1615

1611 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620

political events

France's Estates General dissolves February 23 after 4 months in session (see Richelieu, 1614). It has failed to gain concessions from the crown with regard to taxation and will not reconvene until 1789.

The 14-year-old Spanish infanta Anne of Austria marries France's Louis XIII, also 14.

The circumstances of the late Sir Thomas Overbury's death in 1613 come to light; four accomplices to his murder are tried, convicted, and executed; Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, and his wife, Frances, are brought to trial, found guilty of murder, and will be imprisoned until 1621.

Dutch forces seize the Moluccas from the Portuguese.

An English fleet defeats a Portuguese armada off Bombay (Mumbai).

Osaka falls June 4 to the Japanese shōgun Ieyasu Tokugawa after a 6-month siege; Hideyori Toyotomi, 21-year-old son of the late dictator Hideyoshi, commits seppuku and is burnt in the flames that consume the castle he has built and tried to defend.

human rights, social justice

English slaver Thomas Hunt kidnaps a Wampanoag tribesman from Patuxet. He sells Tisquantum (Squanto) into slavery at Malaga, Spain (see agriculture, 1621).

exploration, colonization

Samuel de Champlain makes a seventh voyage to the New World and finds Lake Huron July 28 (see 1609). One of the Great Lakes that cover 95,000 square miles and hold one-quarter of the world's fresh water, Lake Huron will provide an easier inland route for fur traders.

Captain John Smith of the Virginia colony surveys the New England coast from Maine to the cape that will be called Cape Cod. Commissioned by the Plymouth Company, Smith renames the native village of Patuxet, calling it Plymouth (Plimouth) (see 1606; 1620).

English navigator William Baffin, 31, explores Hudson Strait in northern Canada as pilot of Captain Robert Bylot's ship Discovery in search of a Northwest Passage (see 1616; Davis, 1587).

energy

England turns increasingly to cheap coal as timber grows scarce and firewood becomes costly (see 1658).

technology

Rubber from South America reaches Europe but is little more than a curiosity (see 1503; solvent, 1762).

science

Physicist-anatomist-playwright Giambattista della Porta dies at Naples February 4 at age 79, having improved the camera obscura and invented a telescope, produced a treatise on the physiognomy of hands, and written plays that were published if not performed; mathematician Adriaan van Roomen dies at Mainz May 4 at age 53.

"Letter concerning the Opinion of the Pythagoreans and Copernicus about the Mobility of the Earth and Stability of the Sun, and about the New Pythagorean System of the World" ("Lettera sopra l'Opinione de' Pitagorici, et del Copernico della Mobilita della Terra, e Stabilita del Sole, e del Nuove Pittagorica Systema del Mondo") by Carmelite monk (Paolo) Antonio Foscarini, 50, defends the Copernican heliocentric theory of astronomy (see Galileo, 1613). Published at Naples, it creates a storm of controversy at Rome (see 1616).

religion

Jesuit leader Claudio Aquaviva dies at Rome January 31 at age 71, having increased the membership in the 71-year-old Society of Jesus from about 5,000 to more than 13,000.

literature

Nonfiction: Analecton Ango-Britannicon by John Selden is a history of civil government in the British Isles before the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Fiction: Don Quixote (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) by Spanish novelist Miguel de Saavedra Cervantes, 68, who completed the first part of the work 10 years ago. Cervantes's left hand was maimed at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Algerian pirates captured him in 1575 and held him for ransom until 1580. His writing has been published since 1585, and his burlesque of romantic chivalry gained popularity when it first appeared with phrases that will become universal: "Not to mince words" (I, preface); "Give the devil his due" (I, III, 3); "Paid him in his own coin" (I, III, 4); "A finger in every pie" (I, III, 6); "Every dog has his day" (I, III, 6); "Give up the ghost" (I, III, 7); "Venture all his eggs in one basket" (I, III, 9); "Cry my eyes out" (I, III, 11); "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" (I, IV, 3); "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" (I, IV, 10). His second part contains more: "All that glitters is not gold" (II, III, 3); "Honesty is the best policy" (II, III, 33); "A word to the wise is enough" (II, IV, 30); "A blot on thy escutcheon" (II, IV, 35); "Pot calls the kettle blackarse" (II, IV, 43); "Mum's the word" (II, IV, 44); "When thou art in Rome, do as they do at Rome" (II, IV, 54); "Born with a silver spoon in his mouth" (II, IV, 73); and "There are only two families in the world . . . the Haves and the Havenots."

Poetry: The Odyssey by Homer translated by George Chapman (see 1611); "Shepherd's Hunting" by English Cavalier poet George Wither, 27, who wrote the pastoral while imprisoned in Marshalsea for his libelous satire "Abuses Stript and Whipt" ("Little said is soonest mended"); TheAuthor's Resolution by Wither contains the sonnet "Fidelia": "Shall I wasting in despair/ Die because a woman's fair?/ Or make pale my cheeks with care/ 'Cause another's rosy are?/ Be she fairer than the day,/ Or the flowery meads in May,/ If she think not well of me,/ What care I how fair she be?"

art

Painting: Scenes from the Life of St. Cecilia by Il Domenichino for Rome's S. Luigi dei Francesi; Portrait of a Young Man with Skull and Tulip (pen drawing) by Hendrick Goltzius.

music

Recercari et Canzoni Francese with music by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, 32, is published at Rome. Frescobaldi is organist at St. Peter's.

food and drink

France's Louis XIII has learned to cook his own food for fear of being poisoned. His bride, Anne of Austria, brings along Spanish chocolate paste as a gift to her husband; it is served at their wedding feast, and use of chocolate will soon spread to the Lowlands and Italy, where drinking chocolate will become fashionable (see 1590; 1659).

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