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According to tradition, William Shakespeare was born on St
George's day, 23 April, in 1564, and died on his 52nd birthday.
The accuracy of these dates cannot be verified. It
is quite possible that they were invented by a posthumous biographer,
who conceived it to be fitting that England's greatest playwright
should have been born, and died, on the feast day of England's
patron saint.
By a quite remarkable coincidence, the supposed date on which
England's greatest playwright died - 23 April 1616 - is also
recorded as the date of death of Spain's greatest playwright,
Miguel de Cervantes. Some, of course, would say this is not
a coincidence: John Michell, in Who Wrote Shakespeare ?,
tells us that[1]:
"The Baconian cult at its most luxuriant is an awesome
and awful thing. Its adherents credit Bacon not only with
the whole of Shakespeare, but with all the great literature
of his time, including the works of Montaigne and Cervantes."
Yet, whilst Shakespeare and Cervantes supposedly died on
the same date, paradoxically they did not die on the
same day. 23 April 1616 was a Saturday in Madrid.
Ten days later, 23 April 1616 fell on a Tuesday in Stratford-upon-Avon[2].
The explanation for this paradox is quite simple. Spain,
along with most of Catholic Europe, had adopted the Gregorian
Calendar in 1582; England, as a non-Catholic country, maintained
the Julian Calendar until the middle of the 18th century.
Lunar and Solar Calendars[3]
Since the beginning of human civilisation, mankind has measured
the passing of time principally by reference to three natural
phenomena which recur at regular intervals - the rising and
setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the cycle of
the seasons. Of course, the causes of each of these phenomena
are astronomical - the revolution of the earth on its axis,
the orbit of the moon around the earth, and the orbit of the
earth around the sun. The basic problem for calendar-makers
is that the periods demarked by these phenomena are not readily
divisible into one another - the lunar month occupies approximately
29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes; the solar year equates to
approximately 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes; and there are
12 lunar months in the solar year, plus about 10 days, 21 hours
and 1 minute.
A strictly lunar calendar - one based on the actual phases
of the moon - necessarily falls out of kilter with the cycle
of the seasons. Such calendars were common in ancient
civilisations, but fell out of use as more advanced techniques
of agriculture required a more reliable means of predicting
the times for planting and harvesting crops. However, one example
of a lunar calendar still exists; namely the Islamic Calendar,
which is used mainly for religious purposes amongst the followers
of Islam, but remains the civil calendar in Saudi Arabia and
other countries of the Gulf region. The Islamic year,
of 12 lunar months, is about 10 days shorter than the solar
year. The result is that a particular month, such as Ramdhaan
(the month of fasting), may fall at any time of the solar cycle.
As ancient civilisations sought to co-ordinate their lunar
calendars with the cycle of the seasons, their first solution
was to introduce additional or "intercalated" months at periodic
intervals. Various formulae were devised in different
civilisations - the Babylonians devised a 19-year cycle with
seven additional months; the ancient Egyptians had a 25-year
cycle with nine extra months; and the ancient Greeks had an
8-year cycle with three extra months. In the modern world,
there remain some surviving examples of lunar-solar (or lunisolar)
calendars, which, through the regular intercalation of additional
months, attempt to reconcile the actual lunar and solar cycles.
These include the Hebrew calendar, used by people of the
Jewish faith principally for religious purposes, the Chinese
calendar, used by Chinese people throughout the world to set
the dates for traditional festivals, and the National Calendar
of India.
However, it seems that the Ancient Egyptians were the first
to develop a true solar calendar, in which the year is divided
into 12 arbitrary periods which have only a nominal correlation
with the phases of the moon. What is known as the "Young-Avestan
calendar", introduced in 503 BC, adopted a 365-day year divided
into eleven 30-day months and one 35-day month.
The Ancient Roman Calendar
Prior to 46 BC, the calendar in use in ancient Rome was,
by modern standards, a very peculiar one. It is traditionally
attributed to Romulus, the legendary founder and first king
of Rome. It comprised only 10 months, with the first month
- March - commencing with the new moon prior to the vernal or
Spring equinox. Each of these months had a fixed length
of between 29 and 31 days, so that the first day of each month
roughly coincided with the next succeeding new moon. The
first four months were given the names Martius (honouring Mars,
the god of war), Aprilis (apparently honouring the love-god
Venus, although the word Aprilis is a corruption of her Greek
name, Aphrodite), Maius (honouring the goddess Maia, a daughter
of Atlas), and Junius (honouring the goddess Juno). The
remaining months were merely numbered from Quintilis (the fifth)
to Decembris (the tenth).
Within each month, days were not numbered consecutively.
The first day of the month was called the Calends, from
which our word "calendar" is derived. The day of the full
moon was called the Ides, and the Nones fell approximately mid-way
between the Calends and the Ides. Other specific days
were identified as occurring a number of days before the Calends,
the Ides or the Nones.
After ten lunar months, a period of several weeks remained
until the Calends of March would occur on the new moon before
the Spring equinox, signalling the commencement of the new year.
The period between the end of the tenth month (December)
and the beginning of the first month (March) was simply omitted
from the calendar, apparently "because there was little agricultural
work to be done"[4].
