1642
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An English Civil War begins as Charles I tries to arrest five members of the Long Parliament on the floor of the House of Commons. The five include Sir Arthur Hesilrige, who goes into hiding to escape the king's wrath (see 1641). Parliament appoints a Committee of Safety with members who include William Fiennes, 1st viscount Saye and Sele, now 60. Drury Lane Theatre manager William Davenant comes under attack in May as members of the Long Parliament accuse him of being involved in a royalist conspiracy to seduce the army and overthrow the Commons; apprehended at Faversham, Davenant is imprisoned for 2 months at London, escapes to Canterbury en route to France but is recaptured, reaches Queen Henrietta Maria, and volunteers to fetch some military stores left in France by his friend the earl of Newcastle (see 1643). Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, receives command of the parliamentry army in July and leaves London for the Midlands while Charles moves his headquarters to Shrewsbury, where he recruits and trains an army on the Welsh marches. The king is supported by the gentry, the Anglican clergy, and the peasantry (especially in northern and west-central England) but opposed by the middle classes, the great merchants, and much of the nobility. Saye and Sele raises a regiment for the parliamentary forces following the outbreak of hostilties in August, Hesilrige raises a cavalry unit (see 1643).
The Catholic uprising that began in Ulster last year continues as followers of Sir Phelim O'Neill lay siege to Drogheda in County Louth for several months, but they are obliged to withdraw in April, and O'Neill loses command of the rebel forces to his kinsman (and rival) Owen Roe O'Neill. The rebellion will continue for another decade (see 1652).
Charles I leads his cavaliers against the Puritan parliament at York. Addressing his 13,500-man Royalist army October 23 south of Warwick, Charles says, "Your king is both your cause, your quarrel, and your captain. The foe is in sight. The best encouragement I can give you is that, come life or death, your king will bear you company, and ever keep this field, this place, and this day's service in his grateful remembrance." The bloody but indecisive Battle of Edgehill pits Charles's troops against a 13,000-man Parliamentarian army commanded by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, now 51. Patrick Ruthven, earl of Forth, now 69, leads the left wing of the Royalist army with such success that he is appointed general in chief of Charles's forces. Charles continues his march toward London, encounters a reinforced Parliamentarian army of 24,000 men at Turnham Green, and withdraws to Oxford after a day-long stand-off. The king sends his wife, Henrietta Maria, and their daughter Mary to Holland with the Dutch admiral Maarten Tromp, who has come to Dover to escort them across the Channel (see 1643). Brilliana, Lady Harley (née Conway), 42, third wife of Sir Robert Harley, is left in charge of Brampton Bryan Castle near Hereford when her husband goes to London for consultations with the Parliamentarians, whom he supports. Royalist forces approach the castle in December and order Lady Harley to surrender, but she places her seven children and nine stepchildren in relative safety and prepares for a siege (see 1643).
Parliamentary forces attack a Royalist army at Banbury December 22; Spencer Compton, 42, 2nd earl of Northampton, resists them through the night and is relieved the next day by cavalry forces that arrive under the command of the Prague-born, Dutch-raised Prince Rupert, now 23, a nephew of Charles I who will be called the "Mad Cavalier" but show a certain tactical genius (see 1643). Rupert fought against the imperial forces in the Thirty Years' War 4 years ago, was captured at Vlotho on the Weser River, and gained release from confinement in Austria only last year.
The War of Castro breaks out between the papacy and its opponents. Austrian soldier Raimondo Montecuccoli is released by his Swedish captors after 3 years' imprisonment and campaigns on the side of his native Modena.
France's Cardinal Richelieu dies in the Palais Cardinal at Paris December 4 at age 57, worn out from overwork after 18 years in which he has been the power behind the throne of Louis XIII. The public is relieved to see him go, but Cardinal Mazarin will see Richelieu's policies through to completion (see 1643).
Persia's Shah Safi I dies at age 26 after a 13-year reign in which he has lost much of his empire to the Ottoman Turks. He is succeeded by his 10-year-old son, who will reign until 1667 as Abbas II and be no more successful.
Montreal has its beginnings in the settlement of Ville Marie founded by French colonist Paul de Chomedey, 30, sieur de Maisonneuve, on the island in the St. Lawrence River first visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535 at the point where the Ottawa and Richelieu Rivers flow into the St. Lawrence.
Explorer Jean Nicolet drowns in a storm on the St. Lawrence River November 1 at age 44.
Dutch East India Company navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman, 39, leaves Batavia (later Jakarta) August 14 with 110 men aboard the 60-ton Heemskerck and 100-ton Zeehaen with enough supplies for an 18-month expedition. Sent on an exploring expedition by the governor general of the Dutch East Indies Anthony Van Diemen, now 49, Tasman reaches the company's Indian Ocean base on the island of Mauritius in September and refits his vessels; accompanied by Frans Visscher, he leaves October 8 and sights land November 24 at 42°20' South, having gone as far south as 49° and discovered what he calls Van Diemen's Land (it will be renamed Tasmania after 1856). He consults with his officers December 5 and decides to go on without further investigation, sights New Zealand's South Island at 42°10' South December 13, proceeds northward along the coast, and enters the strait between North Island and South Island (see 1643).
