1664 (place)

While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle...I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!

-Samuel Pepys, August 7

Born in 1664:

• English playwright Matthew Prior.
• James Ogilvy, first Lord of Seafield, the last Lord Chancellor of Scotland, who signed the 1707 Act of Union dissolving the Scottish Parliament.
• French composer Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre.
• Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch.
• English architect and playwright John Vanbrugh.
• Japanese painter and sculptor Sonyu.
• Italian Cardinal, and Giulio Alberoni, future regent of Spain.
• Japanese printmaker Torii Kiyonobu.
• Future Ottoman sultan Mustafa II.

• Flemish painter Michiel Sweerts.
• Legendary Irish royalist soldier Daniel O'Neill.
• Italian composer Barbara Strozzi.
• Dutch painter Adam Willaerts.
• Dutch painter Cornelis Bega.
• English poet Katherine Philips.
• Calvinist apologist Moise Amyraut.
• Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán.
• Early Chinese Taiji Quan figure Chen Wangting.
• Former Cossack hetman Ivan Vyhovs'kyy, executed by the Poles after Cossack-Ukrainian peasant uprisings.
• Tens of thousands from plague in Amsterdam and Brussels. By December, people are dying from plague in London.
• Sikh guru Har Krishen Ji; Tegh Bahadur succeeds him.

• Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully collaborate on Le mariage forcé (The Forced Wedding) and The Princess of Elida. These have some success, but Molière's religious satire La Tartuffe is immediately banned.
• The French Horn makes its first appearance in orchestras.
• Heinrich Schütz's Christmas Oratorio appears.
• Jean de la Fontaine's collection of bawdy tales, Contes et nouvelles, appears.
• Pope Alexander VII
• adds a condemnation of Coperican theory to the Index of prohibited books. All "books which affirm the motion of the earth'' are proclaimed anathema.
• issues a decree condemning the Jansenists.
• Samuel Butler's publishes the second part of his epic poem Hudibras.
• The second issue of the third edition of William Shakespeare's plays is the first one to contain all of the plays now ascribed to him.
• Jean Racine's play La Thébaïde  (The Thebans) premieres.
• Jean-Baptiste Colbert convinces young Louis XIV to:
• establish a royal tapestry factory at Beauvais.
• dissolve the Compagnie des Îles d'Amérique and purchase Guadeloupe as a royal possession.
• Colbert also pressures Louis to reduce ranks of the nobility, whom he considers parasites crippling the French economy.
• Maryland prohibits interracial marriage, and relegates black people to lifelong slavery, the first colony to do so.
• Charles II
• sets up the territory of Maine for his brother James, Duke of York.
• Gives the territory between the Delaware River and New Netherland to his brother James, as well. James grants George Carteret and Lord Berkeley a charter to found New Jersey there.
• offers a prize of ten shillings a ton for every foreign merchant ship captured.
• sets up the Admiral's Regiment, a detachment of the Royal Navy later called the Royal Marines.
• is given some Chinese tea by English East India Company traders. He loves it even though it has been contaminated by seawater from a leaky hold, and the Company gains a concession that will make many of them rich and drive much of history in the future.
• Peter Stuyvesant has so alienated the Dutch settlers of New Netherland that they refuse to lift a finger to help when the English invade; Stuyvesant is forced to surrender Nieuw Amsterdam to the English without a shot being fired; they rename it New York (after James).
• Maratta warlord Shivaji captures and sacks the Gujarat city of Surat; he assumes the kingship of Surat and allows French traders establish a factory there.
• French buccaneers, having driven the Spanish from Hispaniola, found Fort de Paix, their first settlement in Haiti.
• The Knights Hospitaller attack Algiers.
• German divers salvage 53 cannons from the Swedish warship Wasa, which had sunk on its maiden voyage in 1628.
• The English Parliament passes The Coventicle Act, forbidding any non-Anglican religious gathering of more than five people. Also, they begin transporting Quakers to Maryland, New Jersey, and the West Indies.
• An Austrian army beefed up by contingents from several European countries defeats Ahmed Kuprulu leading an invading Ottoman army at Saint-Gotthard in Hungary.
• A Dutch fleet fails to recapture Fort Zeelandia (near Tainan) from the Chinese, but manages to capture Amoy in Fukien.
• Certain worthies of Lindheim, Germany begin trying and executing people for witchcraft in order to seize their property.

1663 - 1664 - 1665

How They Were Made - 17th Century