The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and needed to become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English history, especially during the Protectorate.
The Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers were the English settlers who established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands. They held Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church. They eventually determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, which became the second successful English settlement in America, following the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.
Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1683.
The Elizabethan Religious Settlement is the name given to the religious and political arrangements made for England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) that brought the English Reformation to a conclusion. The Settlement shaped the theology and liturgy of the Church of England and was important to the development of Anglicanism as a distinct Christian tradition.
Louise Renée de Penancoët de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth was a mistress of Charles II of England.
A jeremiad is a long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in verse, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall.
Venus in the Cloister or The Nun in her Smock, known in the original French as Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise (1683) is a work of erotic fiction by the Abbé du Prat, which is a pseudonym for an unknown author. Candidates for whom this might be include Jean Barrin and François de Chavigny de La Bretonnière.
Cornelia Connelly was the American-born foundress of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious institute. In 1846, she founded the first of many Holy Child schools, in England.
Cornelia Sorabji was an Indian woman who was the first female graduate from Bombay University, the first woman to study law at Oxford University and the first female advocate in India, and the first woman to practice law in India and Britain.
Events from the year 1683 in England.
The 1668 Bawdy House Riots took place in 17th-century London over several days in March during Easter Week, 1668. They were sparked by Dissenters who resented the King's proclamation against conventicles while turning a blind eye to the equally illegal brothels. Thousands of young men besieged and demolished brothels throughout the East End, assaulting the prostitutes and looting the properties. As the historian Tim Harris describes it:
"The riots broke out on Easter Monday, 23 March 1668, when a group attacked bawdy houses in Poplar. The next day crowds of about 500 pulled down similar establishments in Moorfields, East Smithfield, St Leonard's, Shoreditch, and also St Andrew's, Holborn, the main bawdy house districts of London. The final assaults came on Wednesday, mainly in the Moorfields area, one report claiming there were now 40,000 rioters - surely an exaggeration, but indicating that abnormally large numbers of people were involved. ... On all days the crowds were supposedly armed with 'iron bars, polaxes, long staves, and other weapons', presumably the sort of tools necessary for house demolition. The rioters organized themselves into regiments, headed by a captain, and marching behind colours."
Damaris Page also known as Damarose Page, was a London brothel keeper, entrepreneur and property developer, one of the most successful and famous prostitutes of her time.
Elizabeth Cresswell, also known as Mother Creswell and Madam Cresswell of Clerkenwell, was one of the most successful prostitutes and brothel keepers of the English seventeenth century. Starting with houses in Bartholomew Close, in the City of London and St Leonard's, Shoreditch, she built a widespread network of brothels across London, supplied with girls and women from across England. Her employees included the wives of soldiers pressed into service for Charles II and gentlewomen who had supported the Cavalier cause during the English Civil War and had since fallen on hard times. Her bawdy houses were favoured by King Charles and his court as well as powerful figures in government and city guilds. This position gave her a measure of immunity from prosecution and added to her profile as a caricature of iniquity and corruption.
The Whores' Petition was a satirical letter addressed from brothel owners and prostitutes affected by the Bawdy House Riots of 1668, to Lady Castlemaine, lover of King Charles II of England. It requested that she come to the aid of her "sisters" and pay for the rebuilding of their property and livelihoods. Addressed from madams such as Damaris Page and Elizabeth Cresswell, it sought to mock the perceived extravagance and licentiousness of Castlemaine and the royal court.
The Convocation of 1563 was a significant gathering of English and Welsh clerics that consolidated the Elizabethan religious settlement, and brought the Thirty-Nine Articles close to their final form. It was, more accurately, the Convocation of 1562/3 of the province of Canterbury, beginning in January 1562.
The Fair Jilt: or, the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda is a short novella by Aphra Behn published in 1688. It is the first English novel written by a female writer.
Agatha van der Mijn, was an 18th-century flower painter from the Northern Netherlands active in London.
Priss Fotheringham, was an English sex worker and madam from London who was described in a number of publications from the 1660s. One publication, The Wandering Whore, described her as the 'second best whore in the city'. A memorial plaque to her stands at the corner of Whitecross Street and Old Street in East London.
