1400-1750

Nobunaga was born the heir to the Oda clan in 1534. He was his father Nobuhide’s second son, but his elder brother Nobuhiro was illegitimate. The clan had historically been the vassals of a more powerful clan, the Shiba, but eighty years…

Benedetta Carlini had the misfortune of being born into the wrong time. If she’d been born a few hundred years earlier (or even a hundred years later), she’d be Saint Benedetta of Pescia. As it was she was born in 1591 in Italy, a period…

Philip Dormer Stanhope, heir to the Earldom of Chesterfield, was born on the 22nd September 1694. He was a child of a family who had been part of the British aristocracy for centuries. One of his ancestors had been executed by Edward VI’s…

Mary Wortley Montagu was born as Mary Pierrepoint in 1689. Her father Evelyn was the Earl of Kingston, and Mary was his eldest child. Her mother (also named Mary) died when she was only three years old, and Mary was handed into the care…

April 23rd 2016 is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. Although his plays and poems have lived on and are enjoyed across the globe, relatively little is known for certain about the man himself. This is particularly so for…

Tycho Brahe was born as Tyge Brahe in 1546, though he would adopt the Latinized form of his first name when he was fifteen. His parents were Danish nobles, with his father, Otte Brahe, one of the close advisors of the King of Denmark. Tycho…

William Chaloner was born in Warwickshire sometime around the late 1650s. His father was a weaver, but William showed little aptitude for the trade and was reportedly a wilful child, so his parents sent him away to Birmingham to be…

Christopher Marlowe, known to most as Kit, was born in Canterbury in early 1564. His father was a shoemaker, but young Kit’s intelligence was evident enough at an early age that his father sought a scholarship for him at the King’s School…

Carlo Gesualda was born in Venosa, part of the Kingdom of Naples in southern Italy in 1566. His father was the Prince of Venosa, having been granted that title in 1561 when he married Geronima Borromeo, niece of Pope Pius IV. Carlo was his…

William Dodd was born in 1729 in the town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, which was in the 18th century a sleepy country town. His father was the local vicar and he seems to have done his best to prepare his son to follow him into the…