1649

1641 1642 1643 1644 1645 1646 1647 1648 1649 1650

political events

England's Charles I blandly denies the jurisdiction of a high court but is sentenced to death and beheaded at Whitehall January 30 at age 48, accompanied to the scaffold by his priest William Juxon, 66 (who is promptly stripped of his bishopric and goes into retirement) (see 1648). "For the People," Charles says on the scaffold, " . . . I must tell you that their Liberty and Freedom consists in having the Government of those Laws, by which their Life and their Goods may be most their own; 'tis not for having share in Government, that is nothing pertaining to 'em. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things." Continental powers declare open season on English shipping. The king's 18-year-old son is encouraged to reclaim his late father's realm; he is proclaimed Charles II at Edinburgh, in parts of Ireland, and in the Channel Islands, but England becomes a republic headed by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, whose Commonwealth will rule until 1660. Oliver Cromwell has no sympathy for radicals who oppose private ownership of land, and in the end it will be the gentry and nobility who profit from England's Civil War.

A high court whose judges include Sir Richard Saltonstall sentences James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and others to death for treason (see 1648). Hamilton tries to escape confinement, but he is executed at Preston, Lancashire, March 9 at age 42. His brother William, earl of Cambridge, inherits the title and becomes 2nd duke of Hamilton (but see 1651).

The last Royalist stronghold in England falls March 22 as a parliamentary army under the command of John Lambert captures Pontefract, Yorkshire.

Leveller leaders who include John Lilburne are imprisoned in March. A mutiny of Leveller troops at London is suppressed in May, and a more serious uprising is put down in Oxfordshire. The Leveller movement is effectively ended as an organized political force, having failed to gain the support of the army in a time when people are accustomed to accepting with little question the ideas promulgated by the Church and landed aristocracy. A London jury acquits Lilburne of charges of high treason, and he remains enormously popular as "Free-born John" (see 1653). About 30 unemployed workers and landless farm laborers gather in April outside Walton-on-Thames in Surrey and defiantly begin to cultivate the common land on St. George's Hill; led by mercer's son Gerrard Winstanley, 40, and William Everard (who was active as a Leveller in the army), they demand that the people have access to the forests and other common lands, but local landlords will force these "Diggers" or "True Levellers" to move and will launch continual attacks on their settlements.

Oliver Cromwell suppresses an Irish uprising led by James Butler, 39, marquis of Ormonde. Cromwell's soldiers storm Drogheda September 12, sack the town, massacre its garrison, butchering the royalist soldiers even after most of them have surrendered and been disarmed, and do the same to the garrison at Wexford.

France has a new Fronde uprising in January as the Great Condé turns against the court because he thinks Cardinal Mazarin does not accord him proper respect (see 1648). Mazarin pretends to a reconciliation with the bishop coadjutant, his forces blockade Paris, but city leaders and some members of the nobility support Parlement, which refuses to yield. Under pressure from the demands of its war with Spain and disturbances in the provinces, the government negotiates the Peace of Rueil, granting amnesty to the insurgents and confirming concessions to Parlement; ratified April 1, it permits the court to return to Paris (see 1650).

Poland's new king Jan II Casimir suffers further military losses to the Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnicki and his Tatar allies, who enter Kiev in January and are welcomed as liberators (see 1648). The king grudgingly agrees August 18 to accept the terms of the Compact of Zborów (Treaty of Zboriv), which grants a considerable agree of autonomy to the Zaporozhian Cossacks on the Dnieper River, allowing Chmielnicki to set up a Cossack principality in the Ukraine that is virtually independent of Polish rule, but Poland's gentry object to the treaty, and it comes under attack also from Chmielnicki's followers, many of whom remain subject to Polish landlords (see Battle of Beresteczko, 1651).

China's new Qing (Ching) dynasty regime gives former Ming general Shang Kexi (Shang K'o-hsi) the title p'ingnan wang, meaning "prince who pacifies the south." Shang defected to the Manchus before their coup d'état 5 years ago and is sent to conquer Gwandung (Kwantung) Province, which he will rid of Ming sympathizers and control as governor until 1673 (see 1673).

