  Sunspot positions from various historical sets of solar drawings are analysed
with respect to the tilt angles of bipolar sunspot groups. Data by Scheiner,
Hevelius, Staudacher, Zucconi, Schwabe, and Spoerer deliver a series of average
tilt angles spanning a period of 270 years, additional to previously found
values for 20th-century data obtained by other authors. We find that the
average tilt angles before the Maunder minimum were not significantly different
from the modern values. However, the average tilt angles of a period 50 years
after the Maunder minimum, namely for cycles 0 and 1, were much lower and near
zero. The normal tilt angles before the Maunder minimum suggest that it was not
abnormally low tilt angles which drove the solar cycle into a grand minimum.
