Oh, the gallant fisher's life,
It is the best of any
'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,
And 'tis beloved of many.
- John Chalkhill, as published in The Compleat Angler
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart,
I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
Take away that fool's bauble, the mace.
- Oliver Cromwell, to Parliament
Born in 1653:
Died in 1653:
Events of 1653:
- Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's great love-goft to his favorite wife, the Taj Mahal, is completed, except for the gardens.
-
Jean Nicolas Smogulecki and Xue Fengzuo publish San Jiaofa,
a trigonometry text, as well as an astronomy text, Tian bu zhen
yuan (True Course of Celestial Moons).
-
Izaak Walton's fishing treatise The Compleat Angler appears
for the first time.
-
Richard Brome's comedy The City Witt, or, the Woman Wears the
Breeches skirts Oliver Cromwell's ban of the theater.
-
Nicholas Culpeper's pharmacopoeia Complete Herbal appears.
-
Sir Thomas Urquhart publishes an English translation of François
Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel.
-
Lorenzo Tonti, an Italian banker, comes up with a scheme where something
of value is held in trust for several people; when one of the group dies,
the rest get greater shares until the last survivor gets it all.
Such a scheme will later be called a 'tontine'.
-
Pope Innocent X condemns Jansenism (a doctrine of Cornelius
Otto Jansen, containing a strong element of predestination) as heresy.
-
The 'Commonwealth' of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
is replaced by a 'Protectorate':
-
Meanwhile, England is at war with the Netherlands (First Dutch War)
over the 1652 Navigation Act.
-
Johan de Witt becomes chief minister of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
Since stadtholder William of Orange is three years old,
de Witt is effectively ruler of The Netherlands.
-
Cromwell sends six ships against Royalist forces of Clan MacClean, holed
up in near Duart Castle on the Scottish Isle of Mull. They find
the castle deserted, but before they can decide what to do, a storm sinks
four of the ships.
-
The Fronde is supressed under the command of a former rebel-turned
Mazarin loyalist, Vicomte Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne,
de Turenne.
-
Cardinal Mazarin arranges for Nicolas Fouquet to be appointed
Finance Minster of France. Fouquet immediately begins the campaign
of graft that will allow him to build his rival to Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte.
-
Dutch settlers build a wooden stockade to defend New Amsterdam.
The path along this wall will become rather more important
in later years.
-
A Dutch ship wrecks off Cheju Island. Captain Hendrick Hamel
and his 36 crewmembers are the largest group of Westerners to set foot
in Korea thus far. The castaways will spend three years in Korea,
and Hamel will be the first Westerner to thoroughly describe Korea to the
West.
-
After putting down a revolt in Taiwan, the Dutch occupiers build Fort
Provintia in the rebellious village of Saccam, now inside Tainan.
-
Sweden wrests the province of Skåne away from Denmark.
-
The town of New Amsterdam is founded on the tip of Manhattan Island.
1652 - 1653 - 1654
How They Were Made - 17th Century