Zhu Houcong

Also known as Ming Shizong · Jiajing Di

Zhu Houcong, Emperor Shizong of Ming, was the son of the Prince of Xingxian and a nephew of Emperor Xiaozong. When the Zhengde Emperor died without a son in 1521, he was brought from his princely seat to the throne and began the Jiajing reign the next year. His insistence on honouring his own father as imperial father set off the Great Rites Controversy with Yang Tinghe and other ministers; in 1524 officials who knelt in protest at the Zuoshun Gate were flogged, several fatally. After palace women tried to strangle him in his sleep in 1542, he moved to the Western Park, devoted himself to Daoist rites and stopped holding regular audiences, while Yan Song dominated the government for nearly twenty years. In 1550 the Mongol leader Altan Khan reached the walls of Beijing, and pirates raided the southeast coast for decades. He died in January 1567. The year before, the official Hai Rui submitted a memorial punning that 'Jiajing' meant every household had been wiped clean.