1651

1651 1652 1653 1654 1655 1656 1657 1658 1659 1660

political events

England's Charles II is crowned at Scone January 1. He sends Patrick Ruthven, earl of Forth, on a mission to Sweden, but the earl returns and dies at Dundee February 2 at age 77. Oliver Cromwell takes Perth in early August and defeats Royalist forces September 3 at the Battle of Worcester with help from John Lambert (see 1650). Charles has 8,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and some guns (10,000 of his 12,000 men are Scots), but he is far outnumbered by Cromwell's 18,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry, and guns. Some 3,000 of the Royalist army are killed, 7,000 taken prisoner, and Cromwell captures all the Royalist guns. William Hamilton, 2nd duke of Hamilton, sustains wounds in the battle and dies at Worcester September 12 at age 34. Royalist general Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, commands a cavalry regiment but is among those taken prisoner and will be held in the Tower of London until 1656. James Stanley, 7th earl of Derby, and Henry Wilmot, 1st earl of Rochester, help the king make his escape but Derby is captured by the parliamentary forces and beheaded at Bolton, Lancashire, October 15 at age 44 (his widow defends the Isle of Man and will survive until 1663). Disguised as a servant to the daughter of a Royalist squire, Charles escapes to France October 17 after traveling through a countryside alive with Roundheads (see 1660; Rump Parliament, 1652).

England's lord deputy of Ireland and acting commander in chief Henry Ireton dies at Limerick November 28 at age 40, following a siege of the city; his widow, Bridget, soon marries her father's general Charles Fleetwood, 33, who will succeed to Ireton's command next year and rule Ireland with an iron hand until 1655.

Spanish forces under the command of Juan José de Austria lay siege to Barcelona as Catalonians rebel (see 1652).

The French Parlement gains reluctant consent from the queen mother Anne of Austria in February to dismiss Cardinal Mazarin and release the Great Condé (see 1650). Mazarin flees the country, and Pope Innocent X makes his foe Jean François Paul de Gondi the cardinal de Retz, but the regent Anne of Austria gives orders in August that the Great Condé be indicted. He obtains support from Marshal Turenne and begins a second war of the princes in September that will continue for 2 years; Mazarin returns in December with 7,000 German troops to put down the rebellion (see 1652).

The Swedish general Lennart, count Torstensson, dies at Stockholm April 7 at age 47, so crippled by gout that he has often been unable to mount his horse and had to lead his army in a litter.

The Battle of Beresteczko that rages from June 28 to 30 on the Styr River south of Lutsk in Volynia ends in victory for Poland's Jan II Casimir over the rebel Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnicki, whose forces have come under formal Ottoman protection in April and been reinforced by the sultan's Tatar vassals in the Crimea. Outnumbered three to one, the Poles are saved when the Tatar khan removes his forces in the midst of battle, possibly to defend Kiev from an approaching Lithuanian army. The Polish general Jerema Wisnowiecki dies August 20 at age 39 (approximate) on the eve of another battle against the Cossacks. A peace settlement signed at Biala Cerkiew September 28 reduces the number of "registered" Cossacks from 40,000 to 20,000 and strips them of their right to settle in various provinces that were designated 2 years ago in the Compact of Zborów. The Cossacks do not accept the terms of the settlement, which are rejected also by Poland's Sejm (parliament) (see 1654).

The elector of Brandenburg Maximilian I von Bayern dies September 17 at age 78 and is succeeded by his 13-year-old son, who will reign as Ferdinand Maria until his death in 1679.

The Ottoman sultana Kösem tries to kill her 12-year-old grandson, the sultan Mehmed IV, but is herself strangled to death September 2 at age 66 (approximate) by men in the entourage of her daughter-in-law Turhan.

China's Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty court issues a proclamation in March calling the late regent Dorgon a usurper, depriving him of his princely rank, stripping him of his other honors, and disavowing his relationship to the imperial house (see 1650). A petition from two officials asking that his reputation be redeemed is rejected, and it will be 122 years before his extraordinary services in establishing the Qing dynasty are fully recognized.

