Tuesday, June 26, 2007

1623 to 1627

Society
1623. Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Colony assign each family its own parcel of land, forsaking the communal Mayflower Compact. Given a new incentive, women and children join with men to plant corn and increase production.

Literature
The Changeling. Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. British. 1623. Play. Young noblewoman arranges the murder of her betrothed because she is in love with another. The killer, her ugly servant, claims her as his mistress lest he tell all. She marries the man she loves, but substitutes her virgin servant girl in the marriage bed because she is afraid she will be found not to be a virgin. Confronted with the truth, her husband kills both her and the killer who had claimed her as his mistress.

Society
1624. France's Louis XIII makes Cardinal Richelieu his chief minister.

1624, Pope Urban VIII threatens snuff users with excommunication as the use of tobacco from the New World gains in popularity.

1624. The Louvre Palace at Paris is completed in part for Louis XIII.

Literature
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. John Donne. British. 1624. Meditation. Series of meditations on the variable, therefore miserable, condition of man. Metaphorical and complex. Contains, "No Man Is an Island."

Society
1625. England's James I dies and is succeeded by his son of 24 as Charles I.

1625. The Plymouth Colony for the first time has "corn sufficient and some to spare for others," Governor William Bradford writes home to England and credits part of the improvement to a revised plan of communal labor with each family being assigned land according to its size. "This...made all hands very industrious...."

Literature
A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Philip Massinger. British. 1625. Play. Avaricious Sir Giles Overreach manipulates lives and eventually loses his mind.

The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral. Francis Bacon. British. 1625. Essays. On personal and public conduct. Philosophical, religious. Witty, pithy and metaphorical. Highly original style. Contains the essay on reading that includes, "Some books are to be tasted...."

Society
1626. Manhattan Island is purchased from Canarsie chiefs of the Wappinger Confederacy for fish hooks and trinkets valued at 60 guilders by Dutch colonists who call the natives Manhattes. The 60 guilders paid for Manhattan is by some accounts $24 and by others $39, but a 20th century economist will reckon the purchasing power of 60 guilders at several thousand dollars in modern terms. (And the Canarsie sellers have sold land that belongs to the Manados).

1626. Dutch whalers establish the port of Smeerenberg in Spitzbergen to process right whales, so called by the English to distinguish them from "wrong" whales which sink when dead. The whales are prized not as food but for their oil and whalebone, used for illumination and lubrication and as stays.

Literature
'Tis Pity She's a Whore. John Ford. British. 1627. Play. Fatal attraction for his sister whom he impregnates. She tries to cover up by marrying someone else. The would-be husband plans to tell all. The brother kills his sister to save her honor and kills the would-be husband whose followers then kill him.

Los Suenas. Francisco de Quevedo. Spanish. 1627. Satires. Descriptions of the author's visit to Hell. Caricature of men and institutions.

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