If this was not sufficiently bizarre, a series of so-called
"reforms" are (perhaps unkindly) attributed to the semi-legendary
second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. At first, the month
of February was added to follow immediately after December,
and then January was added to follow February. But then
it was decided that the year should commence on the first day
after the end of December, rather than the first day of March;
February, being named for the gods of the underworld, was not
considered a very propitious month to begin the year, so the
order of February and January was reversed. By adding
two additional months of fixed length, the calendar no longer
conformed with the true solar cycle. So the Pompillian
reforms also included the introduction of an intercalary month,
variously known as Mercedinus or Intercalaries, of 22 days every
second year. Extraordinarily, this additional month was
inserted between the 22nd and 23rd days of February[5].
Another consequence of the Pompillian reforms was that the
calendar no longer reflected, even approximately, the actual
phases of the moon. The one feature of the pre-Pompillian
calendar which was retained was the peculiar Roman system of
counting the days backwards from the Calends, Nones and Ides.
But these days became nominal, rather than coinciding
with the actual phases of the moon. The first day of each
month continued to be called the Calends. In the months
of March, May, July and October, the fifteenth day was designated
as the Ides; but the Ides was the thirteenth day in all other
months. The Nones was the day falling eight days before
the Ides.
The Julian Calendar
It is little wonder that, in 46 BC, Julius Caesar conceived
that a further reform was due. The calendar devised and
implemented under his authority - the Julian Calendar - was
a remarkably fine piece of mathematics for its time. Indeed,
save for two differences, it is virtually the same calendar
that we use today. It is a feature common to all great
calendrical reforms that the credit is usually given to the
political leader under whose patronage the reform was adopted,
rather than the brilliant mathematician who devised it. The
Julian calendar was in fact the work of a Greek-Egyptian astronomer,
Sosigenes.
Sosigenes calculated the length of the solar year as 365
and one-quarter days. Thus, by adopting a regular year
of 365 days, with an additional or "leap" day being intercalated
every fourth year, the calendar achieved a very close approximation
to the cycle of the seasons. It did, however, involve
the abandonment of any pretence that the arbitrary periods known
to us as "months" corresponded with the phases of the moon.
Initially, the Julian Calendar comprised months which
alternated between 31 days (January, March, May, July, September
and November) and 30 days (April, June, August, October and
December), with February having 29 days in ordinary years and
30 days in leap years. The traditional names for the months
were retained, with the exception of Quintillis - originally
the fifth month - which was renamed as Iulius, or July, to honour
Julius Caesar.
Unfortunately, this orderly arrangement of the months was
interfered with under Augustus, who esteemed himself to be deserving
of an equivalent honour, and therefore renamed Sextilis (originally
the sixth month) as August. Of course, the month named
in his honour could not have fewer days than the month named
in honour of his great-uncle, so an additional day was added
to August. But, to avoid having three successive months
each of 31 days, September and November were each reduced to
30, and October and December were raised to 31. This resulted
in the disorderly jumble of 30-day and 31-day months, which
still survives 2000 years later, and has produced the result
that the only reliable way for most people to remember the length
of a given month is by recalling the verse which commences "Thirty
days hath September".
We should be grateful, though, that only two members of the
Roman Imperial family have been honoured in this way: at various
times, there were proposals to rename April in honour of Nero,
May in honour of Claudius, June in honour of Germanicus, September
in honour of Tiberius, and October in honour of Livia. It
was Tiberius who put an end
to this business when the Senate offered him September: "What
will you do when there are 13 Caesars?" he asked.[6]
The Julian Calendar during the Dark and
Middle Ages
Despite some imperfections, the Julian calendar continued
in use throughout Western Europe until 1582, and was exported
by European traders, conquerors and settlers to the New World
and elsewhere. Thus, for almost 16 centuries, the so-called
civilised world was in agreement, at least as to what day of
the month it was.
Still, there remained some regional variations throughout
Western Europe, principally relating to the numbering of the
years, and the date taken as the first day of the year. The
Julian reforms reinforced those attributed to Numa Pompilius,
in selecting 1 January - a date close to the (Northern) Winter
Solstice - as the first day of the year. But, throughout
the Middle Ages, different dates were selected in different
parts of Europe.
The Catholic Church, at a time when Catholicism was dominant
throughout Western Europe, adopted the Feast of the Annunciation,
on 25 March. Apart from its religious significance - occurring
on the supposed date of Christ's conception, precisely nine
months before Christmas - this date was in close proximity to
the (Northern) Spring Equinox. Ironically, after the Protestant
Reformation, non-Catholic England was one of the few places
to continue this practice. The supposed date of Shakespeare's
death, 23 April 1616, occurred within the first month of that
year, according to the official calendar then used in England.
Had he died a month earlier, the date would have been
given, officially, as 23 March 1615.
However, even by Shakespeare's time, the general public had
given up on the inconvenience of the official calendar, and
printed calendars and almanacs generally showed the year commencing
on 1 January. To distinguish the common or popular year
from the official year, commencing on the Feast of the Annunciation,
the latter came to be known as the "Year of Grace". The
pragmatic Scots would have none of this nonsense, and, a century
and a half before the English calendar reform, the Privy Council
of Scotland under James VI decreed that, from 1 January 1600,
the year should commence on that day[7].
