1623
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England's prince of Wales travels in secret to Spain with George Villiers, 1st marquess of Buckingham, who has persuaded him to seek the hand of the infanta Maria, sister of Felipe IV. "Mr. Smith" and "Mr. Brown" arrive at Madrid March 7 but find the infanta and Spanish court unenthusiastic, put off by Buckingham's arrogant manner, and distrustful of young Charles's promise to change English penal laws against Catholics (see Great Protestation, 1621). The diminutive (four foot-seven inch) Charles, now 22, makes the 30-year-old Villiers a duke May 18 (the first duke created since the execution of Norfolk in 1572), returns October 5, and will be betrothed instead to the sister of France's Louis XIII.
The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II gives the Upper Palatinate to Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, as the Thirty Years' War continues. Maximilian makes the duchy an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Upper Palatinate will be incorporated into the electorate in 1628. Papal troops occupy the Valtelline and graf von Tilly advances to Westphalia after defeating Christian of Brunswick at Stadtlohn.
The Ottoman sultan Mustapha I abdicates under pressure in favor of his 14-year-old nephew and is confined in the Seraglio (see 1622). The nephew will reign until 1640 as Murad IV, with his mother, Kösem Sultana, serving as regent until his majority.
Persia's Abbas I takes Baghdad, Mosul, and all of Mesopotamia from the Ottoman Turks. Baghdad will remain in Persian hands for 15 years.
Japan's shōgun Hidetada Tokugawa abdicates at age 45, having consolidated his family's rule, eliminated Christianity, and begun the process of closing the country to outsiders. He is succeeded by his son 19-year-old son Iemitsu, who will raise the shōgunate to its greatest glory in the next 28 years, eliminating the emperor's few remaining prerogatives while continuing his father's campaign against Christians.
Ndongo princess Nzinga succeeds to the throne after poisoning her brother. Her small monarchy is dwarfed by the neighboring Portuguese colony of Angola, but she is determined to resist the depredations of slave traders. She travels to Angola, where she negotiates with the governor and allows herself to be baptized into Christianity as Dona Aña de Souza (but see 1624).
Dutch forces seize the Brazilian port of Pernambuco that will later be called Recife.
Another large group of English colonists arrives at Plymouth.
The port of Gloucester is founded in the Massachusetts Bay colony.
The Dutch make Nieuw Nederland a formally organized province and organize a group of families to settle there (see 1614). The Dutch West India Company chartered 2 years ago draws up Provisional Regulations for Colonists under whose terms they are to be provided with clothing and supplies from the company's storehouses, these to be paid for at modest prices in installments, but the colonists may not produce any handicrafts and may engage in trade only if they sell their wares to the company. They must promise to stay for at least 6 years and to settle wherever the company locates them (see 1624).
Sir Thomas Warner arrives in the Caribbean and establishes the first successful English colony in the West Indies on the west coast of Saint Christopher, whose name will be shortened by the colonists to Saint Kitts (see 1632; Columbus, 1493; Bélain, 1627).
Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterzsoon Coen leaves for the Netherlands in February, and Dutch East India Company agents at Amboina proceed promptly to end English East India Company efforts to trade with the Spice Islands, Japan, or Siam. Believing that the English merchants plan to kill him with help from Japanese mercenaries and overwhelm the Dutch garrison as soon as an English ship arrives to support them, Governor Herman van Speult has ordered the arrest of the alleged conspirators early in the year. They admit guilt under torture, 10 rival English traders are executed in February along with 10 Japanese and a Portuguese, and what the English will call the Amboina Massacre brings to a halt all attempts at Anglo-Dutch cooperation in the region. Coen is forbidden to return to the Indies pending an investigation (see 1627), but hereafter it will be the Dutch who control the East Indies.
English traders in Japan abandon their commercial station at Hirado (see 1613).
