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Papish meant we stuck to our guns for another 200
years before finally adopting the Pope’s calendar.
The idea that the English reacted to the change
when it came with riots demanding that the powers
that be
give us back our 11 days
is, sadly, disputed by
modern historians. The misunderstanding was
possibly based on too literal an interpretation of the
satirical painting
An Election Entertainment
by
William Hogarth. In the detail of the painting above
the slogan is chalked onto the blackboard under the
man’s foot at the bottom right. In the old Julian
Calendar the calendar year and thus the tax year
began on 25 March. With the introduction of the
Gregorian Calendar this moved forward 11 days to
April 6th and there it remains.
The Eight Day Week
The word calendar comes from the Roman name
for the first day of the month –
Kalends
although
the Romans themselves called their calendars
fasti.
The Roman calendar changed its form several times
between the founding and the fall but we know a lot
about Roman timekeeping and especially calendars
because they were rather fond of carving or painting
calendars onto the sides of public buildings and
temples. They probably did this because they used
a really confusing system and if it wasn’t chalked up
on the walls no one would have had any idea what
was going on. The letters were painted in red on a
white background. Read from the top down twelve
vertical month columns were subdivided into two:
the eight letters A to H repeated until the bottom kept
track of Roman market days which came every eighth
day, the next column listed legal classifications of
Red Letter Days
The word Lammas comes from the later Anglo-Saxon
words hlaef-mass, meaning loaf-mass, when grain
from the first harvest was baked in to bread. For
centuries Lammas was a rent day when, until the 19
th
century Enclosure Acts, land tenure and pasture rights
were settled and grazing lands given over to common
use until Candlemas. Lammas went on to become one
of the days on which criminal and civil courts were
convened, contracts were signed and, guess what,
marriages were made. Lammas and the other old
quarter and cross-quarter days were often printed in
red on calendars, hence the expression
red-letter day
to denote an important event or special occasion.
If you think these ancient solar dates have no biding
on modern life think again! In these recessionary
times large retail chains go bust when rents fall due
on quarter days (look out for poor old WH Smith).
The Pope’s Elevenses
In 1752 the British people went to bed on the evening
of 2 September and woke up on the morning of
14 September. Eleven days had been skipped by
Act of Parliament (The Calendar Act) to enable the
government to align Britain and its Empire with the
rest of Western Europe. The Roman calculation of the
solar year was out by 11 minutes, which meant that
over the centuries the calendar had fallen out of sync
with the seasons. With each passing year Easter,
traditionally observed on March 21, had fallen further
away from the Spring Equinox. To rectify this the
Gregorian Calendar had replaced the Roman Julian
Calendar in 1582 on the orders of Pope Gregory but
not here where stubborn resistance to all things