In this issue,
R K Vyst
goes dating
as she answers questions asked in Scottish archives about
the calendar and related problems

Question 1. Why do some historical documents have two dates on them?

Answer: usually because the document is being sent from one country to another during the period when some countries had adopted the Gregorian Calendar, but others still used the Julian Calendar. Classical astronomers reckoned that the solar year (i.e. the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun) was 365¼ days. The Julian calendar (introduced in 45 BC) was based on this calculation, and had a standard year of 365 days, with every fourth year (a 'leap year') having an extra day to take account of the ¼ day. The Julian calendar was used throughout Europe until 1582, and in some countries for several years or even centuries further. This method of fixing the date is known as 'Old Style'. In medieval Europe, including Scotland, the beginning of the year was usually 25 March (the feast of the Annunciation), so that the day after 24 March 1490 was 25 March 1491. Medieval scholars discovered that the year of 365¼ days was a slight over-estimate, and by the sixteenth century a discrepancy of about 10 days had accumulated between the calendar year and the solar year. Pope Gregory XIII corrected the error by cutting 10 days from the calendar in 1582 (so that 15 October 1582 followed 4 October 1582), and reformed the calendar to make the last year of every fourth century an additional leap year. The calendar became known as the 'Gregorian Calendar', and dates calculated by the Gregorian Calendar are described as New Style. In addition he decreed that the year should begin on 1 January. However, Pope Gregory's reformation of the calendar was not accepted by most protestant states until the eighteenth century (and the twentieth century in Russia, the Balkans and Greece). Scotland adopted the change to the start of the year in 1599 (31 December 1599 was followed by 1 January 1600). In the rest of the British Isles the change did not take place until 1 January 1752, under Chesterfield's Act (24 Geo. II, c.23), which also removed the days (twelve by this time) required to bring the British Isles into New Style (2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752). Some correspondents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would mark two dates on a letter, e.g. '11/21 March 1651', to take account of the different calendars operating in different parts of Europe.

The calendar in use in Scotland can be summarised as follows:

• 45BC – October 1599AD - Julian Calendar.
  Beginning of year was usually 25 March
  (From October 1582AD some parts of Europe, but not Scotland, used the Gregorian calendar and 1 January as beginning of year).
• 1600AD – September 1751AD - Julian Calendar.
  Beginning of the year was 1 January
  (25 March was still the beginning of the year in England and some other parts of Europe).
• September 1752AD – present - Gregorian calendar.
  Beginning of the year is 1 January for all the British Isles.

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Question 2. I'm writing a book about our town's local holiday, which commemorates its liberation from royalist forces by Oliver Cromwell's army on 16 September 1650. To find out what day of the week it occurred on, I had the bright idea of checking the calendar on my computer's e-mail package (Macrosaft Spamsaver 3.6). This says 16 September was a Friday. Is this correct?

Answer: not in Scotland it wasn't. Scotland had not adopted the Gregorian calendar yet, and 16 September 1650 Old Style was a Monday. Your computer's e-mail package, like many similar ones, simply calculates New Style dates back to 1582 or some other arbitrary starting date.

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Question 3.What were the Scottish 'Term Days'?

Answer: term days, or quarter days, were the four days dividing the legal year, when rent and interest on loans were due, when ministers' stipends were due and servants hired and paid, and when contracts and leases often began or ended. In Scotland the term days were Candlemas, Whitsun, Lammas, and Martinmas. Candlemas, on 2 February, was the originally the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, in pre-Reformation times celebrated by candlelit processions. Whitsun was originally the feast of Pentecost, around which a great many christenings seemed to occur and therefore became associated with the colour white. In Scotland the legal term day of Whitsun was fixed on 26 May Old Style and then 15 May New Style, irrespective of the day of the week that date fell on, whereas in England the quarter day was the movable feast of Whitsunday. Lammas was traditionally a harvest festival on 1 August, at which the first fruits of the harvest were offered, the name coming from the Anglo-Saxon for 'loaf-mass' or 'bread-feast'. Martinmas, on 11 November, was originally the feast of Saint Martin of Tours a fourth-century bishop and hermit). In 1886 the term dates for removals and the hiring of servants in towns were changed to 28 May and 28 November. For a discussion of the use of saints' days and festivals to date medieval documents see C. R. Cheney (ed.) Handbook of Dates for Students of English History (London, 1978).

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Question 4. In archive catalogues and older historical publications I've seen the abbreviations ‘c.’, ‘ca’, ‘x’ and ‘fl.’, used in dates, for example Trumpton Burgh Charter 1195 x 1198, the feuing of Camberwick Green ca 1571, and Guilielmus de Chigley (fl. 1348). What do these mean?

Answer: the 'x' between two dates, means that the event (in this case the erection of Trumpton burgh) happened at some point between those dates, but historians have not been able to ascertain the precise date. The abbreviation 'c.' or 'ca' stands for the Latin word circa, meaning 'about' or 'around the time of', in this case meaning Camberwick Green was feued some time around 1571. The 'fl.' stands for the Latin word floruit, meaning 'flourished', which is a way of saying the person concerned was alive at that time but that no birth and death dates are known. So, in this case, William of Chigley was in his prime in 1348.

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R K Vyst is grateful to Alan Borthwick, David McClure and the Scottish Archive Network.