The official
calendar of Scotland continued to treat 1 January as the first
day of the year, even after the passing of the Acts of Union
in 1706.
Elsewhere in Europe, different communities reckoned their
years as commencing on different dates. In 312 AD, the
Emperor Constantine had sought to reimpose uniformity, by adopting
the "Byzantine Year" commencing on 1 September: this was taken
up in various parts of Continental Europe, and remained the
official year of the Holy Roman Empire until its abolition by
Napoleon in 1806. But Constantine's attempt to achieve
uniformity proved fruitless as the power and influence of Imperial
Rome waned. As one writer has suggested[8]:
"If we suppose
a traveller to set out from Venice on March 1, 1245, the first
day of the Venetian year, he would find himself in 1244 when
he reached Florence; and if after a short stay he went onto
Pisa, the year 1246 would already have begun there. Continuing
his journey westward he would find himself again in 1245 when
he entered Provence and on arriving in France before Easter
(April 16) he would once again be in 1244."
Just as different communities throughout Europe selected
different days as the beginning of the year, so they also had
different systems for numbering the years. In most instances,
the years were numbered according to the reign of the local
ruler. Of course, this practice survives with the use
of "Regnal Years" in Acts of Parliament and some other official
documents.
Rome's system of numbering years began from the year in which
the Eternal City was supposedly founded. After some debate
and disputation, the year eventually chosen for this purpose
was the year which corresponds with that now known as 753 BC,
so that the thousandth anniversary of the city was celebrated
in 247 AD.
However, in 525 AD, a Scythian monk, Dionysis Exiguus, or
Dennis the Little, was commissioned by Pope John I to formulate
an algorithm to ascertain the date of Easter in any year.
Diminutive Dennis saw that his task would be made very
much easier if years were counted consecutively from a common
starting-point, and for this purpose he chose the year now known
as 1 AD. It is far from certain that he intended this
year to represent the historical date of Christ's birth; it
is more likely that he simply chose a year which happened to
fit comfortably with his proposed algorithm, and which coincided
approximately with the beginning of the Christian era. It
seems that it was the English cleric and historical scholar,
the Venerable Bede, who began to use the abbreviation AD (Anno
Domini, or "Year of our Lord") when applying the system devised
by Dennis, thereby popularising the assumption that the year
1 AD was the year in which the historical personage of Jesus
Christ was born. In fact, modern historians (both secular
and theological) now accept that the Child of Nazareth was probably
born between the years 6 BC and 4 BC.
The Bissextile
It will be recalled that the pre-Julian Calendar of Ancient
Rome included an intercalary month of 22 days, inserted every
second year between the 22nd and 23rd days of February. Under
the Julian Calendar, a single intercalary day was to be inserted
every fourth year. But, as a throw-back to the pre-Julian
practice, this insertion continued to be made between the 22nd
and 23rd days of February.
Strictly, though, the intercalated day was not regarded as
a separate day at all: under Roman law, it and the preceding
day, the sextilis or sixth day before the Calends of March,
were counted as one. Thus, once in every four years, the
sextilis occupied 48 hours. Because this nominal day comprised
two natural days, it was known as the bissextilis.
Over the space of 16 centuries following the adoption of
the Julian Calendar, the Roman system of numbering days -
working backwards from the Calends, the Nones and the Ides -
seems to have been gradually supplanted by the modern system
of numbering days consecutively from the first day of the month.
With the disappearance of the Romans' peculiar system
for numbering days, the concept of the bissextile being a single
day also faded from consciousness. But not completely.
By a Statute of Henry III, entitled de Anno et die Bissextili,
it was provided that, in a leap year, the bissextile day "and
the Day next going before, shall be accounted for one Day".
The rational compulsion behind this legislative fiction
has been lost in the mists of time. Indeed, it is not
even certain when it was enacted: some references assign to
it the regnal year 21 Henry III (that is, 1236), whilst others
assign to it the regnal year 40 Henry III (that is, 1256).[9]
In the time of Lord Coke, at least, the fiction of treating
the bissextile and the preceding day as a single day was alive
and well.[10] In England, the Act of Henry III was not repealed
until 1879.[11] In some Australian States, it has also been
expressly repealed: for example, in New South Wales in 1969.[12]
Where it has not been expressly repealed, the suggestion
is that it has no continuing application, perhaps because it
was impliedly repealed by the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar
in 1751.
The point arose before Burchett J. in Re Clubb; ex parte
Clubb v. Westpac Banking Corporation[13], in which the respondent
bank sought to rely on the statute of Henry III to justify its
method of charging interest on customers' accounts. The
evidence showed that the bank had divided its annual interest
rate by 365, and added this amount of interest to the customer's
account for each day, producing the result that, in a leap year,
the customer was charged an extra day's interest over the agreed
annual rate. Not surprisingly, Burchett J. held that this
was impermissible, observing[14]:
"There is
nothing nominal about 29 February; it takes its place in the
succession of days of the week as a Sunday or other designated
day - there are not two Sundays (allowing the added day to be
nominal) because one is an intercalary day. It is the
year which is conventional, its length being adjusted artificially
to correct an error of approximation in the calendar."
