The problem with the calendar……
The calendar that we used in England in 1642 was the Julian Calendar. This was adopted by Julius Caesar in 36 BC – not that he knew it as that year of course. In Roman account the year was 703 AUC (Ab urbe condita).
The previous Roman calendar was based on the moon and nominally only had 355 days, but was irregularly corrected by the Senate to bring it into line with the sun by inserting a complete extra month after February. The Julian calendar was an improvement and allowed 365 day per year with every fourth year being a leap year. The important thing was that this kept the calendar fairly well in line with the declination of the sun. Almost.
The Christian world started using ‘AD’ in 525 AD and was invented by Dionysius Exiguus.
In 731 the Venerable Bede agreed with Dionysius that the year started on 25th March, the date of Christ’s incarnation.
And so the year number changed on Lady Day, (the first Quarter day), 25th March. March 25th 1642 was the day after March 24th 1641. Any disbelievers go and look at the parish registers!
Well before 1642 it was recognised that the year according to the sun was getting earlier.
In our time the shortest day of the year was occurring about the 10th December ie the sun’s maximum southerly declination. After1700 the shortest day was on the 9th December.
The new Gregorian calendar was similar to the Julian calendar but only allowed Century Years to be leap years if they could be divided by 400 and so reduced this growing error.
This change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar had already taken place in much of Catholic Europe in 1582 when the ten days between October 4th and 15th were removed. Thus in 1642 English dates were ten days behind Catholic European dates and by 1751 were eleven days behind because we had an extra day in 1700 (February 29th) that most of Europe didn’t have because 1700 isn’t divisible by 400. The difference can be seen in the ephemeris that lists the sun’s declination ‘in the English account’ and then a separate column for ‘the Foreign account’
In the British Isles this was changed to our modern system when 1751 was cut short by three months and ended on 31st December. Not only did 1752 then start on January 1st, but 11 days between the 2nd and 14th September were removed from the calendar, (i.e.: 3rd to 13th September missing).
In 1752 did Christmas Day or the other quarter days change? No. Was Guy Fawkes day (or more correctly ‘Powder Treason Day’) change? No. However, the one day that DID change was the day you paid your taxes and rents etc. No one was going to let the government get away with charging you a year’s tax for a short year- so the first tax that was payable on Lady Day was deferred to 5th April. The financial year still commences on 6th April.
Is this important for the Village? I would suggest it might only be a talking point if you were a merchant or a sailor and needed to reconcile different dates across Europe.