1674 (place)

• English composer Jeremiah Clarke.
• English composer Philip Hart.
• English playwright Nicholas Rowe.
• English inventor and agricultural innovator Jethro Tull.
• English poet and hymn writer Isaac Watts.
• British politician Charles Townshend.
• Irish novelist and playwright Mary Davys.
• French flautist and composer Jacques Martin Hotteterre.
• French music critic Jean Laurent  Le Cerf de la Viéville.
• French playwright Louis Fuzelier.
• German composer Johann Augustin Kobelius.
• German composer Reinhard Keiser.
• Welsh social butterfly Richard 'Beau' Nash.
• French politician and colonial administrator Jerome Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain.
• Philippe d'Orleans, future Duc d'Orleans, and Regent of France for Louis XV.
• Hungarian-born Turkish printer Ibrahim Muteferrika.

• English novelist John Milton.
• English playwright Thomas Traherne.
• English poet Robert Herrick.
• English musician and composer John Wilson.
• English merchant, political economist, and epidemiologist John Graunt.
• English literary historian Francis Meres.
• French painter Philippe de Champaigne.
• French painter Louis de Boullongne the Elder.
• German composer Matthias Niederdorla Weckmann.
• Italian composer Giacomo Marini Carissimi.
• Dutch painter Leonaert Bramer.
• Dutch painter Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.
• Dutch painter Jan Lievens.
• English noblewoman, poet, and playwright, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
• Irish nobleman and general Murrough O'Brien, 1st earl of Inchiquin, aka 'Murrough of the burnings'.
• English historian Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.
• 6000 French and 9000 Dutch and Spanish at Seneffe.

• Izaak Walton publishes The Life of Mr. George Herbert.
• Jean-Baptiste Lully's play Alceste appears.
• Robert Boyle observes that corrosion and breathing use up some component of air.
• Russia outlaws smoking upon pain of death.
• A treaty with the Netherlands gives England all of the former New Netherland in exchange for Surinam.  King Charles II thinks that England is getting the raw end of the deal, and only signs it after Parliament forces him to. Dutch occupying forces leave Nieuw Oranje, and the city reverts to the name it had had from its 1664 capture by the English until 1673, New York.
• Charles grants his brother James, Duke of York, a section of New England coastline that will later be called Maine.  Thrown into the bargain are New Jersey, Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, and the former Dutch territory in the Hudson Valley.   James turns around and sells New Jersey to Sir George Carteret.
• Polish nobles elect general Jan Sobieski to be their king.
• Louis XIV continues his war against The Netherlands by invading The Palatinate.
• Brandenburg, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire line themselves up against France.  (You know, it really takes something to force Spain and the Netherlands into a military alliance).
• Marhsal Turenne crosses the Rhine and defeats the Imperial army at Sinsheim.
• William, prince of Orange and stadtholder of The Netherlands, misreads The Prince of Condé's troop redeployment as a retreat and marches on Paris. Conde cuts him off around Seneffe and forces William to withdraw after a 10 hour battle.
• Turenne attacks the main army of 57,000 Brandenburgers and Austrians at Enzheim near Strasbourg but withdraws, leaving Alsace in the hands of the Imperial army. But Turenne has a surpruse for them the following year.
• Louis demands that Sweden send forces to help in the continent.  Sweden sends an army into its territory in Pomerania. At the end of the year, General Wrangel invades Brandenburg, touching off a war that will distract Brandenburg and draw Denmark into the conflict.
• Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, having sacked Panama City three years previously, is forgiven his life of crime, knighted, and made Lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

1673 - 1674 - 1675

How They Were Made - 17th Century