November 2nd

On November 2nd, 1418, the short yet bloody war between the Utrecht bishopric and the Teutonic Knights came to a dramatic close. Bishop Frederick of Blankenheim had seized assets from the Teutonic monastery adjacent to the Cathedral of Saint Martin and sent them to Philip of Burgundy. The Teutonic Knights, who were allied with Jacqueline of Bavaria, Philip's adversary in the second Hook and Cod War, were outraged and attempted to restore their wealth by kidnapping Frederick and holding him hostage. But Frederick, paranoid as ever, lived beyond the Teutonic reach within the fortified cathedral. His army of mercenary alter boys rained arrows and other missiles down on the Teutonic besiegers. The Teutonic Knights retreated to near-by Ijsselstein to prepare for a second assault, but it was an ill-fated move. Just before dawn on November 2nd, Frederick's alter boys flooded the canals and destroyed the dams protecting Ijsselstein. Though few actually died in the deluge, the sodden town was soon struck low by plague. Before the month was through the entire population of Ijesselstein was either dead or relocated. Utrecht expanded, consuming its conveniently conquered neighbor and has held Ijsselstein ever since.

November 1st

The separation between church and state has its roots in a theo-political debate that took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on November 1st, 1623. There had been tensions between the puritan Calvinist separatists known as Pilgrims and the Strangers, a heterogeneous group of European adventurers seeking gold and asylum from the polemic religious fervor gripping Britain, since the Mayflower first departed on its western journey. The strain was exacerbated upon landfall as the Pilgrims and Strangers attempted to contrive a charter for their shared village. The Pilgrims desired the creation of a theocracy in which a congress of Calvinist ministers would act as legislators, interpreters, and executors of the law. The Strangers lobbied for a plutocracy in which an individual's power to create or defy legislation would increase as his personal cache filled with New English gold. Initial hopes for amicable deliberation soon proved naive, and the proceedings descended into factional strife. The antipathy came to a head on the evening of November 1st as the village debated what percentage of the annual harvest was appropriate to sacrifice to John Calvin when a Stranger named Mordecai Wayne suggested (as recorded in his personal diary) that "questions of a theological, ritual, and superstitious nature ought to be the concern of the individual and not our village." Mordecai Wayne's words provoked fury from the Pilgrims and a riot erupted. The riot was accompanied by a conflagration which consumed most of the buildings in the village and, according to Mordecai Wayne, "smoldered into the new year." In the days following the riot the rift between the Pilgrims and the Strangers widened until the Strangers were chased out of town altogether. Mordecai Wayne was named mayor of the new village of Wessagussett on Christmas day, 1623. However, the community's gold-based economy soon languished as the land denied prospectors their expected due. Starving, Mordecai Wayne led Wessagussettians raiding parties into Plymouth frequently well into the late 17th century.