The Gregorian Calendar
Although the Julian Calendar was accurate to about 11 minutes
per year, this discrepancy compounded over the centuries, with
the calendar falling out of kilter with the cycle of the seasons
at the rate of about 3 days every four centuries. At the
time of Julius Caesar, the (Northern) Spring Equinox fell on
25 March; by the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, it
fell on 21 March; and by 1582 it fell on 11 March. Pope
Gregory XIII proposed that the calendar be re-calculated, to
bring it into closer conformity with the solar year. Once
again, although the new calendar bears the name of the Pope
under whose patronage it was adopted, the real credit belongs
to the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius.
The Julian Calendar, as devised by Sosigenes, was based on
a year of 365 days and 6 hours. It is likely that Sosigenes
was aware that this exceeded the actual solar year, but took
the pragmatic attitude that the minor discrepancy would not
be manifested for many centuries to come. If this seems
a little irresponsible on the part of Sosigenes, it shows a
great deal more foresight than was exercised by computer manufacturers
in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, who built computers which
were incapable of ascertaining the correct date after 1 January
2000. At least the calendar devised by Sosigenes proved
reasonably effective for more than one and a half millennia.
In devising the Gregorian Calendar, Clavius replaced the
Julian year of 365 days and 6 hours with a Gregorian year of
365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds. This reduced
the difference between the calendar year and the solar year
from about 11 minutes to about 26 seconds, and thereby brought
the calendar to a degree of synchronisation with the Earth's
orbit of the Sun which, for all practical purposes, is very
nearly perfect. Whereas the Julian Calendar fell behind
the solar cycle by 1 day in every 135 years, the Gregorian Calendar
will lose one day in about every 3300 years.
All of this was achieved by the simple expedient of deleting
three leap years every four centuries, so that the years 1500,
1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 were not leap years, whilst the years
1600 and 2000 remained leap years.
At the same time, the Gregorian reforms addressed two other
calendrical anomalies. The first was to delete 10 days
(4th to 15th October, 1582) so as to restore the (Northern)
Spring Equinox to 21 March, the date on which it fell at the
time of the Council of Nicaea. The second was to adopt
1 January as the beginning of the year.
Under the Pope's authority, these reforms were rapidly adopted
throughout Catholic Europe. But, in light of the Protestant
Reformation, non-Catholic countries were not so willing to accede
to papal authority on such a fundamental issue as the calendar.
Gregory XIII had not endeared himself to Protestants,
through his promotion of the Counter-Reformation, including
the ruthless campaign of Philip II against the Protestants in
the Spanish Netherlands, and his celebration of the St Bartholomew's
Day massacre of French Huguenots in 1572. It was widely
contended, in non-Catholic Europe, that the Pope's calendrical
reforms were an attempt by Gregory XIII - "with the mind of
a serpent and the cunning of a wolf" - to reimpose papal authority
throughout Christendom.
Even in Catholic Europe, the Gregorian reforms were not received
with universal equanimity. In France, where the year had
traditionally commenced on 1st April, many people stubbornly
continued the custom of exchanging gifts on this date. Those
who did so became the target of jokes and tricks, and came to
be known as "April Fools".[15]
Although all of Catholic Europe had adopted the Gregorian
Calendar by 1587, non-Catholic Europe was very slow to follow.
The first countries to "break ranks" were Denmark, the
Protestant Netherlands, and the Protestant German States, in
1699 to 1700. The United Kingdom, as we will see, followed
suit in 1752; Sweden in 1753; Switzerland in 1812; Japan in
1873; Egypt in 1875; most of Eastern Europe between 1912 and
1917; Russia, following the Soviet Revolution, in 1918; and
Greece - the last European country to maintain the Julian Calendar
- in 1923.
The Gregorian Reforms in England[16]
Holdsworth[17] records
that, in 1583 - the year after the Gregorian Calendar was adopted
in Catholic Europe - a proclamation[18]
was drafted to reform the English calendar, but was never issued.
Subsequent attempts to adopt the Gregorian reforms in England,
under Queen Elizabeth I, foundered due to opposition on all
sides. On the one hand, Anglican bishops were opposed
to any reform, which they regarded as smacking of Papism. On
the other hand, there were those who contended for a reform
similar to the Gregorian Calendar, but argued that Clavius had
miscalculated, and suggested an 11-day correction rather than
the Gregorian 10-day correction. This proposal was supported
by the Queen's most powerful ministers, Burghley and Walsingham,
but the principal proponent was Dr. John Dee - a shadowy figure,
who combined the role of court astronomer with those of a mystic,
spiritualist and astrologer, and who is said to have been the
inspiration for Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest[19]. A
committee of mathematicians was commissioned to investigate
the matter and make recommendations. This committee, whilst
agreeing with Dee's calculations, proposed that it would be
more convenient for England to have the same calendar as Catholic
Europe. Of course, this solution did not satisfy anyone.
