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Major-General Thomas Harrison, baptised 16 July 1616, executed 13 October 1660, was a prominent member of the radical religious sect known as the Fifth Monarchists, and a soldier who fought for Parliament and the Commonwealth in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. One of those who approved the Execution of Charles I in January 1649, he was a strong supporter of Oliver Cromwell before the two fell out when The Protectorate was established in 1653. Following the 1660 Stuart Restoration, he was arrested, found guilty of treason as a regicide, and sentenced to death. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 13 October 1660, facing his execution with a courage noted by various observers, including the diarist Samuel Pepys.
"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period of 1660–1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym for this. After public stage performances were banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, reopening of the theatres in 1660 marked a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:
The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper.... The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1660.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his Dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
Eleanor Gwyn was a celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stage, she became best known for being a long-time mistress of King Charles II of England. Called "pretty, witty Nell" by Pepys, she has been regarded as a living embodiment of the spirit of Restoration England and has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of Cinderella. Gwyn had two sons by King Charles: Charles Beauclerk (1670–1726) and James Beauclerk (1671–1680). Charles Beauclerk was created Earl of Burford and later Duke of St Albans.
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Sir Richard Pepys was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1640 and was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was a great-uncle of Samuel Pepys, the diarist.
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During that period, theatres began to flourish again after they had been closed from the restrictions throughout the English Civil War and the Interregnum. The Duke's Company existed from 1660 to 1682, when it merged with the King's Company to form the United Company.
Mary Knep, also Knepp, Nepp, Knip, or Knipp, was an English actress and one of the first generation of female performers to appear on the public stage during the Restoration era.
Sir Thomas Jones KS was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1676.
Anne Marshall, also Mrs. Anne Quin, was a leading English actress of the Restoration era, one of the first generation of women performers to appear on the public stage in England.
James Carkesse was an English naval official and schoolteacher, a Fellow of the Royal Society now known for poetry written in Bethlem Hospital and an asylum in Finsbury.
Sir Robert Coke of Caludon Castle, Coventry, Huntingfield, Suffolk and Epsom, Surrey was an English politician.
Mary Elmy born Mary Morse was a British actress who appeared in roles at leading theatres in Dublin and London. She led a long life and she was noted for her role of Gertrude appearing with Spranger Barry in Hamlet.
Dorothea Gotherson was an English Quaker preacher and writer.
References
- ↑ Highfill, Philip H.; Burnim, Kalman A.; Langhans, Edward A. (1993). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. SIU Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-1802-5.
- 1 2 3 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67770 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/67770 , retrieved 2021-11-20
{{citation}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ "Saturday 11 January 1667/68". The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Retrieved 2021-11-20.