What do I do with a date of 29 Feb 1639 OS? This would be in 1640 by the Gregorian calendar we use now, so allowable: the year divides evenly by 4. But if we use the same rule for an OS date, it would have to be interpreted as a clerk's error, probably for 1 March. What was the rule for the Julian calendar? Or did they just not have leap years? Regards, John Moore

Dear John I have been looking my copy of "Handbook of Dates for students of English history" by C.R. Cheney and this question, as you suspect, is by no means straightforward. It needs a bit of reading up on my part for me to totally understand it. However, it does appear that, in the Julian calendar, there were leap years every four years and there was a February 29th. Cheney does suggest, however, that the difference in the calendar in relation to the solar year, demanded that they should make adjustments but these didn't necessarily include February 29th. He talks about repeating the calends of March which fell on 24th February, i.e. having two days with the same date. Evidently the Emperor Augustus did a lot of sorting out of dates (probably not personally though). I may be reading this incorrectly so it is probably best if you can acquire a copy and read it for yourself. I expect you would be able to get one from inter-library loan. Cheney has written a lot about it and there are all sorts of tables there too. If you haven't already seen it, this is a fascinating book and I tend only to dip into it for my own purposes. I have tried to read it straight through but it is jam-packed with interesting and detailed information. Your question has now stimulated to make another attempt to read the book through. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "John and Margaret Moore" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 4:04 AM Subject: [OEL] Feb 29 > What do I do with a date of 29 Feb 1639 OS? > > This would be in 1640 by the Gregorian calendar we use now, so > allowable: the year divides evenly by 4. But if we use the same rule > for an OS date, it would have to be interpreted as a clerk's error, > probably for 1 March. > > What was the rule for the Julian calendar? Or did they just not have > leap years? > > Regards, > John Moore > > > ==================================== > WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

<<What do I do with a date of 29 Feb 1639 OS? This would be in 1640 by the Gregorian calendar we use now, so allowable: the year divides evenly by 4. But if we use the same rule for an OS date, it would have to be interpreted as a clerk's error, probably for 1 March. What was the rule for the Julian calendar? Or did they just not have leap years?>> The Julian calendar did have leap years (they were its main innovation) and the Romans added the extra day by having two 24 Februaries. However England spent most of the middle ages and early modern period being thoroughly confused as to how to handle the extra day, and no one systemn was used consistently or universally. Under the Roman system from AD 4 onwards leap years were those divisble by four, but England was throughly confused and from the 13th century the general practice was for leap years to be the years preceding the ones which were divisible by four (1751 OS was therefore a leap year, which of course became 1752 NS, thus setting us back on course). For an exhaustive and detailed discussion of this, see AF Pollard's article entitled "New Year's Day and Leap Year in English History" in the English Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 218. (Apr., 1940), pp. 177-193. Anyone who has access to JSTOR can read it at http://www.jstor.org/view/00138266/ap020218/02a00010/0 Matt Tompkins