There the matter rested, with English calendars remaining
10 days apart from those of Continental Europe, until 1700.
In that year, the discrepancy increased to 11 days, since
1700 was a leap year under the Julian Calendar, but not under
the Gregorian Calendar.
During the first half of the Eighteenth Century, the United
Kingdom - particularly England - was one of the greatest trading
nations on Earth. Business-people who complain about the
inconvenience caused by daylight saving, especially when neighbouring
jurisdictions disagree on when to adjust their clocks or whether
to do so at all, will readily understand the commercial inconvenience
of the United Kingdom's having a calendar which was 11 days
behind the calendars of its major trading partners. Many
commercial documents of this era - business letters, bills of
lading, promissory notes, and the like - show that English merchants
and traders often used both the Julian and Gregorian dates when
dealing with business-houses in Continental Europe.
However, the impetus to reform the calendar was not merely
commercial. For a variety of practical reasons, time-keeping
became something of a national obsession. The first scheduled
stage-coaches to traverse England operated to a strict timetable
- for example, leaving Bristol at 4 pm, and driving through
the night at a standard speed of 10 miles per hour, to arrive
in London at 8 am the following morning. Clocks and watches,
which had hitherto been prohibitively expensive and hopelessly
inaccurate, were increasingly reliable, and became common possessions
amongst the industrial middle classes. In 1714, Parliament
passed an Act "for Providing a Publick Reward for such Person
or Persons as shall Discover the Longitude at Sea", with a prize
in the enormous sum of £20,000, and a Board of Longitude
to determine the winner. The solution was found in the
construction of the first reliable marine chronometer, by John
Harrison of Yorkshire[20]. Over coming decades, Greenwich
would rival Paris - and would eventually defeat Paris - to be
recognised as the site of the world's Prime Meridium. In
an age of increasing scientific enlightenment, it must have
seemed perverse that the United Kingdom - which led the world
in the science and craftsmanship of time-keeping - should continue
to labour under a primitive calendar, for which there was no
scientific justification, its retention being merely a by-product
of sectarian prejudice, mistrust and ignorance.
Voltaire's chiding remark, that "The English mob preferred
their calendar to disagree with the Sun than to agree with the
Pope"[21], must have stung deeply.
When the push for reform came, things happened very quickly.
It began with an address to the Royal Society on 10 May
1750, by George Parker, the Second Earl of Macclesfield, an
amateur astronomer. Amongst the audience was a prominent
politician of the day, Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield,
by whom the campaign for reform was embraced with enthusiasm.
After meeting resistance, even from the leaders of his
own Party, Chesterfield enlisted the support of the popular
press, and pseudonymously contributed to the debate which he
had begun.
Thereby winning over the approval of his Party's leaders,
it fell to Chesterfield to introduce into the House of Lords
a Bill "for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for
Correcting the Calendar now in Use". That the Bill was
passed in record time, with unanimous support, is a testament
more to Chesterfield's own political wiles, than to the intelligence
of contemporary legislators. As Chesterfield wrote to
his son:[22]
"I consulted
the best lawyers and the most skilful astronomers, and we cooked
up a bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began:
I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed
of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both of which
I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary
to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the
matter; and also to make them believe that they knew something
of it themselves, which they do not. For my own part,
I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them,
as astronomy, and [they] could have understood me full as well:
so I resolved ... to please instead of informing them. I
gave them, therefore, only an historical account of calendars,
from the Egyptian down to the Gregorian, amusing them now and
them with little episodes ... . They thought I was informed,
because I pleased them; and many of them said, that I had made
the whole very clear to them; when, God knows, I had not even
attempted it."
The Act of 1751
A reproduction of the Act of 1751, omitting the schedules
and tables which were annexed to it, accompanies this
paper. Because the Act was drafted in the style of the
time, without section numbers and other divisions, I have caused
this copy to be prepared in a form intended to make it intelligible
to the modern reader, whilst still preserving the essential
features of the historical document.
As will be observed, the Act is a remarkable artifact of
its era. Stylistically, it is very much a period piece,
characterised by lengthy and argumentative recitals, archaic
language, and oppressive prolixity. Yet, as contrasted
with modern enactments, it is a remarkably concise document
to achieve such a fundamental change as the omission of 11 days
from the calendar, and the implications of this for every aspect
of the nation's commercial and legal affairs. And it contains
some distinctly modern features, such as definitions, provisos
and saving provisions. To identify the principal features
of the Act, I will refer to the paragraph numbers which I have
inserted in the version accompanying this paper.
Sections [1.1] to [1.5] abolish the "Year of Grace", providing
that the year 1752, and all subsequent years, are to commence
on 1 January.
Sections [1.6] to [1.8] provide for the suppression of 11
days between 2nd and 14th September, 1752.
Section [1.9] provides (subject to certain exceptions) that,
from 2 September 1752, the "new Method of Supputation" is to
be adopted for all purposes, "whether Ecclesiastical or Civil,
Publick or Private", including all courts apart from those held
with fairs or markets, and all "Meetings and Assemblies of any
Bodies Politick or Corporate".