The Japanese shōgun Iemitsu Tokugawa dies of beriberi at Edo June 8 at age 47 (his diet has been based heavily on white rice) after a 28-year reign that has consolidated Tokugawa rule through national isolationism, oppression of the people, and suppression of Christianity. His son Ietsuna, 10, will reign until 1679, exhausting the treasury and debasing the nation's coinage.

exploration, colonization

The English governor of Barbados Francis Willoughby, 38, 5th Baron Willoughby, settles Surinam on the northwest coast of South America with immigrants from other South American colonies and various Caribbean islands (see 1581). They establish the town of Paramaribo on the site of a French settlement nine miles upriver from the Atlantic and take over what is nominally Spanish territory but has resisted European settlement for 70 years (see politics [Treaties of Breda], 1667).

The duke of Courland (Latvia) Jacob Kettler obtains a grant of the 116-square-mile Caribbean island of Tobago from England's Charles II and establishes a settlement in the north (see politics, 1662).

commerce

The Navigation Act adopted by Parliament October 9 forbids importation of goods into England or her colonies except by English vessels or by vessels of the countries producing the goods. The mercantilist legislation aims to help the nation's merchant marine gain supremacy over the Dutch, who have been trading with English possessions and take exception to English claims of sovereignty over the seas (see 1660; Anglo-Dutch war, 1652).

science

A New Philosophy of Our Sublunar World (De Mudo Nostro Sublunari) by the late William Gilbert expresses ideas consistent with those of the late Copernicus that the Earth rotates on its axis; it states that fixed stars are at varying distances from the Earth and that a form of magnetism is what holds planets in their orbits. His brother has edited two manuscripts that were left at Gilbert's death to produce the work.

medicine

Exercitationes de generations animalium by William Harvey of 1628 blood-circulation theory fame is published at London. Now 73, Harvey was physician to Charles I until 1648 and he says, "All animals, even those that produce their young alive, including man himself, are evolved out of the egg," but he thinks that lower forms of life are capable of primal generation and believes the pupa to be an insect egg (see Redi, 1668).

literature

Nonfiction: Leviathan, or "The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, 63, who published a translation of Thucydides in 1629. In order to survive, he says, people must surrender their individual rights and submit to an absolute sovereign whose duty is to protect them from outside enemies much as a feudal lord protected his vassals. "Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery," writes Hobbes, "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth, no Navigation, nor use of the commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"; Jacula Prudentum by the late George Herbert contains translations of proverbs that include "The eye is bigger than the belly"; "His bark is worse than his bite"; "Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another"; "God's mill grinds slow, but sure"; "In doing we learn"; "For want of a nail, the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost"; "One half the world knows not how the other half lives"; "He that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas"; and "One hour's sleep before midnight is worth three after."

Poetry: Swan of Usk (Olor Iscanus) by Henry Vaughan; Spiritual and Worldly Poems (Geist und weltliche Poemata) by the late Paul Fleming, who died in 1640.

art

Painting: Girl with a Broom by Rembrandt van Rijn; The Marriage of the Artist by David Teniers the Younger, who moves to Brussels and becomes court painter to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm; The Holy Family by Nicolas Poussin; The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) by Diego Velázquez; The Institution of the Eucharist and The Last Supper by Jusepe de Ribera.

music

Opera: Calisto at Venice, with a libretto about love among the gods, music by Francesco Cavalli.

food and drink

Le Cuisinier François, enseignment la maniere de bien apprester & assassonner toutes sortes de viands . . . legumes, & patisseries en perfection, &c. by Paris chef F. P. (François Pierre) de La Varenne indicates a branching out of French cooking from medieval times, when recipes contained a superabundance of flavors.

"Rumbullion, alias Kill-Devill" is the "chief fudling they make in the Island" of Barbados, writes Richard Ligon. He calls rum "a hot, hellish and terrible liquor" made of "suggar canes, distilled" (see 1641; 1655).

1651 1652 1653 1654 1655 1656 1657 1658 1659 1660