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France has another civil war (the War of the Three Henris) as the Holy League vows to bar Henri de Navarre from inheriting the French throne (see 1584). Supported by the Holy League and Spain's Felipe II, Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd duc de Guise, battles Henri III de Valois and Henri de Navarre (see Coutras, 1587). Former military leader Jacques de Savoie, duc de Nemours, comte de Genevois, and marquis de Saint-sorlin, dies of gout at Annecy June 15 at age 53.
Antwerp surrenders August 17 to Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, who sacks Europe's chief commercial center, exiles its Protestants, and secures the southern Netherlands, Flanders, and Brabant for Spain (see 1584). The Treaty of Nonsuch in August allies England with the Protestant United Provinces as Elizabeth breaks with Spain. Felipe II seizes all English ships in Spanish ports; Elizabeth sends Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, now 53, with a 6,000-man army to aid the Lowlanders, but Leicester will prove incompetent both as a military leader and a diplomat (see 1586).
Sir Francis Drake sails for the West Indies with 2,300 men in a fleet of 30 ships to attack the Spanish, who resisted his attacks last year (see 1586).
Sir Walter Raleigh sends a new expedition to Virginia under the command of his cousin Sir Richard Grenville, 44, and Sir Ralph Lane, 55.
Chesapeake Bay is discovered by Sir Ralph Lane, who remains in the New World as governor of Raleigh's Roanoke Island colony (see 1584; 1586).
English navigator John Davis (Davys), 35, discovers what later will be called Davis Strait on the first of three voyages that he will make with Adrian Gilbert in search of a Northwest Passage through North America to the Pacific (see Frobisher, 1576). After sailing northward along the icebound coast of western Greenland, he turns west and sails up a body of water that he names Cumberland Sound but finds no passage and turns back (see 1587).
Oxford graduate Thomas Harriot, 25, accompanies the second expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to Virginia and makes scientific observations that will be published in 1588. Harriot will pursue highly original research on subjects such as the refraction of light, ballistics, ciphers, codes, algebra, binary mathematics, and spherical geometry (see astronomy, 1609).
La disme by Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin, 37, introduces decimal fractions (see 1586). Stevin is the illegitimate son of a rich Bruges merchant.
Pope Gregory XIII dies at Rome April 10 at age 82 after a 13-year pontificate in which he has promulgated a new calendar and founded a system of seminaries for priests, but his political ventures and ambitious building program, which has included construction of the Quirinal Palace, have exhausted the Vatican's treasury. Gregory is succeeded by Felice Peretti Cardinal di Montalto, 64, who wins unanimous election April 24 and will reign until 1590 as Sixtus V.
Nonfiction: The Names of Christ (De los nombres de Cristo) by the Augustinian monk Luis de Léon, now 58, who was denounced to the Inquisition in 1572 for criticizing the text of the Vulgate (the fact that one of his great-grandmothers was Jewish also weighed against him) and imprisoned for nearly 5 years from 1572 to 1576.
Humanist and classical scholar Marc-Antoine de Muret dies at Rome June 4 at age 59, having written commentaries on works by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Catullus, and Tacitus.
Poet Pierre de Ronsard dies at the priory of Saint-Cosme-en-l'Isle outside Tours December 27 at age 61.
Organist-composer Thomas Tallis dies at Greenwich November 23 at age 80.
France's Henri III promulgates a code of etiquette for his courtiers.
The papal election of Cardinal di Montalto as Sixtus V alarms Paolo Giordano Orsini, duke di Bracciano, who fears that the new pope will seek revenge for the murder of his nephew Francesco Peretti 4 years ago. The duke takes his wife, Vittoria (née Accoramboni), to the Venetian town of Salo but dies there in November. Vittoria leaves for her family home in Padua, where she meets with her late husband's kinsman Ludovico Orsini, who has been sent to discuss issues relating to the duke's will. A gang hired by Ludovico breaks into her house on the night of December 27 and she is stabbed to death at age 28; he and his accomplices are apprehended and will be executed early next year.
Kronborg Castle is completed at Elsinore (Helsingör) for Denmark's Frederik II on the site of an earlier castle built early in the last century by Eric of Pomerania to enforce the collection of tolls on foreign ships passing through the Oresund.
Jamaican ginger reaches Europe on a ship from the West Indies. It is the first Oriental spice to have been grown successfully in the New World.
Portuguese traders introduce deep-fried cookery (tempura) into Japan, where it will be used mostly for vegetables.
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