The plague epidemic that begins in 1592…
1592 CE
Four galleys of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany or the Order of Saint Stephen had captured two vessels from Alexandria, and had taken their cargo and about one hundred and fifty Turkish captives with them to Malta.
While en route to Malta, an outbreak of the plague had begun on board the ships, killing twenty crew members.
The galleys arrive in Malta on May 7, 1592.
The plague spreads in Malta in various waves, the first of which begins in June 1592.
When the outbreak occurs, it is initially mistaken to be a venereal disease.
The epidemic subsides by September, but a second wave begins in November.
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Ioánnis Fokás, a Greek maritime pilot in Portuguese employ who has sailed to China, the Philippines, and Mexico, claims the discovery of the waters Drake had sought twenty years earlier, which is why the strait south of Vancouver bears the name of Juan de Fuca, the Spanish transcription of his name.
Fokás claims to have sailed the strait from the Pacific to the North Sea and back in 1592 on his his famous trip up the northwest coast of the North American continent.
Born in Ceffalonia in 1536, little to nothing is known of his life before he entered the service of Spain, some time around 1555.
His early voyages were to the Far East, and he claimed to have arrived in New Spain in 1587 when, off Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, the English privateer Thomas Cavendish seized his galleon Santa Ana and deposited him ashore.
Having perfected his skill as a pilot in the Spanish fleet, the King of Spain had recognized him for his excellence and made him pilot of the Spanish navy in the West Indies, a title that he has kept for forty years.
According to Fuca's account, he had undertaken two voyages of exploration on the orders of the second viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, marqués de Salinas, both intended to find the fabled Strait of Anián that would lead to the Northwest Passage, a northern sea route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
At this time, Spanish doctrine divides control of ships and fleets between the military commander, who is an army officer, and the sailing and navigation commander, who is a mariner.
The first voyage had seen two hundred soldiers and three small ships under the overall command of a Spanish captain (with Fuca as pilot and master) assigned the task of finding the Strait of Anián and fortifying it against the English. This expedition had failed when, allegedly due to the captain's malfeasance, the soldiers mutinied and returned home to California.)
Fuca enjoys success in 1592, on his second voyage.
Having sailed north with a caravel and a pinnace and a few armed marines, he returns to Acapulco and claims to have found the strait, with a large island at its mouth, at around 47° north latitude (the Strait of Juan de Fuca is in fact at around 48° N, as is the southern tip of the large island now called Vancouver Island).
The Strait of Juan de Fuca between the United States of America and Canada will be named for him by Captain Charles Barkley in 1787.
Poland’s King Sigismund III Vasa, son of John III of Sweden and his first wife, Catherine Jagellonica of Poland, marries the nineteen-year-old Austrian archduchess Anna of Austria in 1592.
After his father's death on November 17 of the same year, he receives permission from the Sejm to accept the Swedish throne.
Conflicts arise, however: Duke Charles, the oldest living son of Gustav Vasa, does not approve the accession of Sigismund, his nephew and a Catholic, to the government of a realm that could just as well be his.
Portuguese forces briefly occupy Kandy in 1592, but are expelled.
El Greco has painted three versions of a composition with a boy, a man and a monkey grouped in darkness around a single flame: the initial canvas between 1577 and 1579; the second version between 1580 and 1585, and the third version between 1589 and 1592.
The Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore (English: Church of the Most Holy Redeemer), commonly known as Il Redentore, a sixteenth century Roman Catholic church located in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, has been designed by the architect Andrea Palladio and built as a votive church to thank God for the deliverance of the city from a major outbreak of the plague that decimated Venice in 1575-76.
Located on the waterfront of the Canale della Giudecca, it dominates the skyline of the island of Giudecca.
Though the Senate had wished the Church to be square plan, Palladio had designed a single nave church with three chapels on either side.
Its prominent position on the Canale della Giudecca gave Palladio the opportunity to design a facade inspired by the Parthenon of Athens and enhanced by being placed on a wide plinth.
Fifteen steps are required to reach the church's entrance, a direct reference to the Temple of Jerusalem and complicit with Palladio's own requirement that "the ascent (of the faithful) will be gradual, so that the climbing will bring more devotion".
Trinity College Dublin, formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, is founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", and is today the only constituent college of the University of Dublin.
Located in Dublin, it is Ireland's oldest university.
Originally established outside the city walls of Dublin in the buildings of the dissolved Augustinian monastery of All Hallows, Trinity is set up partly to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland.
There is also a large population of subjects living in several parishes surrounding the liberties, which are among the first communities to be hit severely by the plague's return.
Queen Elizabeth I rules England and City of London's government is concerned with a growing population and rising crime.
Due to increasing economic and food shortages, disorder has grown among the underclass population in the city, and beyond that, moralist authorities increasingly struggle to govern.
By September 7, soldiers marching from England's north to embark on foreign campaigns are rerouted around the city due to the generals' concerns about infection.
By winter, the aristocratic class begins fleeing the city.
Theaters, which had been temporarily closed by city authorities since a riot in June, are kept closed until December 29 out of fear of plague spreading in crowds.
Around two thousand Londoners die of plague between August 1592 and January 1593.
The Company of Parish Clerks begins regularly keeping and publishing records of plague mortality on December 21, 1592.
Some of these records will be re-recorded by John Stow during research in the seventeenth century and have survived time despite the original documents being lost.
Death and infection rates steadily rise during the winter, an unusual behavior exhibited by this plague epidemic
More resourceful, upper-class Londoners continue fleeing during 1593, and public venues, such as theaters, remain shuttered on government orders to halt the spread of infection, but the government countermeasures prove ineffective, primarily due to the filthy, disease-harboring conditions of some areas of London.
London's poorer and more insanitary parishes and neighborhoods are located near the wall and River Thames.
The Fleet Ditch area of London, around the prison, is the most heavily infected part of the city.
A prisoner named William Cecil (not to be confused with Lord Burghley), kept in the Fleet Prison by the command of Queen Elizabeth I herself, later writes that by 6 of April 1593 "The place where [William] lies is a congregation of the unwholesome smells of the town, and the season contagious, so many have died of the plague."
Letters among government officials record that the plague was "very hot" in London by 12 June and that by 3 July the Royal Court was "out in places, and a great part of the household is cut off."
In August Queen Elizabeth's royal court moves to Windsor Castle, most likely encouraged to move by the virulence of plague within the city.
Alarm is prompted by the death of the Queen's chambermaid Lady Scrope from plague on the 21st of August within the castle, almost sending the royal court fleeing a second time
Governor Alonso de Sotomayor, amid his problems with the Mapuche insurgency in southern Chile, has also had to confront the attacks of English pirates, most notably Thomas Cavendish, who had anchored in Quintero on April 9, 1587 and been defeated by the Spanish, losing ten men.
Additionally, he has had to deal with revolts by soldiers in the south, motivated by the poverty that they suffer on account of not being paid in either gold or encomienda rights.
Alarmed by the situation and by the lack of reinforcements, Sotomayor had gone to Peru on July 30, 1592 to petition the viceroy there for more men, leaving, with the title of lieutenant governor of Chile, the old and circumspect lawyer Pedro de Viscarra, who had arrived from Spain two years earlier.
Sotomayor disembarks in August in Callao, where he learns that the king has named a new governor of Chile, Martín García Óñez de Loyola, famous for his capture of Túpac Amaru; Philip II thinks Loyola him the most likely candidate to finish the Arauco War.
Sotomayor returns to Chile to testify about and defend his actions, a tribunal from which he emerges triumphant.
He now heads towards Spain, but is detained on the road by ...