(place) by Gorgonzola Sat Sep 21 2002 at 4:11:49

Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom / Nor forced him wander, but confined him home.

John Cleveland, 'The Rebel Scot', 1647

To fight against such a man is to court ruin.

- Aurangzeb, facing Sayyid Abulaziz Khan's hordes


Born in 1647:

Died in 1647: Events of 1647:
  • Abraham Cowley publishes a collection of poems, The Mistress: or, Love Verses.
  • William Oughtred uses the symbol π to refer to the circumference of a circle for the first time.
  • Johannes Hevelius publishes Selenographia, the first atlas of the Moon's surface, naming its craters and referring to the dark lava plains as maria.
  • 35 plays by John Fletcher are collected into a 'First Folio'.
  • shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu orders Noh troupes to stick to the script.
  • Blaise Pascal proves the maxim 'Nature abhors a vacuum' wrong by creating one.
  • The English Civil War sees manifestoes, remonstrances, and declarations, as well as some actual bloodshed, among the various factions involved:
    • Charles I is in refuge in Scotland, but Parliament pays the Scottish army its back wages. In addition, Charles refuses to accept the Presbyterian Covenant, and so the Covenanters hand him over to Parliament, and he is imprisoned at Holmby in Nottinghamshire.
    • Parliament, controlled by eleven Presbyterian members, orders the New Model Army to stay outside London and tries to disband it. Oliver Cromwell flees London to keep from being impeached. The Army takes control of the King and gathers in Newmarket.
    • Covenanter forces accept the surrender of the 200-300 Highlander troops holding Dunaverty castle but kill them anyway.
    • The Marquis of Ormond surrenders Dublin to the Army and leaves for England.
    • The Army enters St. Albans, closer than Parliament likes.
    • The army presents a set of demands to the King: religious toleration, regular Parliaments, and Parliamentary control of the military. Charles demurs.
    • The army razes Aberystwyth Castle in Wales.
    • Army officers and 'agitators' from the ranks meet in Putney to debate what to do. Oliver Cromwell and his Grandees keep some of the Levellers' more radical proposals from being considered.
    • The results of the Putney Debates are presented to the regiments at Corkbush Field.  Two uninvited Leveller regiments attempt to crash the party, leading to a mutiny.  Lord Fairfax persuades the soldiers to end their mutiny, andtwo officers are arrested, and one private is shot as an example.
    • A riot in London chases all non-Presbyterian Members of Parliament out of the city. The Presbyterians begin fortifying the city, but Cromwell enters London (moving the King to Hampton Court) and forces a repeal of the Army's disbandment through Parliament, in turn chasing all of the Presbyterian MPs out of London.
    • Charles flees to the Isle of Wight, but is captured and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle.  Unknown to his jailers, he begins negotiations with the Covenanters again, using the Marquis of Ormond as a go-between. He will secretly agree to make Presbyterianism the state religion in return for an invasion of England.
  • The Thirty Years War has everybody tired out:  Protracted negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück, and lackluster fighting throughout Europe drag on through the year with little effect.
    • Catholic general Johann von Werth tries to takes his Bavarian troops into Austria but they refuse.  The Emperor gives him a new army to repel the Swedes in Bohemia.
    • The Swedish army captures the site of one of the war's previous great battles, Nördlingen.
    • The Swedish army takes Eger in Bohemia but is badly defeated by Werth at Treibel.
    • Spanish governor Leopold Wilhelm holds the French out of the Spanish Netherlands, defeating them at Armentières and Landrecy.
    • Masaniello's revolt in Naples succeeds after Cardinal Jules Mazarin sends French troops to support him. The Spanish viceroy comes to terms with Masaniello, making him captain-general of Naples.  But Masaniello drops his guard and the Spanish assassinate him, and have little trouble suppressing the revolt after that.
    • Maximillian, Duke of Bavaria, signs the Treaty of Ulm to get the French and Swedish armies out, but later signs the Treaty of Pilsen with Emperor Ferdinand III and re-enters the war on the Austrian side.
  • George Fox begins the ministry that will become the Quaker faith.
  • Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie raiders take control of the Bataan peninsula (on Luzon) after its defenders fight to the last man.
  • The new governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, arrives in New Amsterdam.  He arrests the Scottish 'governor' that Lord Stirling's widow had sent from Nova Scotia.
  • Two Ming pretenders in Guangzhou claim to be Emperor, but the Qing armies overrun Guangdong province, and only one manages to escape to set up court at Guilin in Guangxi province.  The Qing armies later lose Canton, and the Ming court moves north to Quanzhou on the Hunan border.
  • The Portuguese fail to re-estabish relations with Go-Komyo, the Emperor of Japan, and the Japanese blockade Nagasaki to prevent the Portuguese ships from leaving.
  • 20-year-old Maratta warlord Shivaji's band captures Torana and Purandar forts in Pune, taking control of the area.
  • Sayyid Abdul Aziz, Khan of Bukhara, forces the Mughals (led by Aurangzeb) out of Balkh in Afghanistan.

1646 - 1647 - 1648

How They Were Made - 17th Century

I like it!

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.