Pilgrim Fathers in the Plymouth colony assign each family its own parcel of land, forsaking the communal Mayflower Compact of 1620 (see Virginia, 1611). Given new incentive, women and children join with men to plant corn and increase production.
A new English patent law protects and encourages inventors.
German mathematician and astronomer Wilhelm Schickard, 31, writes to his friend Johannes Kepler September 23 describing his progress in inventing a Rechenmaschiene (computer) (see science [Oughtred's slide rule], 1622). A professor at the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, Schickard has built a mechanical device that employs six dented wheels geared through a "mutilated" wheel to add and subtract up to six-digit numbers; with every full turn of this wheel another wheel located to its right rotates 1/10 of a full turn, an overflow mechanism rings a bell, and a set of Napier's cylinders in the machine's upper half helps to perform multiplications, enabling the Rechenmaschiene to multiply as well as add, subtract, and divide. Schickard and his family will die in an epidemic of bubonic plague in 1635, his detailed notes will not be discovered until 1935, and their significance will not be recognized for another 20 years (see Pascal, 1642).
Pinax Theatri Botanici by Swiss physician, anatomist, and botanist Gaspard Bauhin, 63, introduces a scientific binomial system of classifaction. A compilation that pulls together uncoordinated plant names and descriptions of some 6,000 species mentioned by Theophrastus and Dioscorides, plus later herbals and plant records, it represents the first effort to summarize the confusing names (see Linnaeus, 1737).
Italian anatomist Gasparo Aselli, 42, performs a vivisection operation on a dog that has just eaten a substantial meal and discovers "chyle" (lacteal) vessels. Aselli finds that the dog's peritoneum and intestine are covered with a mass of white threads (see Pecquet, 1643).
Smallpox is reported for the first time in Russia, where epidemics of the disease will be as devastating as they are elsewhere.
Pope Gregory XV dies at Rome July 8 at age 69 after a 2-year reign in which he has introduced the secret ballot for papal elections and established the Church's first permanent board of control of its foreign missionaries (the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith). He is succeeded August 6 by Mateo Cardinal Barberini, 55, who 3 years ago wrote a poem in honor of Galileo Galilei and will reign until 1644 as Urban VIII.
Nonfiction: Assayer by Galileo Galilei is a polemic on the philosophy of science. The astronomer and mathematician dedicates it to the new pope Urban VIII.
Scholar Paolo Sarpi dies at his native Venice January 14 at age 70.
Painting: Portrait of Cardinal Bentivoglio, Portrait of François Duquesnoy, and Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, Wife of Marchese Nicola Cattaneo by Anthony Van Dyck; Baptism of Christ by Guido Reni. Diego Velázquez gains appointment as court painter at Madrid, where he will be famous for his naturalistic portraits of Felipe IV, the Infanta Maria, Marianna of Austria, Olivarez, court jesters, dwarfs, idiots, and beggars in addition to his religious paintings.
Sculpture: David by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Theater: Love, Honor and Power (Amor, Honor y Poder) by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 23; The Duke of Milan by Philip Massinger.
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio) is published at London by the bard's friends John Heminge, 67, and Henry Condell with 14 comedies, 10 histories, 11 tragedies, and a dedicatory poem by Ben Jonson "To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us." Heminge (or Heming, or Hemmings) prospered as a member of the King's Men theatrical company and served as its business manager for more than 25 years.
Composer William Byrd dies at Stondon Massey, Essex, July 4 at age 80. A Roman Catholic, he has composed music for both the Catholic and Anglican liturgy and has been at Stondon Massey since 1593.
The Paris Church of St. Marie de la Visitation is completed by architect François Mansart, 25.
Brazil has 350 sugar plantations, up from five in 1550.
The Plymouth Plantation receives 60 new settlers, who are given lobster and a little fish along with spring water for lack of anything better to eat and drink (see 1622). The colony has six goats, 50 pigs, and many hens (see 1624).
A Spanish edict offers rewards and special privileges to encourage large families, but the offer has little effect on birthrates.
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