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Concept
Calendar (New Style) Act 1750
Summary
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (24 Geo. 2. c. 23), also known as Chesterfield's Act or (in American usage) the British Calendar Act of 1751, is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its purpose was for Great Britain and the British Empire to adopt the Gregorian calendar (in effect). The Act also rectified other dating anomalies, such as changing the start of the legal year from 25 March to 1 January.
The Act elided eleven days from September 1752. It ordered that religious feast days be held on their traditional dates—for example, Christmas Day remained on 25 December. (Easter is a moveable feast: the Act specifies how its date should be calculated.) It ordered that civil and market days be moved forward in the calendar by eleven days—for example the quarter days on which rent was due, salaries paid and new labour contracts agreed—so that no-one should gain or lose by the change and that markets match the agricultural season; it is for this reason that the UK tax year ends on 5 April, being eleven days on from the original quarter-day of 25 March.
In summary, the Act has three key elements:
It acknowledges the practical difficulties created for England by its traditional practice of beginning the year on 25 March, when common practice among its people, as well as legal and common usage in Scotland (since 1600) and most of Europe, was to begin the year on 1 January. Accordingly, the Act provided that "all His Majesty's Dominions" would cease this tradition from the end of December 1751, such that the following day would be 1 January 1752.
It acknowledges that the Julian calendar still in use in Great Britain and its Dominions had been found to be inaccurate, and that most of Europe had already adopted an (unnamed) revised calendar. The Julian calendar was eleven days behind this 'New Style' calendar. With this Act, therefore, Britain implicitly adopted the Gregorian calendar. To do so, it ordered that eleven calendar days be skipped in September 1752 and that centennial years no longer be leap years unless divisible by 400.
Official source
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