest of its name will come from that of Ignacio Allende, who will become a hero of the revolution against Spain early in the 19th century.
French colonizer Jean-François de La Rocque, 42, sieur de Roberval sails for New France in command of the ships Anne, Lèchefraye, and Valentine on a mission to establish settlements, counter any Spanish claims to the region, and convert the natives to Roman Catholicism (although he himself has been converted to Protestantism) (see Cartier, 1541). Appointed lieutenant general of the colony last year and given a royal subsidy of 45,000 livres, Roberval has augmented that sum by seizing some English ships. He has brought a group of convicts to perform the heavy labor that he and his large party of gentlemanly comrades disdain, and he meets June 8 in Newfoundland with Jacques Cartier, who is ordered back to Quebec but slips away in the night and returns to France, where the "gold" and "diamonds" that he brings prove to be false. Sailing up the St. Lawrence River, Roberval's group moves into Cartier's quarters at Cap Rouge, near what later will be Quebec, and on September 9 issues a pardon to one of his crew members who has killed another sailor (although for the most part he is a strict disciplinarian). His party prepares to winter on the river (see 1543).
Historia Stirpium by Bavarian-born botanist-physician Leonhard Fuchs, 41, at Tübingen gives precise descriptions of plants, presenting them in alphabetical order, giving an account of each one's form and habitat, discussing their medicinal properties, telling the reader when is the best time of year to collect them, and illustrating them with beautiful woodcuts (see Bock, 1539; L'Obel, 1570).
Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier disembarks at Goa May 6 (see 1541). He begins working among the poor pearl fishers (the Paravas) of India's southeastern coast, thousands of whom accepted Christianity in 1535 to gain Portuguese support against their enemies. Using a small catechism which he has translated into the native Tamil tongue, Xavier moves about instructing villagers (see 1545).
The first Jesuit mission to Ireland arrives with the purpose of keeping the people loyal to Roman Catholicism despite claims of royal supremacy advanced by England's Henry VIII and his supporters.
Pope Paul III establishes the Universal (or Roman) Inquisition at Rome July 21 in a move prompted by the sack of the city in 1527 as he tries to stem the tide of the Reformation with cruel repression (see Jesuits, 1540). A council of Dominican cardinals conducts trials of alleged heretics and permits them no legal counsel. The burning of books, "infidels," and free thinkers will continue until 1610, and the Vatican agency responsible for this Inquisition will continue to exist for more than 450 years.
The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issues an edict against the Dutch "heretic" priest Menno Simons, offering 100 guilders for his arrest (see 1536; 1568).
Poet Sir Thomas Wyatt is asked to conduct the Spanish ambassador to London but is stricken with fever and dies at Sherborne, Dorset, October 11 at age 39. He and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, have introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to English literature, but his work has been little known outside of court circles and will remain obscure until 1557.
A member of Hernándo de Soto's party will tell later of coming upon a region where "the pecan nut, the mulberry, and two varieties of plums furnish the natives with articles of food." Gonzalo Pizarro writes to the emperor Charles V September 3 that there are very few trees of the kind described in 1533 and that they are far apart (see 1541). The buds and the leaves taste like cinnamon but the rest of the tree has no taste at all, and there is no profit to be had from the "cinnamon" trees of the eastern slope of the Andes.
England's Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, 52, makes a rule that an archbishop must not have more than six flesh dishes or six fish dishes on fast days, followed by not more than four "second" dishes. A sliding scale is instituted for minor Church dignitaries; lesser orders must do with three flesh and two second dishes.
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