1684
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Former Parliamentary general John Lambert dies on St. Nicholas Isle off Plymouth in March at age 64. Chief architect of the Protectorate that governed England as a republic from 1653 to 1659, he was sentenced to death in June 1662, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he has been confined for nearly 22 years.
Venice joins Austria and Poland in the Holy League against the Ottoman Turks, and her admiral Francesco Morisini gains support from the navy of Tuscany's sixth grand duke Cosimo III de' Medici, now 42, but Cosimo's consort, Marguerite-Louise d'Orléans, humiliated him in 1675 by returning to France after trying to have her marriage declared invalid. Poland's Jan III Sobieski undertakes an advance into Moldavia with a view to liberating both Moldavia and Wallach and expanding Polish influence to the Black Sea, but Poland soon withdraws from the league sponsored by Pope Innocent XI at the insistence of France's Louis XIV. The Polish king will make further advances into Moldavia in the next 7 years but will be turned back each time.
French troops occupy Lorraine, and Louis XIV signs a 20-year truce at Regensburg with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (see 1683). Louis retains all the territory he has obtained up to August 1, 1681, including Strasbourg, and retains Lorraine as well.
Japan's prime minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated at age 50, leaving the shōgun Tsunayoshi Tokugawa with no able counselors. He will issue edicts inspired by Buddhism prohibiting the killing of any living creature, extend special protection and privileges to dogs, wreck the finances of Edo, and bring hardship to the Japanese.
Parliament annuls the Massachusetts Charter of 1629 following charges that colonists have usurped the rights of Mason and Gorges and their heirs in New Hampshire, evaded the Navigation Acts by sending tobacco and sugar directly to Europe, exercised power not warranted by the charter, and shown disrespect for the king's authority.
The word American appears for the first time in writings by Puritan minister Cotton Mather, 21, who entered Harvard College at age 12 and will become assistant next year to his father Increase Mather at Boston's North Church (see 1693).
The sieur de La Salle returns to America with a force of more than 400 men, but he lands in error on the Texas Gulf Coast, where he becomes disoriented and loses most of his men to fever and desertion (see 1682; 1687).
Somerset-born explorer William Dampier, 31, goes ashore on the San Fernandez Islands in late March from an English ship and makes observations. A tenant farmer's son who went to sea as a young boy, Dampier has been to Newfoundland and the Dutch East Indies, worked on a Jamaican plantation, cut timber on the Yucatán peninsula, and fought against the Dutch. He takes a keen interest in science but will soon join with pirates to capture prizes in the Caribbean and Pacific while continuing to keep careful scientific notes (see 1688).
England's East India Company gains Chinese permission to build a trading station at Guangzhou (Canton) after years of having to import Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea by way of Java. The company's profits from Indian calico and other cheap cotton textiles have for nearly 25 years been greater than those derived from the spice trade.
"New Method for the Greatest and the Least" ("Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis") by mathematician-philosopher Gottfried W. Leibniz is published in the newly founded Acta Eruditorum, giving an exposition of his differential calculus (see 1671). The terms derivative and differential used by Leibniz will eventually replace the Newtonian terms fluent and fluxion (see Newton, 1687).
England has an outbreak of smallpox that adds to the misery caused by extreme cold.
Nonfiction: "Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas" ("Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis") by Gottfried W. Leibniz defines his theory that there is a strict relation between God's logic and those of man.
Scholar Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia dies at Padua July 26 at age 38, probably of tuberculosis (see 1678). Citizens of Venice and Padua hear of her death from cries in the street, "The Saint is dead!" She has spent the past 6 years ministering to the poor while continuing her studies and devoting herself to religious observance.
Baroque still-life painter Jan Davidz (Davidzoon) de Heem dies at Antwerp April 26 at age 77.
Playwright and poet Pierre Corneille dies at Paris the night of September 30 at age 78.
The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles is completed by the French architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, whose uncle François brought the mansard roof into use. As building superintendent to Louis XIV, Hardouin-Mansart will create the Grand Trianon, Place Vendôme, Place des Victoires, and the dome of the Hotel des Invalides (see 1682).
England emerges from her coldest winter in memory. The Thames has frozen over and even the sea has frozen for two miles from land.
Charles II roasts oxen and feeds the poor at his own expense as bitter cold grips the country.
Tea sells on the Continent for less than 1 shilling per pound, but an import duty of 5 shillings per pound makes tea too costly for most Englishmen and encourages widespread smuggling. The English consume more smuggled tea than is brought in by orthodox routes (see 1784).
1681 1682 1683 1684 1685 1686 1687 1688 1689 1690
Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology:
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In the year 1684
Astronomy
Giovanni Cassini discovers Dione and Thetys, satellites of Saturn. See also 1672 Astronomy.
Ole Römer invents the transit telescope, perhaps following a design from Abbé Picard, and installs one in the window of his house in Copenhagen. See also 1667 Astronomy.
CommunicationRobert Hooke describes a system of visual telegraphy. See also 1792 Communication.
MathematicsLeibniz's "A New Method for Maxima and Minima as Well as Tangents, Which Is Impeded Neither by Fractional nor by Irrational Quantities, and a Remarkable Type of Calculus for This" is the first published account of differential calculus. Its six pages are so dense, however, that few can understand them. See also 1676 Mathematics.
