Events Timeline

Orlando includes short event entries, freestanding and embedded in author profiles, about moments and processes relevant to literary history and organized into four categories: Women writers, Writing Climate, Political Climate, and Social Climate. Explore the timelines by searching for date(s) and/or words or phrases associated with them.

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Mary Mollineux: August 1684

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Mollineux

August 1684

MM composed a poem she entitled Meditations concerning our Imprisonment Only for Conscience sake, 1684. in Lancaster Castle.
Mollineux, Mary. Fruits of Retirement. T. Sowle, 1702.
123

Lady Lucy Herbert : October 1684

Women writers item
Author event in Lady Lucy Herbert

October 1684

The Lincoln's Inn Fields house of Lord Powis (recently released after years in prison on suspicion of treasonable Catholic plotting, father of future writers Lucy and Winifred ) was burned to the ground by chance...

Mary Astell: 10 October 1684

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Astell

10 October 1684

MA , not yet eighteen, must have been chief mourner at the funeral of her mother , the last remaining adult member of her close family.
Ancestry.co.uk. http://www.ancestry.co.uk.

Elinor James: 18 November 1684

Women writers item
Author event in Elinor James

18 November 1684

EJ intervened in the affair of Dissenting Minister Thomas Rosewell ; she says that courtiers seeking a pardon for Rosewell came to her and begged her to go to the king .
McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon, 1998.
138-9

Mary Barber: Probably about 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Barber

Probably about 1685

The future MB was born.
If Patrick Delany was right when he thought her fifty, her birth was more like 1681;
Isdell-Carpenter, Andrew. “On a manuscript of poems catalogued as by Mary Barber in the Library of TCD”. Hermathena, Vol.
109
, 1969, pp. 54-64.
56-7
but in eighteenth-century thinking fifty, for a woman, was almost the next stage after thirty.
Pilkington, Laetitia. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. Editor Elias, A. C., Jr, University of Georgia Press, 1997, 2 vols.
391-2

Aphra Behn: 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Aphra Behn

1685

AB edited an anthology: Miscellany: Being a Collection of Poems; it includes ten pieces by herself.
Todd, Janet. The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
327, 328

Aphra Behn: 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Aphra Behn

1685

AB published, again anonymously, her novelistic sequel, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister Part II (the year following part one).
O’Donnell, Mary Ann. Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. Garland, 1986.
109

Jane Brereton: 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Jane Brereton

1685

Jane Hughes (later JB ) was born at Bryn-Griffith near Mold in Flintshire on the borders of Wales. She had a brother, and was the younger daughter of two, but her sister died early.
Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press, 1990.
78
Prescott, Sarah. Women, Authorship, and Literary Culture, 1690-1740. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
96 and n50
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Elizabeth Cairns: 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Elizabeth Cairns

1685

EC was born in a little cottage at Blackfoord or Blackford in Scotland.
Cairns, Elizabeth. Memoirs of the Life of Elizabeth Cairns. Editor Greig, John, John Brown, 1762.
prelims

Dorothy Osborne: From 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Dorothy Osborne

From 1685

Lady Temple (formerly DO ) and her husband lived chiefly at Moor Park, near Farnham in Surrey, which he bought that year.
He named it after the original Moor Park near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire...

Damaris Masham: Probably early 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Damaris Masham

Probably early 1685

Damaris Cudworth (later DM ) addressed to Locke a long poem wittily discussing the relationship between the sexes; she sent it to him more than a year after writing it, with one of her several...

1685: The Licensing Act, which had lapsed in 1679,...

Building item

1685

The Licensing Act, which had lapsed in 1679, was renewed for a period of ten years only.
Suarez, Michael F. “The Business of Literature: The Book Trade in England from Milton to Blake”. A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake, edited by David Womersley, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 131-47.
145

1685: The parish of St James's in Westminster was...