Section [2.1] provides for the omission of three leap days
in every four centuries, whilst section [2.2] confirms that
years divisible by 400 continue to be leap years. (It
may confidently be assumed that section [2.2] was the first
enactment ever to make specific reference to the year 2000,
as well as the years 2400 and 2800.)
Sections [3.1] to [3.3] are concerned with fixing the date
for Easter, and effectively adopt the Catholic methodology for
doing so. These sections provide that the "Table prefixed
to the Book of Common Prayer", and the "Column of Golden Numbers",
are to be "left out in all future editions of the said Book
of Common Prayer", and that the "new Calendar, Tables and Rules,
hereunto annexed, shall be prefixed to all such future Editions
of the said Book, in the Room and stead thereof".
Sections [3.4] to [3.6] deal with "Feast-days Holy-days and
Fast-days, which are now kept and observed by the Church of
England, and ... the several solemn days of Thanksgiving, and
of Fasting and Humiliation". In essence, fixed feasts
- those which traditionally fall on a particular calendar date,
such as Christmas Day - are to be observed "On the same respective
nominal Days on which the same are now kept and observed; but
which according to the Alteration by this Act intended to be
made ... will happen eleven Days sooner than the same now do".
But the dates for movable feasts are to be reckoned in
accordance with the new methodology for fixing the date of Easter.
Specifically, by clause [3.36], this is to include the
Easter and Trinity Court Terms, and all other courts, meetings,
assemblies, markets and fairs "which by any Law, Statute, Charter,
Custom or Usage are appointed, used or accustomed to be holden
and kept at any movable Time or Times depending upon the Time
of Easter".
The remainder of the Act, sections [4] to [6], consists of
provisos, or what we would call "saving provisions", to preserve
matters which are to continue to be reckoned "according to the
same natural Days, in case this Act had not been made; that
is to say, eleven Days later than the same would have happened,
according to the nominal Days of the ... new Supputation of
Time".
Section [4.1] comprises a miscellany of saving provisions.
It covers the Court of Sessions, and the Terms of the
Court of Exchequer in Scotland; the "April Meeting of the Governor,
Bailiffs and Commonalty of the company of Conservators of the
great Level of the Fens", and all markets and fairs which are
fixed to a nominal day of the month, or depending upon the beginning
or any certain day of a month - as opposed to markets and fairs
for which the date is fixed by reference to a movable feast.
This was perhaps the most ill-conceived aspect of the
Act. If a particular market had traditionally been held
on (say) the 10th of June, the nominal date of the market would
become the 21st of June. But if the traditional date for
a market was, say, the third Saturday in June, it became necessary
to calculate which Saturday would have been the third Saturday
in June under the old calendar.
Section [5] is concerned with those "divers Customs, Prescriptions
and Usages, in certain Places within this Kingdom, [according
to which] certain Lands and Grounds are, on particular nominal
Days and Times in the Year, to be open for Common of Pasture,
and other Purposes", and "other Times, [when] the Owners and
Occupiers of such Lands and Grounds have a Right to inclose
or shut up the same, for their own private Use". Under
the Act, those rights and obligations are to be exercised "upon
the same natural Days and Times on which the same should have
been ... in case this Act had not been made; that is to say,
eleven Days later than the same would have happened, according
to the ... new Account and Supputation of Time".
Finally, sections [6.1] to [6.4] attempt to address a variety
of anomalies which might otherwise have arisen from the suppression
of eleven days in September 1752. It is provided that
"nothing in this present Act contained shall extend, or be construed
to extend, to accelerate or anticipate" the time for payment
of any rental, annuity, or other sum of money, or increase the
interest on any loan, or bring forward "the Time of the Delivery
of any Goods, Chattles, Wares, Merchandize or other Things whatsoever",
or affect the "Time of the Commencement, Expiration of Determination
of any Lease or Demise of any Lands, Tenements or Heriditaments,
or of any other Contract or Agreement whatsoever", or of "any
Grant for any Term of Years, of what Nature or Kind soever".
The section also deals with "the Time of the attaining
the Age of one and twenty Years, or any other Age requisite
by any Law, Custom or Usage, Deed, Will or Writing whatsoever,
for the Doing any Act, or for any other Purpose whatsoever,
by any Person or Persons now born, or who shall be born before
the said fourteenth Day of September"; and also "the Time of
the Expiration or Determination of any Apprenticeship or other
Service, by virtue of any Indenture, or of any Articles under
Seal, or by reason of any simple Contract or Hiring whatsoever".
In all of these instances, time is to be computed according
to "the same respective natural Days and Times, as the same
should and ought to have been ... , or would have happened,
in case this Act had not been made, ... any Thing herein before
contained to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding".
Implementation of the Act
One can only imagine the confusion and anxiety which occurred
when the citizens of the United Kingdom went to bed on the evening
of 2 September 1752, and awoke the next morning to find that
the date was 14 September. There were riots in London
and elsewhere. Business-people were naturally perturbed
by the complexity of having to re-calculate interest, and the
dates for the repayment of loans, the expiration of leases,
and such-like; though one might hazard a guess that the commercial
inconvenience was nothing compared with that of implementing
a "New Tax System".
