Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/481

 ii s. i. JUNE 11, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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have two Easter Days, whether a year of the Old Style or the New.

The terms Old Style and New Style refer to the Julian and Gregorian calendars respectively. Before we in England adopted the New Style, nearly all other countries had fixed on the 1st of January as the first day of the year, whatever their previous dates had been. Thus our change of the begin- ning of the civil year by Act of Parliament was a corollary only of the New Style. Pope Gregory XIII. began in 1582 the use of the calendar called after him, but we did not adopt it till 1752, being the last to do so of the European nations, except Russia, where the Old Style still obtains (Greece had at that time no separate existence).

It is true that, before enacting the New Style or Gregorian calendar* statute 24 Geo. II. c. 23 enacted the regulating of the com- mencement of the year ; but its main object was the correction of the calendar then (1751) in use, i.e., to accord with the Gregorian system. " Regulating the commencement of the year " was the minor object, viz., the substitution, for a year beginning in England on 25 March, of a year beginning on 1 January, a change of what one may call local custom. The Act recites that the legal supputation of the year of our Lord in England, according to which it began on 25 March, had been found by experience to be attended with divers inconveniences, as it differed not only from the usage of neighbouring nations, but also from the legal method of computation in Scotland, and from the common usage throughout the whole kingdom. This " common usage " was the historical year, which for a very long period had begun on 1 January.

The English civil, ecclesiastical, or legal year began on 25 March. But by sect. 1 of the Act above mentioned it was enacted that the supputation according to which the year of our Lord began on the twenty- fifth day of March should not be made use of from and after the last day of December, 1751 ; and that the first day of January next following the said last day of December should be reckoned, taken, deemed, and accounted to be the first day of the year of our Lord 1752. It was further enacted that each new year should accordingly begin to be reckoned from the first day of every such month of January next preceding the twenty-fifth day of March, on which such year would, according to the then present supputation, have begun.

Later comes the enactment for changing the 3rd of September, 1752, into the 14th, eleven days being thus omitted from that year. Further, for the continuing of the calendar in regular course it was enacted that the years 1800, 1900, 2100, &c., should not be esteemed leap years, but taken to be common years of 365 days. (The centurial years are only leap years when they are divisible by 400 without a remainder.)

There was also a provision that the feast of Easter, and all other movable feasts thereon depending, should be observed according to the new Calendar, Tables, and Rules annexed to the Act. The new rule as to Easter and other movable feasts was (and is) as follows :

" Easter Day, on which the rest depend, is always the first Sunay after the full Moon, which happens upon or next after the 2 1st Day of March ; and if the full Moon happens upon a, Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after."

So generally had the historical year been used before 1751, when the Act was passed, that a pamphlet published in 1735 contained the following :

" While we are maintaining this beginning of the year according to the rubric of the Common Prayer, we seem to forget that our year begins on the 1st of January, both in our common licensed almanacks, and even in the book of Common Prayer itself ; and it may amount to a question very difficult to be answered, why the rubric of the Common Prayer enjoins the year to begin on the 25th of March, and yet the calendar for the lessons, &c., begins on the 1st of January ? "

The title of this pamphlet was " The Regu- lation of Easter, or the Cause of the Errors and Differences contracted in the Calcula- tion of it discovered and duly considered, by Henry Wilson, Mathematician, at Tower Hill."

An example of the confusion produced by the practice of having two modes for com- puting dates is the date of the death of King Charles I. Some give the date as 30 Jan., 1648, while others give 1649. According to the civil, ecclesiastical, or legal year, 1648 is correct, and indeed that is the year inscribed on the scroll of lead which en- circles the coffin ; but 1649 is the historical date. Had King Charles been beheaded two months later, 1649 would have been the year according to both systems.

It may be worth noting that Canon Sheppard, Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal, in a lecture on ' The Execution and Burial of King Charles I.' at the Royal United Service Institution on 17 Feb., 1909, after citing 1648 as the date on the coffin, said :