The County Hall of Berkshire, built from…

Ihara Saikaku, born in 1642 to the wealthy merchant Hirayama Tōgo in Osaka, had first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku, and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin School of poetry, which emphasized comic linked verse.

He had begun later in life to write racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde.

These stories cater to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class, whose tastes of entertainment lean toward the arts and pleasure districts.

From the age of fifteen, Saikaku had begun to compose haikai no renga (linked verse).

At the age of twenty Saikaku in 1662 had become a haikai master and, under the pen name Ihara Kakuei, had begun to establish himself as a popular haikai poet, developing his own distinctive style by 1670, relying on the use of colloquial language to depict contemporary chonin life.

During this time Saikaku also owned and ran a medium sized business in Osaka.

He had in 1673 changed his pen name to the one we recognize today; however, the death of his dearly beloved wife three years later had had an extremely profound impact on Saikaku.

In an act of grief and true love a few days after her passing, Saikaku started to compose a thousand-verse haikai poem in a matter of twelve hours.

When this work was published it was called ‘Haikai Single Day Thousand Verse’ (Haikai Dokugin Ichinichi).

It was the first time that Saikaku had attempted to compose such a lengthy piece of literature.

The overall experience and success that Saikaku received from composing such a mammoth exercise has been credited with sparking the writer’s interest in writing novels.

However, shortly after his wife’s death, the grief-stricken Saikaku had decided to become a lay monk and began to travel throughout Japan, thus leaving behind his three children (one of whom was blind) to be cared for by his extended family and his business by his employees.

He began traveling extensively after the death of his blind daughter.

Returning to Osaka in 1677, Saikaku had learned of the success his thousand-verse haikai poem had received and, from this point forward, pursued a career as a professional writer.

Saikaku had initially continued to produce haikai poetry, but by 1682 he had published his first of many fictional novels, ‘The Life of an Amorous Man’.

Scholars have described numerous extraordinary feats of solo haikai composition at one sitting; most famously, over the course of a single day and night in 1677 at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka Saikaku, Saikaku is reported to have composed at least sixteen thousand haikai stanzas, with some rumors placing the number at over twenty-three thousand five hundred stanzas; the scribes, unable to keep pace with his dictation, just counted the verses.

Louis, through the Réunions policy, had renewed his aggressions on the German frontier slmost immediately after the conclusion of peace.

The emperor, engaged in a serious struggle with the Ottoman Empire, has again been slow to move, although he joins the Association League against France in 1682.

The growing controversy in Ethiopia over the nature of Christ had grown severe enough that in the last year of his reign Yohannes called a synod to resolve the dispute.

The Ewostathian monks of Gojjam advocate the formula "Through Unction Christ the Son was consubstantial with the Father", by which they have come to be known as the Qebat ("Unction") faction, who are supported by the Emperor's own son Iyasu; ...

...they are opposed by the monks of Debre Libanos, who at this time still advocate traditional Miaphysitism.

The outcome of the synod is in dispute: according to E.A. Wallis-Budge and H. Weld Blundell, Emperor Yohannes was persuaded to condemn the Qebat doctrine, which led to Iyasu attempting to flee his father's realm; but according to Crummey, Yohannes favored the Gojjame delegation for political reasons: at this time Gojjam is an important province.

These decisions will be revisited after Iyasu becomes Emperor, at a synod called by him in 1686.

The pirate Laurens de Graaf was reported in the autumn of 1679 to have captured a Spanish frigate of twenty-four to twenty-eight guns, which he had renamed the Tigre (tiger).

De Graaf has by  1682 become so successful that Henry Morgan, serving his third term as Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, sends the frigate Norwich, under command of Peter Haywood, pirate hunting with de Graaf as his primary quarry.

It is not reported if Haywood encountered de Graaf.

During a brief stop in Cuba around the same time, de Graaf is told of the plans of the Armada de Barlovento, a military institution created by the Spanish empire to protect American overseas territories from European enemy attacks, likewise those of pirates and privateers, to seek him out.

Rather than waiting for the pirate-hunting fleet, he sails immediately in search of them.

After a running gun battle that lasts hours, the Princesa strikes her colors, having lost fifty men to de Graaf's eight or nine. (De Graaf, in an act of kindness, reportedly put the seriously wounded captain of the Princesa ashore with his own surgeon.)

The Princess carries the payroll for Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo: about one hundred and twenty thousand pesos in silver.

After sharing out the prize, ...

...the buccaneers retire to Petit-Goâve, Saint Domingue, to celebrate and refit.

De Graaf makes the Princesa his new flagship.

Meanwhile, French privateer Michel de Grammont, following his recovery, has commanded eight ships but had had no success until 1682 when, at the request of the governor of Petit-Goâve, he joins the Dutch pirate Nicholas van Hoorn to harass Spanish shipping.

Jaques Nepveau, Sieur de Pouançay, having served seven years as governor of the French part of Hispaniola Island, is replaced in 1682 by de Franquesnay, who will serve only a year.

Penn, in England in early 1682, draws up a Frame of Government for the Pennsylvania colony.

Freedom of worship in the colony is to be absolute, and all the traditional rights of Englishmen carefully safeguarded.

Penn drafts a charter of liberties for the settlement creating a political utopia guaranteeing free and fair trial by jury, freedom of religion, freedom from unjust imprisonment and free elections.

Having proved himself an influential scholar and theoretician, Penn now has to demonstrate the practical skills of a real estate promoter, city planner, and governor for his “Holy Experiment”, the province of Pennsylvania.

Besides achieving his religious goals, Penn hopes that Pennsylvania will be a profitable venture for himself and his family, but he proclaims that he will not exploit either the natives or the immigrants.

Though the Quakers are thoroughly oppressed, getting them to leave England and make the dangerous journey to the New World is his first commercial challenge.

Some Quaker families had already arrived in Maryland and New Jersey but the numbers are small.

To attract settlers in large numbers, he writes a glowing prospectus, considered honest and well-researched for the time, promising religious freedom as well as material advantage, which he markets throughout Europe in various languages.

The chief difference between the Fyodorean and the later Petrine reforms in Russia is that while the former are primarily, though not exclusively, for the benefit of the church, the latter will be primarily for the benefit of the state.

The most notable reform of Fyodor III, however, is the abolition in 1682, at the suggestion of Vasily Galitzine, the system of mestnichestvo, or "place priority", which has paralyzed the whole civil and military administration of Muscovy for generations.

Henceforth all appointments to the civil and military services are to be determined by merit and the will of the sovereign, while pedigree (nobility) books are to be destroyed.

Fyodor's first consort, Agaphia Simeonovna Grushevsky had shared his progressive views.

She had been the first to advocate beard-shaving.

The Tsarina had on July 12, 1681, given birth to her son, Tsarevich Ilya Fyodorovich, the expected heir to the throne.

Agaphia had died as a consequence of the childbirth three days later, on July 24, and six days later, on July 30, the nine-days-old Tsarevich also had died.

Seven months later, on February 24, 1682, Fyodor marries Marfa Matveievna Apraksina, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Matvei Vasilievich Apraksin and Domna Bogdanovna Lovchikova.

La Salle, having reassembled a party for another major expedition, departs in 1682 from present-day Fort Wayne with eighteen Native Americans and canoes down the Mississippi River.