Perhaps the most strident opponents of the reform were those
who felt it was a sacrilege to change the dates of religious
feasts and celebrations. One correspondent wrote to a
popular journal regarding the Glastonbury Thorn, which was reputed
to blossom every year exactly on Christmas Day, that it had
"contemptuously ignored the new style" and "burst into blossom
on the 5th January, thus indicating that Old Christmas Day should
alone be observed, in spite of an irreligious legislature".
Yet the reforms found an unlikely ally in the Church of
England, which was principally responsible for the fact that
they had not been adopted 170 years sooner. The English
Church discovered that, well before Gregory XIII and Christopher
Clavius, an Englishman - Roger Bacon - was amongst the first
to propose such a reform. The Church's motto became "The
New Style the True Style".
The Act had anticipated, and provided for, most of the consequences
of the calendrical reform. But a few anomalies were not
anticipated.
It is said that bankers in the City of London, in protest
at the inconvenience caused to their industry, refused to pay
their taxes on time. They had a persuasive argument that,
since the Act provided for interest to be calculated and loans
to be repaid according to the number of "natural days" rather
than the "nominal days" of the new calendar, the banking industry
should have a similar indulgence in meeting its obligations
to the exchequer. Taxes which would ordinarily have been
paid on 25 March - the first day of the "Year of Grace" under
the old calendar - were not paid until eleven days later, on
5 April. This quite possibly explains why, to this day,
5 April remains the first day of the English fiscal year.[23]
In Eighteenth Century England, it was common for the dates
in leases - particularly agricultural leases - to be fixed by
reference to the standard "quarter days", being Lady Day (25
March), Midsummer Day (24 June), Michaelmas Day (29 September)
and Christmas Day (25 December)[24]. Less commonly, reference
was made to "half-quarter days", namely Candlemas (2 February),
9 May, 11 August and Martinmas (11 November)[25], though in some
instances Whitsuntide is taken as "the first of the four cross-quarter
days of the year"[26]. Whitsunday, or the Feast of Pentecost,
was traditionally celebrated in England on the fiftieth day
after Easter, and was therefore a movable feast for the purposes
of the Act[27]. In Scotland, where the usual "quarter-days"
were Candlemas (2 February), Whitsunday, Lamass (1 August) and
Martinmas (11 November), this problem was addressed by adopting
a nominal "Whitsun Day" for secular purposes, falling on 15
May in each year, which was dissociated from the church feast[28].
For all other purposes, where the parties' rights were fixed
by reference to a religious feast, the courts consistently insisted
that the date of the feast should be ascertained in accordance
with the new calendar. Examples include St Thomas' Day[29],
Martinmas[30] and Michaelmas[31]. Yet, at least in the case of
parol agreements, extrinsic evidence was admissible to show
that, according to the custom of the locality, a reference to
a particular feast day was intended to mean the day
on which the feast was celebrated prior to the Act, rather than
the nominal date on which the feast was celebrated after the
commencement of the Act[32]. In Doe d. Hall v. Benson, Abbott
C.J. said[33]:
"The real
question in this case is, what the parties meant when they used
the expression, Lady-Day, in their original agreement; and whether
we are at liberty to ascertain that by extrinsic evidence. In
Doe d. Spicer v. Lea, the letting was by deed, and the rule
of law is, that evidence is not admissible to explain a deed.
Now reading the deed in that case, as lawyers, the Court
could not but consider Lady-Day there as meaning new Lady-Day.
But in the Nisi Prius case of Furley, d. Mayor of Canterbury
v. Wood, ... where the letting was by parol, evidence of the
custom of the country was admitted by Lord Kenyon. I think
that was a correct decision; and I am therefore of opinion that,
in this case also, the evidence of the custom of the country
was properly admitted, and the verdict was right."
The Present Situation
The fact that England's calendrical reform occurred in the
middle of the Eighteenth Century - before the American War of
Independence - and the fact that the Act was expressed to apply
"throughout all his Majesty's Dominions and Countries in Europe,
Asia, Africa and America, belonging or subject to the Crown
of Great Britain", meant, in practical terms, that all of the
English-speaking peoples of the world underwent the same reform
at the same time. In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin wrote[34]:
"Be not astonished,
nor look with scorn, dear reader, at such a deduction of days,
nor regret as for the loss of so much time, but take this for
your consolation, that your expenses will appear lighter and
your mind be more at ease. And what an indulgence is here,
for those who love their pillow to lie down in peace on the
second of this month and not perhaps awake till the morning
of the 14th."
In the case of Britain's American colonies, the reform brought
their calendars in line with those of other European colonies
in the Americas, upon whom the Gregorian Calendar had previously
been imposed by their Spanish, French and Portuguese masters.
No such problem occurred in Australia. Whilst the indigenous
inhabitants of this country had a very acute understanding of
the cycle of the seasons, they had no formal calendar. With
British colonisation came the Gregorian Calendar, the first
and only calendar ever used in this land.
