1627 to 1632

Literature

The New Atlantis. Francis Bacon. British. 1627. Fable. Voyage to the island of "Bensalem." "Solomon House" becomes the model for the royal Society.

Society

1628. Salem is founded on Massachusetts Bay by some 50 colonists who arrived in September with John Endicott, 39, who will serve as first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1630.

1628. English engineer Edward Somerset invents the first crude steam engine.

1628. "Essay on the Motion of the Heart and Blood" by English physician William Harvey, 50, is published at Frankfurt. Harvey's 75-page treatise establishes that the human heart is muscular and that its regular mechanical contractions drive the blood out into the blood vessels.

1628. Bubonic Plague kills half the population of Lyons. The Black Death will kill a million in the northern Italian states in the next 2 years.

1629. The joint-stock company of Massachusetts Bay organized by Anglican Puritans will bring more than 17,000 settlers to America in the next 13 years.

Literature

El Medico de su honra (The Physician of His Own Honor). Calderon. Spanish. 1629. Play. Wife tries to dissuade the attentions of a prince whom she loves. The husband feels his honor is besmirched. He has her bled to death by a surgeon, which is accepted by the king as within the code of honor.

Society

1630. Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Watertown, Mystic and Lynn are established as the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1630. Portsmouth is established by John Mason in what will be the New Hampshire Colony.

1630. Bubonic Plague kills 500,000 Venetians, hastening the decline of Venice. Repeated epidemics in the decade ahead will reduce America's Huron Tribe to a third of its estimated 30,000 population.

1630. A "Great Migration" begins that will bring 16,000 people to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the next ten years.

Literature

Libertine of Seville and the Stone Guest (Don Juan). Tirso de Molina. Spanish. 1630. Play. Don Juan ignores honor and seeks only pleasure. The morality of the Middle Ages vs. Renaissance libertinism. Introduced Don Juan. He kills his lover's father. The statue of her father strangles him.

Society

1631. Shipyards start up at Boston and other Massachusetts colony seaports as cheap American lumber makes an American-built ship only half as expensive as one built in England.

1632. Nova Scotia is founded as the French colony of Acadia by settlers who will cut farms out of the region's dense forests.

1632. Galileo Galilei repeats his advocacy of the Copernican system of astronomy; summoned to Rome.

Literature

La Dorotea. Lope de Vega. Spanish. 1632. Romance. In dialogue. Partly autobiographical, based on actress Elena Osorio with whom Lope had had an affair.

"Il Penseroso." Milton. British. 1632. Poetry. The pleasure of melancholy, contemplation, solitude and study.