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Japan's shōgun Ieyasu Tokugawa dies at Sumpu June 1 at age 74. His son Hidetada, now 38, will marry a daughter of the emperor Gomizno (all her siblings will be killed or aborted) and rule until his abdication in 1623.
Manchu forces invade China (see 1620).
Dutch East India Company mariner Willem Cornelis Schouten, 49, rounds Cape Horn for the first time and gives the cape its name (he was born at Hoorn). Navigator Jakob Le Maire, 31, accompanies Schouten and will help him explore the South Seas (see Tasman, 1642).
Dutch East India Company mariner Dirck Hartog's ship Eendracht carries too far east after leaving the Cape of Good Hope for Java and lands between October 25 and 27 at what will be called Shark Bay in Western Australia (see 1606). Pieter Nuyts will explore nearly 1,000 miles of the southern coast in the next few years (see Tasman, 1642).
William Baffin discovers what will be called Baffin Bay on another expedition by the Discovery in search of a Northwest Passage (see 1615). He sails some 300 miles farther west than John Davis went in 1587 and reaches latitude 77° 45'—farther to the north than any other explorer will venture for 236 years (see Hearne, 1771). Baffin honors the patrons of his expedition by giving the names Jones, Lancaster, and Smith sounds to straits that extend from the northern head of the bay, but he finds no reason to believe that a Northwest Passage to the Indies can be found.
A Description of New England by Captain John Smith appears at London with a map of the region (see 1615; 1620).
Geographer-historian Richard Hakluyt dies at London November 23 at age 64.
Jamestown, Virginia, colonists each receive 100 acres of land, having worked until now for the London Company. Each colonist will soon be given an additional 50 acres for each new settler he brings to Virginia (see 1611).
England's East India Company begins trading with Persia from its Indian base at Surat.
England's James I begins selling peerages to replenish the seriously depleted royal treasury (see 1606).
Will Adams (Anjin Miura) embarks in Japanese vessels that will take him to Siam and Cochin China in the next 2 years (see 1613). Adams has built the ships to expand Japanese trade in silks and other valuable commodities from the mainland.
Officers of the Inquisition arrest Galileo Galilei February 26 and the Vatican orders him to stop defending Copernican "heresy" (see 1613; Copernicus, 1543). The Vatican places the "Letter" written last year by Antonio Foscarini on the Index of Forbidden Books March 3 (Foscarini has left Rome before Galileo's arrival and dies a few months later at age 51 at the Carmelite monastery he has founded at his native Montalto). Galileo has written a "Treatise on the Tides" and Pope Paul V has asked the cardinals of the Holy Office to examine the Copernican system; Jesuit prelate Roberto Cardinal Bellarmine, now 74, has received secret reports about Galileo and, although on friendly terms with his fellow Tuscan, has declared that belief in the revolutionary ideas of the late Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus violate Holy Scripture. The Venetian scholar Paolo Sarpi speaks out in Galileo's defense, saying, "The day will come, I am almost sure, when men better versed in these matters will deplore the disgrace of Galileo and the injustice dealt so great a man." Galileo is not put on trial and receives assurances that he may continue to discuss Copernican theory hypothetically but is forbidden to "hold, teach, and defend in any manner whatsoever, in words or in print" the Copernican doctrine of the motion of the Earth (but see 1632).
Matthias de L'Obel dies at Highgate, London, March 3 at age 77. He has been botanist and physician to James I.
The leader of a 1614 attack on Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto and some of his followers are beheaded February 28 by order of the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias.
Portuguese-born Amsterdam rationalist Uriel Acosta (né Gabriel da Costa), 31, formulates 11 theses attacking the prevailing form of Judaism on grounds that it is based on rabbinic legislation rather than on the Old Testament. Born into an aristocratic Marrano family, Acosta studied canon law, became the treasurer of a cathedral chapter, but became convinced that there was no salvation in Roman Catholicism and turned to Judaism. He converted his mother and brothers to his beliefs and fled with them to Amsterdam, where he embraced Judaism, had himself circumcised, and changed his name, but the Jews of Amsterdam excommunicate him for his views, as expressed in his work "On the Mortality of the Soul" ("Sobre a Mortalidade da Alma"), which maintains that the mortality of the soul can be proved by the Bible and that the belief in the immortality of the soul impels people to choose an ascetic way of life and even to seek death (see 1624).
Persecution of Catholics intensifies in Bohemia.
The new Japanese shōgun Hidetada Tokugawa bans the teaching of Christianity, continuing the policy of his late father, but some missionaries continue to proselytize (see 1617).
The secret Rosicrucian Society is described in the anonymous pamphlet Chymische Hochzeit Christiana Rosenkreutz that will be ascribed to German Protestant theologian-satirist Johann Valentin Andrea, 30. The society is said to have been started in the 15th century by Christian Rosenkreutz (Frater Rosae Crucis).
Cuzco-born Spanish chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega dies at Córdoba April 24 at age 77, having written widely about the history of the Inca and the Spanish conquistadors. The illegitimate son of a conquistador by an Incan princess, he is best known for his account of Hernando de Soto's expeditions (La Florida del Ynca) and his history of Peru, whose second part will appear next year (the first part was published from 1608 to 1609).
Poetry: "A Select Second Husband for Sir Thomas Overburies' Wife" by John Davies (of Hereford): "Beauty's but skin deep"; Poems by Ben Jonson include "Drink to me only with thine eyes"; Tragiques by French poet and Huguenot captain Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, 64.
Painting: Banquet of the Officers of the Guild of Archers of St. George by Dutch painter Frans Hals, 36; The Lion Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens; Portrait of Jan Vermeulen by Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck (or Vandyke), 17; Lot and His Daughters by Hendrick Goltzius; The Last Supper by Luis Tristán.
Theater: The Scornful Lady by Beaumont and Fletcher: "Beggars must be no choosers" (V, iii) (a line derived from a proverb recorded by John Heywood in 1546).
Playwright Francis Beaumont dies at London March 6 at age 36; playwright-novelist-poet Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra at Madrid April 23 at age 68; playwright-poet William Shakespeare at his native Stratford-upon-Avon April 23 at age 52, having occupied the town's second-largest house and been credited with writing more than 150 sonnets and 38 plays, many of which will be restaged for centuries to come and serve as the bases for countless other tragedies and comedies (see First Folio, 1623).
John Rolfe and his wife, Rebecca (née Pocahontas), voyage to London, where Rebecca is lionized and presented at court. More than one publican capitalizes on her popularity by renaming his tavern "La Belle Sauvage."
Antwerp's Notre Dame Cathedral is completed after 264 years of construction.
Samuel de Champlain returns from North America with Jerusalem artichokes, tubers from a kind of sunflower that the French will initially call artichaut de Canada (Canadian artichoke), poire de terre (earth pear), or topinambour (after a tribe from Brazil); Italians will call it girasole, or turning to the sun.
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