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Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice commerce science religion literature art theater, film tobacco agriculture food and drink |
The Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, 68, is sent to the Tower of London, where the king's chief minister Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, is executed May 12 at age 48 (see 1640). Parliamentarian Sir Arthur Hesilrige, 30, has played a leading role in Strafford's impeachment; legal antiquarian John Selden has taken part in the House of Commons proceedings against the archbishop, who has sought absolutism in Church and state and used the Court of High Commission and Star Chamber to root out Calvinism and Presbyterianism.
Irish Parliament member Sir Phelim O'Neill, 37, seizes Charlemont Castle in Ulster October 22, claims that Charles I has authorized the action, and then allows his followers to massacre hundreds of English colonists in a major uprising against English rule (see 1642).
Louis XIII's brother Jean Baptiste d'Orléans exposes a conspiracy against France's Cardinal Richelieu. He reveals that Henri Coiffier de Ruze, 21, marquise de Cinq-Mars, has taken advantage of his position as protégé of Richelieu and king's favorite to make a secret treaty with Spain (Cinq-Mars will be executed in mid-September of next year).
Dutch forces take Malacca and begin their domination of the East Indies (see 1623).
Dutch forces in Africa take Luanda with help from Nzinga, queen of Ndongo and Matambma (see 1624). The Portuguese, who founded Luanda in 1576, have been using it as a base from which to export 10,000 slaves per year, most of them to Brazil (see 1643).
The Long Parliament abolishes both the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission in July as it shows its determination to effect a revolution against the excesses of the English Constitution (see 1642).
Irish peasants begin a revolt against their landlords (who are mostly English), and the landlords respond with force, seizing livestock and standing crops in an effort to starve the peasantry. Catholics massacre Protestants in Ulster (see Cromwell, 1649).
Kyoto's Shimabara district becomes a licensed brothel area (see Yoshiwara, 1617; environment, 1657). The prostitutes belong to different ranks according to their beauty and education; each wears a special kimono that denotes her rank.
Japanese authorities remove Dutch East India Company traders at Hirado to Deshima, an islet in Nagasaki Harbor (see 1640). Since the Dutch have no missionaries, the Japanese permit them to remain on condition that Company officers visit Edo once a year, turn somersaults in the street, spit on the Cross, and pay a rent in peppercorns. They may bring in three ships per year, and although the number will be reduced to two in 1715, and one ship in five will be lost in the heavy Japanese seas, the surviving ships will make vast profits for the Dutch.
Astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks dies at his native Toxteth Park outside Liverpool January 3 at age 23, having made the first observation of the transit of Venus, shown the moon to have a roughly elliptical orbit, suggested correctly that the sun has an effect on this orbit, and advanced knowledge of the Earth's distance from the sun (although his estimate of 59 million miles will later be found well short of the actual 93 million).
The Massachusetts Bay colony lowers to 8 percent the rate of interest any lender may charge to prevent "usury amongst us contrary to the law of God" (see commerce, 1693).
English moral philosopher Joseph Hall is given the bishopric of Norwich. Now 67, he is imprisoned for 4 months by the anti-episcopalian House of Commons before he reaches his new see, he will be stripped of his episcopal revenues in 1643, and he will finally be driven from his palace.
Fiction: The Crippled Devil (El diablo cojuelo) by Spanish novelist-poet-playwright Luis Vélez de Guevara, 62.
Painting: Manoah by Rembrandt van Rijn; Embarkation of St. Ursula by French painter Claude Lorrain, 42; The Cart by Louis Le Nain; The Seven Sacraments by Nicolas Poussin; Regents of the Hospital of St. Elizabeth by Frans Hals; Country Fair by Flemish painter David Teniers, 30; Scenes from the Life of St. Januarius by Il Domenichino, who dies at Naples April 6 at age 59; Prince Willem of Orange by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, who dies at London December 9 at age 42.
Theater: The Cardinal by James Shirley; Polyentes (Polyeucte) by Pierre Corneille, in December at the Théâtre du Marais, Paris.
Playwright Thomas Heywood dies at London August 16 at age 67 (approximate).
Russia's Michael Romanov forbids sale and use of tobacco in a decree that mentions exile as a possible punishment. Users as well as sellers are to be flogged, but the crown will violate its own law and make the "impious herb" a state monopoly, selling tobacco at high prices to produce revenue (see 1648).
Irish peasants plant potatoes in lazybeds—strips of land between 500 and 800 yards in length—that can be lengthened if other foods are lacking and that yield enough tubers for a typical family to survive if supplemented with a little pork, bacon, milk, butter, and cheese. (People in the Andes have used the same lazybed method for centuries.) Potatoes can be planted in almost any kind of ground, dug up as they are required, and popped straight into the pot (see 1649).
The first sugar factory in the English New World goes up in Barbados using equipment supplied on credit by Dutch investors against the value of the sugar to be produced. A Colonel Holdip shows the colonists "the manner of planting, the time of gathering, and the right placing of their coppers in their furnaces . . . and the true way of covering their rollers, with plates or bars of iron" (see 1636; 1685; slavery, 1645).
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