1625
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Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice exploration, colonization medicine art theater, film architecture, real estate agriculture food availability nutrition |
England's James I dies at Theobalds, Hertfordshire, March 27 at age 58 after a 22-year reign and is succeeded by his 24-year-old son, who ascends the throne March 27 and will reign until 1649 as Charles I. The tiny new king is married by proxy May 1 to Louis XIII's sister Henrietta Maria, now 16, and receives her at Canterbury June 13.
France has a Huguenot revolt led by Henri, duc de Rohan, 46, and his brother Benjamin de Rohan, 42, seigneur de Soubise.
Maurice, Prince of Orange, dies at The Hague April 23 at age 57, having helped to modernize the Dutch military and make it an effective fighting force (see 1622). Breda in the Netherlands surrenders July 2 after nearly a year's investment by Spanish forces, who have foiled efforts by English mercenaries to break the siege (see 1629).
Parliament rebuffs England's new king in his demands for funds to carry on the war with Spain. Charles has lent ships to France's Louis XIII for use against the Huguenots at La Rochelle, and Parliament's Protestant feelings have also been aroused by the king's support of Richard Montagu, 48, the royal chaplain who has repudiated Calvinist doctrine.
The Treaty of Southampton September 8 forms an Anglo-Dutch alliance against Spain. George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, organizes an expedition, which Charles sends to Cádiz in October under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, 51, viscount Wimbledon, but the enterprise is badly organized and Cecil bungles the mission, permitting Spain's treasure ships to reach port. (Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, is Cecil's second in command.) Strapped for funds as was his late father, Charles tries to raise money on the crown jewels in Holland in order to make himself independent of the Commons (see 1626).
Sweden's Gustav II Adolf resumes war with Poland, taking Kokenhusen and invading Lithuania (see 1621; 1626).
De Jure Belli et Pacis by Hugo Grotius is an expansion of his 1609 Mare librum thesis, which begins the science of international law. Grotius has been condemned to life imprisonment for leading a protest group called the Remonstrants but has escaped and emigrated to France (see 1702).
Fort Amsterdam gets its first slaves—some Angolan men taken by a Dutch privateer from a Portuguese ship bound for Brazil. The men are put to work building the fort; loading Dutch West India Company ships with beaver, mink, otter, rat, and wildcat pelts; and tending the colonists' fields of barley, buckwheat, oats, rye, wheat, canary seed, and flax (see 1626).
Fort Amsterdam is founded April 22 on the lower tip of Manhattan Island by the Dutch West India Company, whose officials build a few houses near the fort and lay out some streets, including Tuyn Straet (Garden Street) and Hoogh Straet (High Street). The Dutch ship Oranjeboom (Orange Tree) arrives in late March or early April from Plymouth, England, with an unrecorded number of additional colonists, but 11 passengers have died and 20 fell ill while waiting for the weather to lift at Plymouth, where plague was raging. A convoy of four Dutch ships sets sail for Fort Amsterdam April 25, but pirates capture one of them—De Makereel—off Dunkirk April 27.
The first English colony on Barbados is established under the leadership of Sir William Courteen (see 1627).
The charter of Nova Scotia territory granted to William Alexander in 1621 is renewed, but although exploratory parties were sent out in 1622 and 1623, and baronetcies have been offered to Scotsmen who establish six or more settlers, Alexander has trouble finding takers; only 28 baronets will have gained that title by next year (see politics, 1627).
A Colonial Office is established at London to administer the nation's growing overseas empire.
An epidemic of the bubonic plague known as the Black Death kills 41,000 at London while 22,000 die of other causes (see 1603; 1665).
Glauber's salt (anhydrous sodium sulfate) is discovered by German physician-chemist Johann Rudolf Glauber, 21, whose salt will be used as a laxative and for dyeing textiles.
Painting: Marie de' Medici by Peter Paul Rubens; Allegory of Fertility by Antwerp-born Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens, 32, who has been very much influenced by Rubens; The Procuress by Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst, 34; Paolo Adorno, Marchesa Brignole Sale, and her Son by Anthony Van Dyck; Job by Guido Reni; Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes by Artemesia Gentileschi, now 32. Sofonisba Anguissola dies at Palermo in November at age 92 during a plague that will eventually wipe out half the city's population.
Theater: Love Tricks by English playwright James Shirley, 28; The Trickster of Seville and the Guest of Stone (El burlador de Sevilla) by Tirso de Molina 12/22 at Madrid.
Playwright John Fletcher dies at London in August at age 45.
Moscow's Gate of Salvation in the Kremlin gets a set of bells that will peal for centuries.
London's Covent Garden Church is completed to designs by Inigo Jones.
Kyoto's Katsura Rikyu (detached palace) is completed for Toshihito, a prince of the Hachijo family.
Three Dutch ships (the Paert [Horse]; the Koe [Cow]; and the Schaep [Sheep]) arrive at Fort Amsterdam with 45 more colonists and the colony's first livestock—100 stallions, mares, Holstein bulls and cows, sheep, and hogs. Amsterdam brewer Pieter Evertsen Hulst has paid for their passage, and although three animals have died on the voyage the rest have been kept alive en route in individual stalls. They are put ashore at Nutten (later Governors) Island to keep them from wandering into Manhattan's forests, but a lack of pasturage and water on the island forces their quick removal to Manhattan, where 20 will die in the next few months from eating poisonous weeds.
The Plymouth colony for the first time has "corn sufficient, and some to spare for others," Governor William Bradford writes home to England. He credits part of the improvement to a revised plan of communal labor with equal rations, each family being assigned land according to its size: "This . . . made all hands very industrious."
Peter Paul Rubens depicts a goiter in his portrait of Marie de' Medici. Produced by a dietary iodine deficiency, the thyroid gland swelling is esteemed as a mark of beauty but only when it is moderate in size (see Baumann, 1896).
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