French mathematical prodigy Blaise Pascal, 18, invents a machine that adds and subtracts using wheels numbered from 0 to 9 with an ingenious ratchet mechanism to carry the 1 of a number greater than 9 (see Shickard, 1623). Pascal discovered at age 12 that the sum of the angles in a triangle is always 180 degrees; unaware of the late Wilhelm Schickard's invention, Pascal has made the machine to help his tax-collector father, Etienne, compute taxes at Rouen. The rectangular brass box has a set of notched dials; using a pin to rotate the dials moves internal wheels in such a way that a full rotation of a wheel causes the wheel at the left to move 1/10 of a revolution, but the wheels move only clockwise and are designed only to add numbers; subtraction requires a complex procedure, the device is expensive and unreliable, Pascal will obtain a "privilege" (the equivalent of a patent) in 1649, but the device will never find practical use (see Morland, 1666; Leibniz, 1672).
Galileo Galilei dies at Arcetri, outside Florence, January 8 at age 77, having continued his studies under house arrest despite failing eyesight and hearing (he has been completely blind since 1637). His family conceals his body, and when civil authorities inter his remains in a fine tomb at the Basilica of Santa Croce in 1737 many in the Church will express displeasure (see 1992).
The first printed mention in Europe of cinchona bark, or Peruvian bark, appears in a treatise by Seville physician Pedro Barba, who has relieved the countess of Chinchon of her malaria by treating her with polvos de lacondesa. The alkaloid drug quinine will be obtained from the bark, which will be used indiscriminately by many physicians to treat diseases unrelated to malaria (see Ramazzini, 1700).
Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, now 41, uses a microscope to investigate the causes of disease and is the first to propound the doctrine of cantagium animatum (see Janssen, 1590). Kircher teaches mathematics and Hebrew at the College of Rome (see van Leeuwenhoek, 1675).
Pope Urban VIII forbids Roman Catholics to read the 1640 book Augustinus by the late Cornelius Jansen, whose work was published without Vatican authorization and is based on the doctrine of Baus that has previously been condemned.
Some 600 Jews sail in various vessels from Holland to Brazil. They will be expelled in 12 years when the Portuguese take Pernambuco from the Dutch (see Nieuw Amsterdam, 1655).
Harvard College awards its first baccalaureate degrees (see Dunster, 1640; Eliot, 1869; William and Mary, 1693).
Mary Ward opens a school in her home town of York despite the Civil War that is disrupting classes at her other schools (see 1631). Now 57, she will continue to run the school at York until her death in 1645 (see 1686).
Nonfiction: Religio Medici by London-born physician Thomas Browne, 37, appears in a pirated edition after 7 years of unauthorized circulation in manuscript (an authorized edition will be published next year): "I believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that our separated dust, after so many pilgrimages and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall, at the voice of God, return to their primitive shapes, and join again to make up their primary and predestinate forms" (I) (an authorized version will appear next year and be translated into Dutch and French); Nederlandse historiën (20 volumes) by Dutch dramatist-poet Pieter Coneliszon Hooft, now 61, whose plays and verses have been entertaining audiences and readers since 1603.
Fiction: Ibrahim or the Illustrious Bassa (Ibrahim ou l'illustre bassa) (fourth and final volume) by French novelist Madeleine de Scudéry, 35, whose roman à clef is published under the name of her brother Georges, 42, a prominent playwright. Both belong to the literary society of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, now 55, whose Hôtel Rambouillet is a gathering place for the nation's talent and wit (see 1605). De Scudéry will establish her own salon, the Saturday Club (Société du Samedi), by 1650.
Poetry: "To Althea, from Prison" by English poet Richard Lovelace, 24, who has been locked in the Gatehouse for 7 weeks after presenting to Parliament in April the Kentish petition for retention of bishops and the Prayer Book, a petition Parliament had earlier ruled seditious: "Stone walls do not a prison make,/ Nor iron bars a cage;/ Minds innocent and quiet take/ That for an hermitage"; German Poems (Teutsche Poemata) by the late Paul Fleming.
Painting: Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn, whose large canvas will later be called Sortie of the Banning Cock Company (Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, dies, leaving him as trustee for his son Titus, the only one of their four children to survive infancy); The Guard Room by David Teniers the Younger; The Coronation of the Virgin by Diego Velázquez. Guido Reni dies at his native Bologna August 18 at age 66.
England's great Elizabethan and Jacobean theater is ended by a September 2 Ordinance of Parliament "to appease and avert the wrath of God" (see Prynne, 1632).
London hat maker James Lock establishes a company that will survive into the 21st century (see bowler, 1849).
Cardinal Richelieu leaves the Palais Royal to the king, having built it for himself (see 1643).
Beriberi comes to the attention of Dutch colonists in Java. Marked by debility, nervous disturbances, paralysis, heart weakness, swollen liver, weak and sore calf muscles, plugged hair follicles, and weight loss, the nutritional deficiency disease gets its name from the Sinhalese word beri for weakness.
New England has some 16,000 colonists; their transatlantic passages have averaged 3 months' time.
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