1667
Milton Publishes Paradise Lost
John Milton, blind and out of political favor under Charles II, dictated to his daughters a ten-book epic on the fall of man in blank verse of surpassing grandeur. He sold it to a printer for five pounds. Paradise Lost would become, and remain, the greatest epic poem in English.
Dutch Raid on the Medway
Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed a Dutch squadron up the Thames and Medway, broke the defensive chain at Chatham, burned English warships at their moorings, and towed away the flagship Royal Charles. The humiliation ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War and helped persuade the English that wars with cousins were unproductive.
Treaty of Breda
The Second Anglo-Dutch War ended with a swap: the Dutch kept Suriname, captured during the war, and let the English keep New York. Contemporaries thought the Dutch had the better of the bargain, since Suriname grew sugar and Manhattan merely traded furs. History would take a different view, and the island that the Dutch surrendered would become the commercial capital of the world.
War of Devolution Begins
Louis XIV, exploiting a technicality of Brabant inheritance law, invaded the Spanish Netherlands to claim them on behalf of his Spanish queen. French armies swept through Flanders; the Dutch, alarmed, quietly organized a triple alliance with England and Sweden. The Sun King's first war had been fought and almost won.