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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce science medicine religion literature art theater, film marine resources food and drink |
England's James I dissolves Parliament for the first time. His troops in Ireland force Hugh O'Neill, 2nd earl of Tyrone, now 71, to take refuge at Rome and the Plantation of Ulster is forfeited to the crown.
Denmark declares war on Sweden after more than 40 years of peace (see 1570). Sweden's young prince Gustav Adolf plunders the Bleckingian town of Kristianopel, has most of its inhabitants massacred, and burns it to the ground (see 1612).
Sweden's Karl IX dies at Nyköping October 30 at age 61 after a 7-year reign in which he has ruled arbitrarily, alienated the people, left the country exhausted by wars, and, finally, provoked the war with Denmark. His 16-year-old son has mastered Latin, Italian, and Dutch in addition to his mother tongues of Swedish and German, served as his father's co-regent for the past year, and will reign until 1632 as Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus II Adolphus). He signs a royal charter giving the Swedish council and the Estates (Riksdag) a voice in all questions of legislation and a power of veto in matters of war and peace; his late father has been warring since 1600 with Muscovy, that country is in the midst of internal strife, and a Swedish force occupies Novgorod (see 1612).
Japanese military leader Kioymasa Kato dies at Kumamoto in Higo Province August 2 at age 49, having helped both Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa in their efforts to unify the country and exclude Christians. His fief in southeastern Japan is transferred to the Hosokawa family.
The city of Kishangarh in Rajasthan has its beginning in a fort and palace built on the banks of Lake Gundalao by the Rajput ruler Kishan Singh.
Explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten dies at Enkhuizen in the Netherlands February 8 at age 47, having sailed to India via the Cape of Good Hope and explored the Arctic Ocean.
English mutineers take over Henry Hudson's ship Discovery and set Hudson adrift June 22 in a small boat along with his teenaged son and seven others on what later will be called James Bay (see 1610). The expedition has been ice-bound through the winter, Eskimos kill some of the mutineers, others starve to death, Hudson and his group will never be heard of again, and English authorities will imprison the surviving mutineers upon their return (the ringleaders will have been killed by their mates, four others will be tried for mutiny in 1618 but acquitted) (see Rupert House, 1668).
The new governor of the Jamestown colony in Virginia introduces private enterprise. The colony's agriculture has been a socialized venture until now, but Sir Thomas Cole assigns three acres to each man and gives him the right to keep or sell most of what he raises (see 1616; Plymouth, 1623).
Potosí in the South American Andes reaches its population peak of 160,000 as the Spaniards exploit Native American labor to produce tons of silver for shipment back to Spain (see 1545; Cerro de Pasco mine, 1630).
East Frisian medical student Johannes Fabricius (Johannes Faber, originally Johann Goldsmid), 24, returns to his native Osteel from the Netherlands for his father's 47th birthday and uses a telescope at dawn March 9 (February 27 on the Julian calendar still used in East Frisia) to view the rising sun (see David Fabricius, 1596); noticing several dark spots on it, he calls his father to come have a look, and together they study the phenomenon. Finding it painful to observe even the edge of the sun, they use a camera obscura to project the sun's image and continue for many weeks to investigate what Johannes describes in a tract dedicated June 11. Printed at Wittenberg (where Johannes is continuing his education), "Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun" ("De Maculis in Sole Observatis, et Apparente earum cum Sole Conversione Narratio") is the first published record of sunspots (see Harriot, 1610). German Jesuit astronomer Christopher Scheiner, 35, at Ingoldstadt uses a telescope and a helioscope he has made of colored glass to project the sun's image on a screen in March and discovers sunspots; since the phenomenon is contrary to Church teachings he is fearful of ridicule and publishes nothing, but he conveys the information to his friend Marc Welser at Augsburg (see 1612).
The manual Textbook of Human Anatomy (Anatomicae Institutiones Corporis Humani) by Danish physician Kaspar (Berthelsen) Bartholin, 26, is published by the University of Copenhagen. Bartholin studied from 1608 until last year at the University of Padua with anatomist Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente and will be the first to describe the olfactory nerve as the first cranial nerve (see 1653).
The Authorized (King James) version of the Bible is published for the Church of England after 7 years of effort by a committee of some 50 men which has included not only scholars from Oxford and Cambridge but also obscure vicars and political hacks, some of them drunks and pornographers, who have somehow crafted a masterpiece of the English language that will appear in countless editions over the next 4 centuries, with more than 7 billion copies sold.
Poetry: Homer's Iliad in a translation by George Chapman, whose first part appeared in 1598; The Anatomy of the World by English poet John Donne, 38, published anonymously, is an extravagant elegy to the late daughter of his patron Sir Robert Drury of Hawsted; Scourge of Folly by John Davies (of Hereford) comments on contemporaries who include Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.
Painting: Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens; Allegory by Hendrick Goltzius.
Theater: The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge by Cyril Tourneur; The Maid's Tragedy by Beaumont and Fletcher; A Chaste Maid in Cheapside by Thomas Middleton at London's Swan Theatre, with Lady Elizabeth's Men; The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare; The Tempest by Shakespeare 11/1 at Whitehall, with the King's Men: "Full fathom five thy father lies;/ Of his bones are coral made;/ Those are pearls that were his eyes:/ Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea change/ Into something rich and strange" (Ariel's song, I, ii); "Our revels now are ended. These our actors,/ As I foretold you, were all spirits and/ Are melted into air, into thin air;/ . . . We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep" (Prospero's farewell, IV, i, is also Shakespeare's farewell as he prepares to leave London and return to his native Stratford-upon-Avon); Catiline, His Conspiracy by Ben Jonson; A King and No King by Beaumont and Fletcher 12/26 at the court.
The Muscovy Company sends out the first English ship to be fitted out for whaling (see 1557). The 150-ton Mary Margaret skippered by Steven Benet kills a small whale and 500 walrus in Spitsbergen's Thomas Smyth's Bay, but the ship is lost with all hands on her return voyage (see 1608; 1612).
English country squire Thomas Coryate, 34, of Somersetshire, describes foreign eating habits in his book Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five Moneth's Travels Coryate traveled to the Continent 3 years ago and walked 1,975 miles through Europe, visiting Paris, Lyons, Cremona, Turin, Venice, Heidelberg, Zürich, and Strasbourg. "The Italian," he writes, "and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, do alwayes at their meales use forkes when they cut their meat for while with their knife which they hold in one hand they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten their forke, which they hold in their other hand, upon the same dish; . . . their forkes being for the most part of yron or steele, and some of silver, but those are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane." Coryate's neighbors back in Somersetshire ridicule his foppish affectation in using a fork at table (see Moryson, 1617).
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