Elizabeth Cellier Elizabeth Cellier Elizabeth Cellier (commonly known as Mrs. Cellier and dubbed the "Popish Midwife"), flourished 1668–1688, London, England, was a notable Catholic midwife in seventeenth-century England. She stood trial for treason in 1679 for her alleged part in the "Meal-Tub Plot" against the future James II but was acquitted. She later became a pamphleteer and made attempts to advance the field of midwifery. Elizabeth Cellier was a noted London midwife, who came into prominence through the pretended "Meal-Tub Plot" of 1680. Nothing seems known of her life until her marriage with Peter Cellier, a Frenchman, and her conversion from Anglicanism.
17th century period also that European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the silver deposits, which resulted in bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe. In the Islamic world, the Ottoman, Safavid Persian and Mughal empires grew in strength. In India The Marathas dominated the political scene from the middle of the 17th century to the early 19th century as the Maratha Empire founded by Chatrapati Shivajiraje Bhosale. In Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the century, beginning the Edo period; the isolationist Sakoku policy began in the 1630s and