Massachusetts Bay colony governor John Winthrop dies at Boston March 26 at age 71.

human rights, social justice

Russia legalizes serfdom in a new legal code designed to improve government administration under the rule of Aleksei Mikhailovich (see politics [tax revolt], 1648). Peasants have worked the grainfields of great landowners as virtual slaves for years, if not centuries, and the new law solidifies the practice, eliminating the distinction between old settlers and new peasants, and making it virtually impossible for agricultural workers to leave a master's employ. Serfdom will survive for more than 200 years.

Black laborers in the Virginia colony still number only 300 (see 1619; 1671).

commerce

Japan's Tokugawa government saddles farmers with a new tax that requisitions virtually all their rice and obliges them to subsist on millet (see 1639). They are forced to put their wives to work weaving cloth and to send surplus children to work in the city. A young girl selected to save her family from financial ruin by accepting employment in a brothel is regarded with pity and respect, not scorn, and a young prostitute is not without a certain honor. An official proclamation of the Tokugawa government decrees that no matter how attractive a farmer's wife may be he must divorce her if she does not rise very early in the morning, does not go out and collect hay to feed the livestock, does not work in the rice fields during the day, does not make rope or rice containers from rice straw in the evening, does not take good care of her husband, does her work carelessly, drinks too much tea, or takes too much time for leisure.

Tobacco exports bring prosperity to the Virginia colony.

Massachusetts entrepreneur John Winthrop, Jr., 43, produces more than eight tons of iron per week at the Saugus works he has built in back of Lynn with blast furnaces and a refinery forge manned by workers obtained in England. Son of the Bay Colony's first governor, Winthrop has raised £1,000 in England to purchase his equipment.

religion

Humanist-theologian Gerardus J. Voss dies at Amsterdam March 19 at age 71, having lectured at Oxford and gained international renown as Vossius for his work in the classics and education.

literature

Nonfiction: "The New Law of Righteousness" (pamphlet) by Gerrard Winstanley, who writes, "In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another . . . Landowners either got their land by murder or theft . . . and thereby man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave than the beasts of the field were to him"; "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" (pamphlet) by John Milton tries to justify the execution of Charles I, but regicide is considered the worst of all crimes and readers on the Continent are not persuaded; The Passions of the Soul (Les passions de l'âme) by René Descartes.

Poetry: "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars" by Richard Lovelace, who has devoted his fortune to the Royalist cause, was wounded at Dunkirk in 1646 while serving in the French army, and was imprisoned again upon his return to England: "I could not love thee, dear, so much/ Loved I not honour more"; Rome ridicule by Antoine Girard, sieur de Saint-Amant, whose work begins a rage for burlesque poems.

Poet Richard Crashaw is appointed canon of a church at Loreto, near Rome, but dies there August 21 at age 36 (approximate).

art

Painting: The Four Regents of the Leper Hospital by Ferdinand Bol; The Vision of St. Paul by Nicolas Poussin; Juan de Pereja (his slave) and Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez; Philip IV of Spain by Geraert Terborch; Christ Healing the Sick (etching) by Rembrandt van Rijn.

music

Opera: Giasone 1/5 at Venice's 12-year-old Teatro di San Cassiano, with music by Italian composer Francesco Cavalli, 46, a pupil of the late Claudio Monteverdi, who has changed his name from Caletti-Bruni in honor of his patron Federigi Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.

environment

Parliament gives Richmond Park to the city of London. The land had been Charles I's private hunting preserve.

marine resources

Description of New Netherland by Dutch colonial governor Adriaen Van der Donck says, "Fish of the finest qualities fill the rivers, the bays, and the sea, also, with life. Those in the fresh water were salmon, sturgeon, striped bass, drums, shad." The colonies' first lawyer, Van der Donck remarks that although there are six-foot lobsters in the adjacent waters, "those a foot long are better for serving at table." Salmon swim up 30 Atlantic rivers from Connecticut to Canada on their spawning runs and are larger than any caught in Europe.

food availability

The English in the next 10 years will kill thousands of Irish by transporting them in leaky ships and destroying their livestock (their only wealth), taking their tools and lands, and leaving them with nothing but the potatoes that grow underground. With no means of growing cereal grains, the Irish will survive only by digging up potatoes from bogs and mountainsides and cooking them over peat fires (see 1641; 1670).

population

The Virginia colony receives an influx of Cavalier (Royalist) refugees from England.

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