1606
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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce religion art theater, film architecture, real estate food availability population |
The former English lord deputy of Ireland Charles Blount, 8th Lord Mountjoy, dies at London April 3 at age 43, having finally married Lady Penelope Rich, who obtained a divorce from her husband after bearing Mountjoy's five children.
Russian boyars drive the pretender from the throne and May 17 and murder him as the "time of the troubles" continues. Having caused the death of the "false Demetrius," the Muscovite boyar Basil Shuiski makes himself czar and begins a 4-year reign as Basil (Vasily) IV.
The Austro-Turkish Treaty of Zsitva-Török November 11 recognizes the equality of the Austrians, relieves them of having to pay tribute for their part of Hungary, but gives Transylvania to István (Stephen) Bocskay, the Transylvanian prince who with Turkish support has led Hungarian revolutionists against the emperor Rudolf.
The Treaty of Vienna secured by István Bocskay gives Hungarian Protestants the same religious freedom as Catholics, but Bocskay dies suddenly at Kassa, Slovakia, December 29 at age 49, possibly a victim of poisoning by Counter-Reformationists, and his angry followers kill his chancellor, Mihály Kátay, in the marketplace at Kassa.
Portuguese forces in the Pacific drive off the Dutch after a 4-month siege of Malacca.
A Virginia charter granted by England's James I establishes the Plymouth Company and the London Company (Virginia Company of London), made up respectively of men from those two English cities and their environs. The two companies are authorized to establish settlements at least 100 miles apart in North America, the Plymouth Company to settle somewhere on the coast between the 38th and 45th parallels, the London Company to settle between the 34th and 41st parallels (see Jamestown, 1607; Pilgrims, 1620).
A Plymouth Company ship sent out August 12 under Henry Challons is captured by the Spanish. A second vessel sent out in October under Thomas Hanham and Martin Pring reaches the coast of Maine and returns with glowing accounts (see 1620).
Three ships of the London Company set sail December 19 for Virginia. Captain Christopher Newport commands 144 men, including Bartholomew Gosnold and John Smith, aboard the Godspeed, the Sarah Constant, and the Discovery (see 1607).
Sailors from the Dutch ship Duyjken (Dove) out of Java land at Cape Keerweer in what later will be called Australia are driven off by Aborigines after making the first landing by Europeans on the South Pacific continent (see 1699; Hartog, 1616).
Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queiros discovers in 1774 some South Pacific islands that will be called the New Hebrides.
England's chief minister Robert Cecil, 1st earl of Salisbury, expands the list of goods subject to import duties, and a revised book of rates raises the level of duties, thereby increasing by £70,000 per year the revenues enjoyed by James I (see 1603). The royal debt exceeds £600,000, but English judges rule in the Bate's case that the king may make impositions on imported commodities without parliamentary consent, and while this eases James's financial bind his financial ministers create a furor by trying to increase prerogative income for the crown from purveyance, wardships, and the discovery of so-called "concealed lands" (crown lands whose tenants are not paying their rents and dues) (see 1608).
Pope Paul V demands that Venice repeal a law restricting construction of churches and turn over to him two priests scheduled for trial in the civil courts (one is charged with murder). The Venetians refuse the pope's demand, and he excommunicates the Senate and the doge, putting the republic under the interdict and thereby barring all priests from performing their functions. Venice is a cosmopolitan city with a history of resisting Church intrusion in its local affairs; its officials engage local scholar Paolo Sarpi, 54, as a consultant, and they accept his argument that the interdict is invalid, that the Church pays no taxes on ecclesiastical property and it is not in the public interest to let such properties proliferate in a such a small area, that the Church may have every right to try its priests for crimes they may have committed as priests but that state courts have a responsibility in cases such as adultery and murder (see 1607).
English authorities arrest Jesuit superior Henry Garnett, 50, on charges of having taken part in last year's Gunpowder Plot. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Garnett initially denies any knowledge of the plot but then admits to having learned of it under the seal of the confession. Tried and convicted despite his protests that he is innocent, he is executed at London May 3.
The fifth Sikh guru Arjun is put to death by the ruling Mughal government after a 25-year reign in which he has built the Golden Temple (Harimandir) at Amritsar. Arjun is succeeded by his 11-year-old son Hargobind, who will head the sect until his own death in 1644, giving it a military character for the first time in accordance with instructions from his father.
Painting: Fray Felix Hortensio Paravicino by El Greco.
Theater: King Lear by William Shakespeare: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/ To have a thankless child" (I, iv); Macbeth by Shakespeare: "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time;/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/ Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing" (V, v); The Whore of Babylon by Thomas Dekker, performed by Prince Henry's Servants; A Trick to CatchThe Old One by Thomas Middleton, performed by the Children of St. Paul's.
Playwright-prose stylist John Lyly dies at London in November at age 62 (approximate).
Amsterdam's East India House is completed to designs by Dutch architect-sculptor Hendrik de Keyser, 41.
France's Henri IV tells the king of Savoy that if he lives for another 10 years he wishes that "there would not be a peasant so poor in all my realm who would not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday" (Je veux que le dimanche chaque paysan ait sa poule au pot), but French peasants live mainly on bread and gruel.
Australia has an Aborigine population that will later be estimated to number 300,000, divided among several hundred largely discrete, nomadic tribes without permanent settlements.
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