It is unlikely that any further calendrical reforms will
be required or attempted. The last concerted effort to
alter the Gregorian Calendar occurred in France, following the
Revolution in 1792. Consistently with that country's mania
for decimalisation, the French Revolutionary Calendar comprised
weeks of 10 days, each day comprising 10 hours, each hour comprising
100 minutes, and each minute comprising 100 seconds. Three
of these 10-day weeks comprised a month, and there were twelve
30-day months in the year. The remaining five or
six days were reserved for holidays. The new days and
months were given new names. But almost nobody bothered
to use the new system, and Napoleon dismantled it in 1806.
In 1928, the United Kingdom Parliament passed the Easter
Act, by which Easter Day was to be fixed as the first Sunday
after the second Saturday in April: however, that Act
is to commence on a day to be fixed by Order in Council, and
no such Order in Council has ever been made.
One of the last remaining calendrical peculiarities of the
English legal system has gradually been erased from most common
law jurisdictions over the course of the last century, namely
the concept of a so-called "lunar month", as opposed to a "calendar
month".
The use of the expression "lunar month" to describe an arbitrary
period of 28 days is entirely misleading, given that the actual
lunar cycle is about 29½ days. Blackstone[35] suggests
that the adoption of a conventional 28-day month for legal purposes
can be justified for two reasons: first, that references to
a period of one month will always denote the same number of
days; and secondly, that the number of days thus denoted comprises
precisely four weeks. Yet, as long ago as 1795, Lord Kenyan
C.J. confessed a "wish that, when the rule was first established,
it had been decided that 'months' should be understood to mean
calendar and not lunar months"[36].
Any supposed convenience arising from the adoption of a so-called
"lunar month" for legal purposes is far out-weighed by the consideration
that it simply does not accord - and has never accorded - with
the popular view of what a "month" is. The so-called "lunar
month" is shorter than every month of the calendar, with the
exception of February in common years. There are not 12,
but 13 so-called "lunar months" in a calendar year, leaving
a remainder of one day in common years and two days in leap
years. Most people would be extremely surprised to learn
that an agreement entered into for 12 months, commencing on
1 January, should expire on 2 December, or 1 December if it
is a leap year.
Yet, well within living memory, this was the law. In
a 1971 [37] case, Dr. B.H. McPherson (as he then was) succeeded in
convincing Matthews J. that, where a contract provided for the
purchaser to obtain subdivisional approval from a shire council
"within four months from the date hereof", it should be construed
as referring to four "lunar months" of 28 days each, rather
than four "calendar months". However, less than a
year later, even
the same learned counsel's ingenuity failed in a similar argument
before the Full Court[38]. As
the contract in that case contained another clause referring
specifically to a period of 28 days, the Court was able to conclude
that the expression "month" must have been intended to have
its popular meaning, saying that[39]:
" ... having
regard to modern usage, the term 'month' may readily be construed
as calendar month, if there is even a slight indication in the
context to that effect."
Shortly afterwards, the Property Law Act 1974 (Queensland)
was enacted, which included in s.48(1)(a) the provision that,
"In all deeds, contracts, wills, orders and other instruments
executed, made or coming into operation after the commencement
of this Act, unless the context otherwise requires ... 'month'
means calendar month".
For most practical purposes, the law has also dispensed with
the proposition that it takes no cognisance of fractions of
a day - and the concomitant of that proposition, that a legislative
or judicial act takes effect from the first moment of the relevant
day. Where there is an issue as to "a sequence of events
happening on the same day"[40] the law does take cognisance of fractions
of a day - for example, to determine priority, or where a contractual
stipulation requires that something happen by a particular hour
on a particular day. Even the retroactive operation of
legislative and judicial acts, to the first moment of the day
of enactment or pronouncement, has yielded to the common sense
proposition that "this ancient rule should be given its quietus
insofar as it operates to require the court to assume something
that it knows to be untrue"[41].
It is likely, therefore, that a person could be successfully
prosecuted for bigamy, having gone through a marriage ceremony
in the morning, before a judicial dissolution of a prior marriage
is pronounced on the afternoon of the same day. On the other
hand, were the Battle of Bosworth Field to occur today, it is
unlikely that the supporters of Richard III would face the same
consequences as they did in 1485: it is said that they were
executed for treason on the pretext that Henry VII, having won
the battle, thereupon became king with effect from the first
moment of that day.
One of the few remaining practical implications of the principle
that the law takes no cognisance of fractions of a day is the
rule - which the High Court of Australia reaffirmed as recently
as 1961 [42] - that a person is taken to achieve a particular age
from the first moment of the day preceding the person's birthday.
Yet even this rule has been called into question by Sir
Gerard Brennan. On the day preceding his Honour's retirement
from the High Court, a prominent member of the Sydney Bar made
the suggestion - no doubt in a jocular way - that the effect
of the decision in Prowse v. McIntyre casts "some doubt about
the validity of the farewell tomorrow". Sir Gerard replied
in these terms[43]:
"If I might
say so, Mr. Bennett, although I am conscious of the reported
case to which you refer, the practice of this Court - and of
course the practice of the Court is the law of the Court - quite
clearly establishes that the 70th year is attained on the last
moment of the eve of one's birthday. Tomorrow's ceremony,
therefore, I judicially declare, if it be the last function
that I perform, will be a valid ceremony."
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