1647
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The Scots surrender England's Charles I to Parliament January 30 in return for £400,000 in back pay, and the king is brought to Holmby House in Northamptonshire as Parliament and the army become openly hostile (see 1646). The army refuses to accept a parliamentary act disbanding all soldiers not needed for garrison duty or for service in Ireland (where the rebellion that started in 1641 goes on). The rank and file of the army elect agitators in April who are largely influenced by radical ideas of the Levellers (see 1645). Soldiers seize Charles at Holmby House June 4 and take him prisoner. The Royalists take up arms again, but Sir Thomas Fairfax crushes them at Maidstone, Kent, and starves Colchester, in Essex, into submission. Oliver Cromwell flees Parliament to join the army at Triptow Heath June 4, two speakers of Parliament join the army in July with 14 lords, and 100 members of the House of Commons. The army enters London August 6 and forces Parliament to take back Cromwell and the others; Charles is removed to Hampton Court.
Leveller leader John Lilburne is released from prison in August (see 1645). An army council that includes rank-and-file Levellers as well as officers convenes at Putney in October to discuss an "Agreement of the People" that proposes a new social contract as the basis for a democratic, republican government to replace the one dissolved by Parliament's victory in the Civil War. Cambridge-educated agitator John Wildman, 25, has helped to write the "Agreement" as well as a pamphlet entitled "The Case of the Army," offering a political program that opposes any compromise with the king, and he defends the program in the general council against Oliver Cromwell and Cromwell's soldier son-in-law Henry Ireton, 36, who has presented a constitutional scheme ("Heads of the Proposals") that has been drafted with help from parliamentary general John Lambert, 28, and calls for dividing political power among the army, Parliament, and the king, with religious tolerance for Anglicans and Puritans. Parliamentary soldier Thomas Rainborow (or Rainsborough) supports the Leveller "Agreement of the People" but is reconciled in December with Oliver Cromwell, who gives him command of the siege of Pontefract Castle (see 1648).
Charles I rejects proposals for a constitutional monarchy, flees to the Isle of Wight November 11, and is detained by the governor of Carisbrooke Castle. The king signs a secret treaty with the Scots December 26, having received four bills from Parliament that would give Parliament more power, bills that Charles rejects December 28 after receiving Scottish promises to restore him by force upon his agreement to abolish episcopacy and restore Presbyterianism to Scotland (see 1648).
The inept Hapsburg general Matthias Gallas, graf von Campo, herzog von (duke of) Lucera, dies at Vienna April 25 at age 62, having had his troops annihilated in three campaigns. Marshal Turenne and Sweden's admiral Wrangel force the Truce of Ulm upon Bavaria's Elector Maximilian in the continuing Thirty Years' War (see 1646), but Turenne is recalled, Wrangel goes to Bohemia, and Maximilian breaks the truce (see Peace of Westphalia, 1648).
Neapolitan noblemen levy a new tax on fruit in order to pay the tribute demanded by Spain. Local fisherman Masaniello (Tommaso Aniello), 27, is chosen to lead a popular insurrection in protest. The uprising succeeds in late June, but Masaniello gets drunk and urges his follower to massacre the nobility. Assassins hired by the noblemen murder Masaniello July 16, and a Spanish army under the command of Felipo IV's illegitimate son Juan José de Austria, 18, suppresses the uprising. Actress Maria Calderón is Don Juan's mother, he has been educated as a prince, and he will be more illustrious than any of the king's other illegitimate children.
Retreating Portuguese forces in Africa drown Kifunji, sister of Nzinga, queen of Ndongo and Matambma (see 1643; 1648).
Manchu forces advance into Sichuan (Szechwan), attack and defeat the Chinese rebel leader Zhang Xianzhong (Chang Hsien-chung), and put him to death at Hsi-ch'ung January 2 at age 40. Known as the Yellow Tiger, Zhang has been ruthless in his efforts to establish military control of what he called his western kingdom.
Maryland colonial governor Leonard Calvert returns from 2 years' exile in the Virginia colony, retakes St. Mary's, restores order, but dies June 9 at age 40, leaving his estate in the care of English-born landowner Margaret Brent, 47, who arrived at St. Mary's 9 years ago with her sister, two brothers, and some indentured servants (see 1634). Brent received the first land grant ever vested in a woman and has gone on to become one of the largest landowners in the colonies, earning the title Lord with the right, generally denied to women, to conduct business and sign contracts. She and her sister are proprietors of a large manorial estate, acquired through family connections. She has acted, and will continue to act, as attorney for her friends and neighbors in the Maryland colony (see 1648).
Peter Stuyvesant, 55, is named governor of New Netherlands. The former governor of Curaçao lost his right leg 3 years ago in a campaign against the island of St. Martin (see 1625; 1655; New York, 1664).
The Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies execute 14 women convicted of being "witches."
The Company of Eleutherian Adventurers is organized at London in July "for the plantation of the Islands of Eleutheria, formerly called Buhama in America, and the Adjacent Islands" (see 1629; 1648).
An atlas of the moon published under the title Selenographia by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius (Jan Heweliusz), 36, gives names to the lunar mountains (a lunar star will be named for Hevelius).
"Six Geometrical Exercises" ("Exercitationes Geometricae Sex") by mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri at Bologna states the principles that he postulated in 1635 in a more satisfactory form that will be widely employed by mathematicians for the rest of the century (see Wallis, 1655).
Physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli dies at Florence October 25 at age 39; mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri at Bologna November 30 at age 49.
An epidemic of yellow fever sweeps the West Indies.
The Black Death strikes Spain in an epidemic that will last for 4 years, the worst since 1599.
A handbook of anatomy published at Pavia by German anatomist Johann Vesling gives a detailed account of the lacteal vessels (see Aselli, 1623).
The Society of Friends (Quakers) has its beginnings in the "Friends of Truth" established in Leicestershire by English clergyman George Fox, 23, who begins preaching the need for inward spiritual experience. Troubled by the deadly formalism and intolerance of Puritan Christianity, Fox extends the philosophy of the Anabaptists, making conscience and self-examination supreme, and he draws recruits from the lower middle classes who heed his protest against the Presbyterian system. The Friends will be called Quakers in 1650 by Justice Gervase Bennet, either because their vehemence in appealing to conscience makes them shake with emotion, or because they assert that those who do not know quaking and trembling are strangers to the experience of Moses, David, and other saints. Fox will make a missionary journey to Scotland in 1657, the first annual meeting of the Society will be held in 1669, and Fox will preach in Ireland, North America, the West Indies, and Holland until his death in 1691 despite persecution and imprisonment (see 1689; Penn, 1681).
English nonconformist Sarah Wright reportedly fasts for 53 days (see human rights [Gandhi], 1914).
Connecticut pastor Thomas Hooker dies at Hartford on his 61st birthday, July 7, having by some estimations pioneered democracy in America.
London journalist Marchamont Needham begins publication of the vehemently anti-Parliament newsletter Mercurius Pragmaticus, a commentary on news and politics that foreshadows the modern newspaper. Now 27, Needham has heretofore edited the Mercurius Britanicus, supporting the parliamentary cause in opposition to the Royalist publication Mercurius Aulicus (see 1650).
Poetry: The Mistress by Abraham Cowley, who has sided with the Stuarts against the Puritans and fled to France, where he has become secretary to the exiled queen Henrietta Maria.
Painting: The Banker Jabach and His Family by Charles Le Brun.
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