1565 to 1580

Society

1565. John Hawkins introduces tobacco into England from Florida and writes that it s smoked by Floridians to satisfy their hunger and therefore live four or five days without meat or drink.

Literature

Gammer Gurton's Needle. William Stevenson. 1566. Play. Lost needle is found, painfully, in the seat of Hodge's pants.

La Araucan. Alfonso de Ercilla y Zuniga. Spanish. 1569/90. Poetry. Stubborn resistance of the Chilean Araucanian Indians against the Spanish. The nobility and valor of the Indians and their leaders.

Society

1568. Mary Queen of Scots is placed in confinement after fleeing to England.

1570. Five North American tribes confederate under the name Iroquois. The Mohawk brave Hiawatha and the brave Dekanawida, originally a Huron, have persuaded the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca to form a league with a common council, each tribe having a fixed number of chiefly delegates.

Literature

The Schoolmaster. Roger Ascham. British. 1570. Nonfiction. Favors athletics in the curriculum and English prose to English verse.

Society

1572. England's duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard III, 36, is beheaded for having conspired with the Spanish to invade England and free Mary Queen of Scots.

1572. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 23 and 24, kills an estimated 50,000 Huguenots at Paris and in the provinces, urged on by the queen mother Catherine de Medici. Pope Gregory XIII and all the Catholic powers congratulate Catherine, and the pope commands that bonfires be lighted to celebrate the massacre.

Literature

The Lusiad. Luis de Camoes. Portuguese. 1572. Epic poetry. Exploits of Vasco da Gama in "discovery of India." Mythological machinery.

Society

1573. Poland makes all religions equal under the Constitution.

1574. An estimated 152,000 Spanish settlers are now in the Americas.

Literature

Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. Raphael Holinshed. 1577. History. Source of much material used in Macbeth, Lear and Cymbeline.

Society

1579. De Juri Begni Apud Scotos by Scottish humanist George Buchanan, now 73, confutes absolutism with the argument that kings exist only by the will of the people. Written for the instruction of his royal pupil who will become England's James I, Buchanan's work states that the obligation of subjects to their king is conditioned on the performance of that king in the duties of his office.

Literature

The Shepeardes Calendar. Edmund Spenser. British. 1579. Poetry. 12 eclogues, one for each month of the year. Shepherds' loves and laments.

An Apologie for Poetry. Sir Philip Sidney. 1580/83. Poetry. Answer to attack on poetry by the Puritans. Defines as poetry all imaginative writing.