1540. Henry VIII married Anne, daughter of John, duke of Cleves. This was his fourth wife. He had asked her hand in marriage after having seen a portrait of her by Holbein; and becoming disgusted with her in six months bestowed upon her the epithet of Flanders mare, and sent her home. She retired, not much disconcerted, to her own country, where she died 1557.
1649. Anne of Austria, queen regent of France, obliged to fly from Paris to St. Germain.
1698. Birthday of Metastasio, the celebrated Italian poet.
1711. Christopher Bateman, a noted English bookseller, died. He suffered none to open a book in his shop till it was bought.
1724. The bishop of London preached a sermon against masquerades, which produced a decree that no more than six masquerades, the number already subscribed for, should be held.
1725. Pope Benedict XIII, in great state and measured ceremony, opened with a golden hammer the holy gates of the four great churches which had been shut 25 years, for obtaining indulgences, &c.
1734. John Dennis, an English dramatist and critic, died. He was the son of a saddler, born in London 1657, and liberally educated. His first play appeared in 1697, and was followed by many dramatic pieces and poems which were sufficiently worthless to procure their author an imperishable notoriety in the Dunciad, where Pope has gibbeted him. He squandered a fortune which had been left him by an uncle, and not being able to subsist by his pamphlets and criticisms for the magazines, depended upon his friends for a living; and even those whom he had made his enemies joined in the benefit for him at the Haymarket theatre, after he had become blind and partially insane. One of his plays, which was condemned, is famous for a new kind of thunder introduced in it; a few nights after its representation, the players made use of the contrivance in Macbeth, when the author rose in the pit and with an oath claimed it as his thunder. His thunder is said to be that still used in the theatres.
1738. Jean Baptist Labat, a missionary and traveler, died. He was born at Paris 1663, and became a Dominican priest in Norway, where he taught mathematics and philosophy also. In 1693 he embarked for Martinique as a missionary; and during several voyages in service of the mission, visited all the Antilles. When the English attacked the island of Guadaloupe, he rendered his country important services as an engineer. He afterwards traveled much in Europe, and published his travels. His voyage to the West Indies has been translated into several languages, and is a truly scientific work.
1763. Unsuccessful and very disastrous attack by two English ships on Buenos Ayres. The commodore and nearly 300 of the crew were drowned.
1766. The wild man Peter taken in the Hartz forest and presented to George II, was brought from Cheshunt and shewn to George III and his queen. Like Shakespeare's Caliban, he could bring wood and water but not articulate any language.