Building item

1685

The parish of St James's in Westminster was created by partitioning St Martin in the Fields: an early example of the westward spread of desirable residential London districts.
Henderson, Tony. Disorderly Women. Longman, 1999.
68

From 1685: In France a complex system of official record-keeping...

Building item

From 1685

In France a complex system of official record-keeping was put in place to control employment of wet-nurses, to prevent the infection of infants with venereal disease.
Dunlap, Barbara J. “The Problem of Syphilitic Children in Eighteenth-Century France and England”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 114-27.
119

30 January 1685: John Evelyn observed Charles II, a week before...

Building item

30 January 1685

John Evelyn observed Charles II , a week before he died, sitting and toying with three of his mistresses, listening to a french boy singing love songs, while courtiers played basset (a card game) for...

6 February 1685: King Charles II died and his brother James...

National or international item

6 February 1685

King Charles II died and his brother James II (who was also James VII of Scotland) assumed the throne.
Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 23rd ed., Ward, Lock, 1904.
426
Fryde, Edmund Boleslaw. Handbook of British Chronology. Editors Greenway, D. E. et al., 3rd ed., Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1986.
44
Messenger, Ann. Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent: Studies in Augustan Poetry. AMS Press, 2001.
99

15 February 1685: James II went publicly to Mass for the first...

National or international item

15 February 1685

James II went publicly to Mass for the first time since succeeding to the throne.
Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Editor De Beer, Esmond Samuel, Oxford University Press, 1959.
792

Aphra Behn: March 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Aphra Behn

March 1685

Despite her own endemic poverty, AB lent Otway , who was near death and too poor to eat, £5.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press, 1987.
152, 175

Anne Finch: 2 April 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Anne Finch

2 April 1685

AF addressed to her husband of less than a year a delightful 17-line love-poem, A Letter to Dafnis: she did not include it in her printed volume of thirty years later.
Finch, Anne. The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. Editor Reynolds, Myra, University of Chicago Press, 1903.
19-20

Mary Mollineux: 10 April 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Mollineux

10 April 1685

Mary Southworth married Henry Mollineux at Penketh, which was then in Lancashire, but is now in Cheshire and is part of Warrington.
In the Quaker system, which rejected the heathen names of the...

13 April 1685: Two Scotswomen, Margaret Lachlane aged sixty-three...

National or international item

13 April 1685

Two Scotswomen, Margaret Lachlane aged sixty-three and Margaret Wilson aged around twenty-five, were sentenced to execution by drowning for being Covenanters : they were tied to stakes in Wigtown Bay while the tide came in.
The Covenanters: The Fifty Years Struggle 1638-1688. http://www.sorbie.net/covenanters.htm.

Thomas Otway: 14 April 1685

Writing climate item
Author event in Thomas Otway

14 April 1685

TO , actor and playwright, died at the age of thirty-three; various rumours about his death insist that it resulted from poverty.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature. Clarendon Press, 1954.
390

Anne Wharton: 4 May 1685

Women writers item
Author event in Anne Wharton

4 May 1685

AW settled her financial affairs: she left her property (which her grandmother had struggled to secure), not to her own hypothetical issue but to her husband.
Wharton, Anne. “Introduction”. The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, edited by Germaine Greer and Selina Hastings, Stump Cross Books, 1997, pp. 1-124.
93, 106

19 May 1685: The new monarch, James II, summoned his first...

National or international item

19 May 1685

The new monarch, James II , summoned his first parliament for this date.
Henning, Basil Duke, editor. The House of Commons, 1660-1690. Secker and Warburg, 1983, 3 vols.
1: 86

22 May 1685: Titus Oates, the informer in the alleged...

National or international item

22 May 1685

Titus Oates , the informer in the alleged Popish Plot, was whipped through the London streets at a cart's tail from Newgate Prison , where he was incarcerated, to Tyburn.
Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Editor De Beer, Esmond Samuel, Oxford University Press, 1959.
810
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.