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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).
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