That was then, this is now, concentration of notables edition

[John] Napier’s continental sojourn had embraced the years 1564 to 1571, the year of the Ridolfi Plot.  During his absence Galileo, Shakespeare, Caravaggio and Kepler had been born, Michelangelo, Calvin, Nostradamus and Stifel had died, Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, had been forced to abdicate and was under comfortable house arrest in England, her infant son, James VI, had been made king, Edinburgh had suffered a terrible plague, his father had remarried, and Scotland had been thrown into civil war, with Merchiston playing a pivotal role.

A lot happened in the 1770s as well.  That above paragraph is from Julian Havil’s quite good John Napier: Life, Logarithms, and Legacy.  Napier of course also was obsessed with the Book of Revelation, in addition to being one of the discoverers of logarithms.