1577

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political events

The Perpetual Edict signed by Don Juan de Austria with Dutch rebels in February provides for removal of Spanish troops from the Lowlands in exchange for recognition of Don Juan as governor and restoration of Roman Catholicism as the state religion (see 1576). The provinces of Holland and Zeeland refuse to recognize Don Juan's authority, however, and will not accept the Roman faith. Don Juan resigns his position and resumes hostilities, capturing Namur. Willem the Silent enters Brussels in triumph September 23 and becomes lieutenant to the new governor, Archduke Mathias of Hapsburg (but see 1578).

French Catholics triumph in mid-September over Huguenot forces, but the sixth war is brief. Reluctant to let the Holy League become too powerful, Henri III grants the Huguenots generous terms.

exploration, colonization

The city of Amritsar (initially called Ramdaspur) is founded in northwestern India's Punjab region by the fourth Sikh guru Ram Das around a sacred pool called the Amrita Saras on land given him by the Mughal emperor Akbar (see 1574; Golden Temple, 1605)

Sir Martin Frobisher explores the Atlantic Coast of North America, having obtained royal backing (see 1576). His attempts to establish a settlement at Frobisher Bay will be unsuccessful (see 1578).

Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth December 13 with a fleet of six ships and sails down the African coast en route for South America (see crime, 1573). His 18-gun, 100-ton flagship Pelican is 102 feet in length overall and carries nine "gentlemen" in addition to a crew of 80 (which includes 40 men-at-arms, a tailor, a shoemaker, an apothecary, and Drake's personal trumpeter) (see 1578).

medicine

The Black Assize at Oxford, England, ends with the judges, the jury, witnesses, everyone in the court except the prisoners dying of "gaol fever," a pestilence believed to have arisen out of the bowels of the earth but is actually typhus carried by the prisoners, who live in filth.

religion

England's Queen Elizabeth continues to persecute Roman Catholics (see 1577). Devon-born priest Cuthbert Mayne, 33, returned from France to Cornwall last year as a missionary, has disguised himself as the steward of a local landowner, but is discovered and charged with denying the queen's spiritual supremacy, saying Mass, and possessing the Roman Catholic devotional medallion known as an Agnus Dei. He is executed at Launceston, Cornwall, November 30 (see Campion, 1581).

architecture, real estate

Venice's Church of the Redeemer (Il Redentore) designed by Andrea Palladio goes up with funds voted by the Venetian Senate at the height of a plague.

food availability

Men sailing with Sir Martin Frobisher receive one pound of biscuit and one gallon of beer each day, one pound of salt beef or pork on flesh days and one dried codfish for every four men on fast days, with oatmeal and rice when the fish gives out. Each man also receives one-quarter pound of butter per day and a half-pound of cheese, with honey for sweetening and "sallet oyle" and vinegar, plus wild game, wild fowl, salmon, and fresh cod when it is available.

food and drink

London-born topographer-clergyman William Harrison, 43, says in his Description of England, "If the world last a while after this rate, the wheate and rie will be no graine for poor man to feed on." Barley is the common bread cereal in parts of Wales and the west of England; in the north of England and the Midlands, oats and rye, or a mixture of rye and wheat called maslin, or monk corn, are the staple cereal grains for rural people, but in bad harvest years even maslin is scarce and costly, forcing the poor to subsist on pease meal or ground beans. Harrison says that noblemen, gentry, and students generally dine at about 11 o'clock in the morning, merchants and husbandmen at noon, with a simple supper taken between 5 o'clock and 6 by the upper classes, an hour or so later by the yeomen. The poor eat whenever and whatever they can, living by the rule, "When fish is scant, and fruit of trees, Supplie that want with butter and cheese."

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