1601
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Contents: political eventscommerce transportation science medicine religion theater, film music nutrition food and drink |
Queen Elizabeth punishes Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, for his failure in Ireland, refusing to renew his patent for sweet wines (see 1600). Essex parades through London February 7 with 300 retainers, gains no public support, returns to Essex House, surrenders to the queen's men after a brief struggle with a force commanded by Lord High Admiral Charles Howard, Baron Howard of Effingham, and is put on trial. Attacked by his erstwhile friend Francis Bacon, Essex is condemned and beheaded February 25 at age 34.
Elizabeth tells a deputation from the House of Commons November 30, "Though God hath raised me high, . . . I never was any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strait fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster; my heart was never set on worldly goods, but only for my subjects' good." But many in the Commons bemoan the queen's failure to produce a Protestant heir to the throne and fear that she will be succeeded by a Roman Catholic monarch.
A Spanish force sent to Ireland under the command of Juan del Aguila occupies Kinsale; the English lord deputy of Ireland Charles Blount, 8th Lord Mountjoy, lays siege to Kinsale; Hugh Roe O'Neill, 2nd earl of Tyrone, marches south from Ulster to relieve the siege, but Mountjoy's cavalry routs Tyrone December 24 and surrounds the Spaniards, who evacuate the area, opening the way for an English invasion of Ulster.
English adventurer John Smith, 21, fights with Transylvania's Sigismund Báthory against the Ottoman Turks, who capture him and sell him into slavery (see 1603).
The first English spice fleet sails out of Woolwich in January under the command of James Lancaster. His 600-ton flagship Red Dragon is twice the size of the Hector or of any of the other three vessels outfitted by the East India Company (see 1600; 1602; Lancaster, 1592).
Parliament enacts a law corresponding to Scotland's 1579 Poor Law. The "Act for the relief of the poor" provides work for the able-bodied unemployed, assists those too old or too ill to work, provides for apprenticing children whose parents cannot maintain them, and specifies that support for the program must come from taxes levied in local parishes. But the Poor Law obligates those who are able to labor in workhouses and those who are sick or infirm in almshouses to do piecework. Residence requirements prevent the needy from migrating to richer parishes, and those who refuse to work may be whipped, imprisoned, and even put to death, but the Poor Law recognizes a government's responsibility to care for the poor.
Francis Bacon introduces a bill in Parliament for the regulation of insurance policies, which are "tyme out of mynde an usage amonste merchants, both of this realm and of forraine nacyons."
Japan's regent Ieyasu Tokugawa improves transportation by ordering that 53 stations be established between Edo and Osaka with ryokans (inns) where travelers can stay overnight and obtain fresh horses (see Painting, 1833).
Astronomer Tycho Brahe dies near Prague October 24 at age 54. He has been the first to record seeing a nova (an exploding star), the first to make scientific observations of a comet, and will be the last to rely solely on the naked eye.
The Presages of Life and Death in Diseases (De praesagienda vita et morte aegrotontium) by Prospero Alpini amplifies on his earlier studies of Egyptian diseases and medical practices (see 1591).
French midwife Louyse Bourgeois, 38, attends Marie de' Medici at Fontainebleau for the delivery of the queen's first child before an audience of 200. Bourgeois is one of the first graduates of the Hôtel Dieu, founded at a monastery as a school for midwives and gaining renown throughout Europe. The first great woman practitioner of obstetrics, she has replaced the official royal midwife (see 1608).
Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, now 48, receives permission in January to enter Beijing (Peking), having been refused in an earlier effort because of the Sino-Japanese conflict that made all foreigners suspect (see 1582). He is not received by the emperor but will remain at Beijing until his death in 1610.
Theater: Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare: "If music be the food of love, play on./ Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,/ The appetite may sicken, and so die" (I, i); "Youth's a stuff will not endure" (II, iii); "O mistress mine! Where art thou roaming?/ Oh, stay and hear, your true love's coming" (II, iii); "She never told her love,/ But let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek" (II, iv); "But be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em" (II, v); "This is very midsummer madness" (III, iv); Blurt, Master Constable by English playwright Thomas Middleton, 31.
A Book of Airs by poet Thomas Campion includes music as well as lyrics; Pleasure Garden (Lustgarten) by composer Hans Leo Hassler contains songs that include "Mein Gemüt ist mir verwirret" (see Bach, 1729).
The East India Company's James Lancaster doses his 200-man crew with lemon juice while at the Cape of Good Hope then heaves to off Madagascar to take on more lemons and oranges. His Red Dragon is the only ship in his fleet whose crew is not decimated by scurvy.
The word coffee appears in an English account by William Parry of the Persian expedition of adventurer Anthony Sherley, who 2 years ago failed in an effort to make an alliance between Elizabeth and Persia's Shah Abbas (see 1554; 1582). Sherley has also failed to make military alliances for the shah against the Turks, but he has introduced coffee to London, where it sells at £5 per ounce (see Canopius, 1637).
Most Londoners drink beer, ale, wine, cider, and posset—a hot drink popular since the Renaissance that is made of milk curdled with ale, wines, or some other liquor and usually spiced with nutmeg. It will remain popular through this century and the next.
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