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English statesman William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, dies at his native Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire April 14 at age 79, having supported Parliament in the civil wars. Charles II marries the Portuguese princess Catherine da Braganza (Bragança), 23, who provides Charles with £300,000 in sugar, cash, and Brazilian mahogany plus the port of Tangier, the island of Bombay (Mumbai), and valuable trading privileges for English mariners in the New World (see treaty, 1661). The May 20 wedding solidifies the alliance that has existed between Portugal and England since 1386.
England sells Dunkirk to France for £400,000.
Holland and France form an alliance against possible attack by England.
France's Louis XIV grants letters patent that make one Cornelius Lapsius baron of the Caribbean island of Tobago under the French crown (see exploration, colonization, 1651). A rich source of sugar, tobacco, cotton, and tropical birds for all its small size, the island was lost to the Dutch after Courland's (Latvia's) duke Jacob Kettler was captured during the Northern War between Poland and Sweden between 1655 and 1660 (see 1666).
Connecticut colonies receive the grant of an unusually democratic charter from England's Charles II (see 1689).
Wampanoag Indian chief Massasoit dies and is succeeded by his son Metacum (see 1621; 1675).
Pirate leader Zheng Chenggong (Cheng Ch'eng-kung) dies on Taiwan (Formosa) June 23 at age 37, having established Chinese control over the island. His Ming government on Taiwan will resist the Manchus until his son Zheng Jing (Cheng Ching) surrenders in 1683.
England's Charles II reforms the nation's coinage, having the Tower Mint at London strike silver crowns, half crowns, and shillings (see pound sterling, 1489). He introduces the guinea, a gold coin with an initial value of 20 shillings; made from African gold, the guinea replaces the hammered unite, or broad, and its value will be established at 21 shillings in 1717 (see Bank of England, 1694).
Natural and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality by London notions merchant John Graunt, 42, is a pioneering work on statistical sampling based on a compilation of births and deaths in the city from 1604 to 1661.
The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge is chartered at London at the urging of Oxford clergyman-scientist John Wilkins, now 45, who has entertained a circle of brilliant acquaintances in his rooms at Wadham College and organized them into a club 2 years ago. Most members are Puritan sympathizers and adherents of the late Francis Bacon; unlike academies on the Continent, the Royal Society receives little more than moral support from the crown and can therefore be more independent than their European counterparts. Publication of its Philosophical Transactions will begin in 1665.
Boyle's Law (the volume of a gas varies inversely as the pressure varies) is enunciated by Robert Boyle, who has helped to found the Royal Society (see 1661; medicine [van Helmont], 1648).
Mathematician-physicist-philosopher-theologian Blaise Pascal dies at the Jansenist Port-Royal monastery in Paris August 19 at age 39.
Bishop François de Montmorency Laval leaves Quebec in August following a major dispute with New France's governor-general, Baron d'Avaugoor (see 1659; politics, 1663).
New Amsterdam colonist John Bowne is arrested for permitting Quakers to hold meetings in his Flushing house, completed last year at what will become 37-01 Bowne Street, Queens (see Flushing Remonstrance, 1657). Bowne is convicted of having violated Governor Peter Stuyvesant's ban on Quaker assemblies. He is jailed and banished, but when he reaches Holland and appeals to the Dutch West India Company, it acquits him of all charges, frees him, and rebukes Governor Stuyvesant, thereby establishing the right to free practice of religious worship.
Parliament adopts an Act of Uniformity requiring that all of England's clergymen, college fellows, schoolfellows, and schoolmasters accept everything in a newly published Book of Common Prayer, which contains "A General Confession": "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;/ And we have done those things which we ought not to have done." Those who resist lose their fellowships and will hereafter be called "Nonconformists," but some 2,000 ministers of various Protestant faiths reject the authority of the Church of England August 24, St. Bartholomew's Day (it will be remembered as "Black Bartholomew") and are ejected from their livings (see Toleration Act, 1689).
English Dissenters open academies (small schools and colleges) that will in many cases become more influential than the universities from which their founders have been barred because of their religious nonconformity.
Nonfiction: Logic, or the Art of Thinking (La logique, ou l'art de penser) by associates of Blaise Pascal at the Port-Royal Jansenist monastery; The Day of Doom, or A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgement by Malden, Massachusetts, clergyman Michael Wigglesworth, 31, contains a lurid exposition of Calvinist theology that children of the Massachusetts Bay colony will be required to memorize; Orations of Diverse Persons by Margaret Cavendish, countess of Newcastle, now 39, declares that women are the more powerful sex, even though they are able to dominate men only through the wiles of love; The Life and Death of Mistress Mary Frith purports to tell the story of the late "Moll Cutpurse," who died 3 years ago at age 74. Having dressed herself as a man, free in her language and prone to drink and smoke, Cavendish organized a gang of robbers and established a pawnshop at which she sold stolen goods back to their original owners, using some of her vast profits to visit jails each Sunday and feed the inmates. By giving them lifetime freedom from pickpockets, she acquired powerful patrons, was never convicted of any crime, and died rich; Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince (Ming-i tai-fang lu) by Chinese scholar Huang Zongxi (Huang Tsung-hsi), 52, deplores the despotic rule that has characterized his country's history and proposes that the office of prime minister be revived as a means of having the emperor share power with his top officials.
Painting: The Syndics of the Cloth Guild by Rembrandt van Rijn; Woman Lacing Her Bodice Beside a Cradle and A Boy Handing a Woman a Basket in a Doorway by Pieter de Hooch; Ex Voto de 1662 by Philippe de Champaigne, now 60, who since 1643 has followed the ascetic teachings of the Jansenites and rejected Baroque techniques, adopting instead a more simplified and austere technique. His painting depicts the miraculous cure of his daughter, who has become a nun at the Port-Royal Jansenist convent.
Theater: Sertorius by Pierre Corneille in February at the Théâtre du Marais, Paris; Don Diego the Fop (El lindo don Diego) by Agustin Moreto at Madrid; The School for Wives (L'Ecole des femmes) by Molière 12/26 at the Palais Royal, Paris.
Opera: Nino the Just (Nino il giusto) at Ferrara with music by composer Giovanni Legrenzi, 36, who has been maestro di cappella at Ferrara's Academy of the Holy Spirit since 1656.
Composer Henry Lawes dies at London October 21 at age 66.
Upper-class Englishmen begin to follow the example of Catherine da Braganza (Bragança), who is an inveterate tea drinker. She also introduces the Chinese orange (see 1635).
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