PhysicsRobert Hooke boasts to Christopher Wren and Edmond Halley that he has found the laws governing the movement of the planets. Wren correctly perceives that Hooke is wrong and offers a prize to anyone who can solve the problem. Halley visits Newton to ask what planetary orbits would be if the planets are attracted to the Sun according to an inverse-square law, to which Newton immediately replies, "An ellipse, for I have calculated it." This leads Halley to encourage Newton to write out his ideas, which become the Principia. See also 1680 Physics; 1687 Physics. (See essay.)
Essays and Philosophy
- Increase Mather: "An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences." One of Mather's most important works, the treatise better known as "Remarkable Providences" draws upon both scientific knowledge and faith to report on supernatural incidents in New England's history.
Nonfiction
- Thomas Gage (c. 1596-1656): The English-American: His Travail by sea and land. The English Catholic missionary who traveled in Mexico and Central America helps stimulate English exploration with this account of the wealth of the region.
Poetry, Fiction, and Drama
- Richard Steere (1643-1721): A Monumental Memorial for Marine Mercy. Literary historians consider Steere's poem one of the finest celebrating a sea deliverance. Prompted by a nearly disastrous voyage to London in 1683, it interprets events as an allegory of the soul's redemption.
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This article is about the year 1684.
| Millennium: | 2nd millennium |
|---|---|
| Centuries: | 16th century – 17th century – 18th century |
| Decades: | 1650s 1660s 1670s – 1680s – 1690s 1700s 1710s |
| Years: | 1681 1682 1683 – 1684 – 1685 1686 1687 |
| 1684 by topic: | |
| Arts and Science | |
| Architecture - Art - Literature - Music - Science | |
| Lists of leaders | |
| Colonial governors - State leaders | |
| Birth and death categories | |
| Births - Deaths | |
| Establishments and disestablishments categories | |
| Establishments - Disestablishments | |
| Works category | |
| Works | |
| Gregorian calendar | 1684 MDCLXXXIV |
| Ab urbe condita | 2437 |
| Armenian calendar | 1133 ԹՎ ՌՃԼԳ |
| Assyrian calendar | 6434 |
| Bahá'í calendar | -160–-159 |
| Bengali calendar | 1091 |
| Berber calendar | 2634 |
| English Regnal year | 35 Cha. 2 – 36 Cha. 2 |
| Buddhist calendar | 2228 |
| Burmese calendar | 1046 |
| Byzantine calendar | 7192–7193 |
| Chinese calendar | 癸亥年十一月十五日 (4320/4380-11-15) — to —
甲子年十一月廿六日(4321/4381-11-26) |
| Coptic calendar | 1400–1401 |
| Ethiopian calendar | 1676–1677 |
| Hebrew calendar | 5444–5445 |
| Hindu calendars | |
| - Vikram Samvat | 1740–1741 |
| - Shaka Samvat | 1606–1607 |
| - Kali Yuga | 4785–4786 |
| Holocene calendar | 11684 |
| Iranian calendar | 1062–1063 |
| Islamic calendar | 1095–1096 |
| Japanese calendar | Tenna 4Jōkyō 1 (貞享元年) |
| Korean calendar | 4017 |
| Minguo calendar | 228 before ROC 民前228年 |
| Thai solar calendar | 2227 |
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Year 1684 (MDCLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.
Events
January–June
- January – Edmund Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion.
- January 5 – King Charles II of England gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn.
- January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice.
- March – End of the severe frost in Britain, starting the previous December, during which the Thames was frozen in London, and the sea as far as 2 miles (3.2 km) out from land freezes over. There was great loss of beast and of wildlife, especially birds. Similar reports from across Northern Europe.[1]
July–December
- July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails from France, again, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
- August 15 – France under Louis XIV makes the Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.
- October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
- December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.
Date unknown
- Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to end the Ottoman Turkish rule in Europe.
- Japanese poet Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses.
- The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford.
- Smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.
- John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2.
- The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the River Thames frost fairs on the Thames in London.
Births
- January 1 – Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (d. 1748)
- January 14 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (d. 1745)
- February 24 – Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (d. 1738)
- March 15 – Francesco Durante, Italian composer (d. 1755)
- March 19 – Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar (d. 1766)
- April 15 – Catherine I of Russia (d. 1727)
- May 5 – Françoise Charlotte d'Aubigné, niece of Madame de Maintenon and ancestress of the Heir to the Belgian throne (d. 1739)
- June 22 – Francesco Manfredini, Italian composer (d. 1762)
- September 18 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist, and composer (d. 1748)
- October 10 – Antoine Watteau, French painter (d. 1721)
- October 26 – Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Prussian field marshal (d. 1757)
- December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (d. 1754)
Deaths
- April 1 – Roger Williams, English theologian and colonist (b. 1603)
- April 5 – Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (b. 1602)
- May 4 – John Nevison, English highwayman (b. 1639)
- May 12 – Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (b. c. 1620)
- July 2 – John Rogers, American President of Harvard University (b. 1630)
- July 6 – Peter Gunning, English royalist churchman (b. 1614)
- August 8 – George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (b. 1622)
- October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French playwright (b. 1606)
- October 11 – James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven (b. 1617)
- October – Dud Dudley, English ironmaster (b. 1600?)
References
- ^ Stratton, J.M. (1969). Agricultural Records. John Baker. ISBN 0-212-97022-4.
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