1653

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:

• Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli.
• Venetian composer Marc Antonio Ziani.
• German composer Johann Pachelbel.
• German composer Georg Muffat, in Strasbourg, Alsace.
• English poet John Oldham.
• English naval officer John Benbow.
• English lawyer and author Roger North.
• English playwright Thomas D'Urfey, in France.
• English playwright Nathaniel Lee.
• French Cardinal Andre Dercule de Fleury, who will exhibit an influence over Louis XV similar to the one that Cardinal Mazarin now does over Louis XIV.
• Duc Claude Louis Hector de Villars, Marshal of France during the War of the Spanish Succession.
• Belgian cabinet artist Gerhard Dagly, whose style would later be popularized as 'chinoiserie'.
• Prince George of Denmark, future consort of Queen Anne.
• Japanese dramatist Sugimore Nobumori, better known as Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

 

• Italian composer Luigi Rossi.
• Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
• Japanese sword master Ito Ittosai.
• English (royalist) political philosopher Sir Robert Filmer, a posthumous foil of John Locke.
• English poet John Taylor.
• Vasie Lupu, prince of Moldavia.  Constantine Serban, prince of Wallachia, takes over.
• Konoe Naotsugu, chancellor (Kampaku) of Japan).
• Irish Catholic/royalist leader Sir Phelim O'Neill, executed for not implicating Charles I in the 1641 Irish rebellion.
• Dutch Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, see below.
• Ottoman Grand Vizier Tarhuncu Ahmet Pasha, garotted because of rumors spread about him.

• 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':
• (April 20) Oliver Cromwell dismisses the rump of the Long Parliament.
• (July 4) Cromwell appoints 140 'godly men' (from various Dissenter sects) as a new Parliament.  In this 'Barebones Parliament', Ireland is represent by six members, and Scotland by five.  Sectarian arguments lead to its dissolution on December 12.
• (December 16) An Instrument of Government gives Cromwell sole executive power, naming him 'Lord Protector'.   Parliament is reorgranized to meet every three years; membership is reapportioned among the various counties and boroughs.
• Cromwell imprisons John Lilburne, leader of his erstwhile allies, the Levellers
• Meanwhile, England is at war with the Netherlands (First Dutch War) over the 1652 Navigation Act.
• (February 18-20) Monck inflicts severe damage on an escorted Dutch convoy off Beachy Head,
• (March)  Fighting Instructions (descriptions of naval tactics) appear.
• Admiral Robert Blake defeats Tromp off the Isle of Portland.
• (June 3) The Dutch are forced to retreat at Gabbard Bank, and Admiral George Monck sets up a blockade of the Dutch coast.
• (July 25) Tromp gets past the blockade, but six days later, at the Battle of Scheveninghen (aka Texel), the Dutch fleet takes twice the losses of the English one, and Tromp himself is killed.
• 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