COMPLETING the futile Elizabethan effort in chronology, the British Parliament of 1751 discussed reforms in the calendar, Lord Chesterfield initiating the proposal.[1] His motion for adopting the new style was carried into force by the statute 23 George II, chapter 50. The preamble of that act sets forth, 'The legal supputation (reckoning) of the year of our Lord in that part of Great Britain called England, according to which the year beginneth on the 25th of March, hath been found by experience to be attended with obvious inconvenience, as it differs from the usage of neighbouring nations, and also from the legal method of computation' in Scotland.[2] Then having admitted that the Julian calendar was at the time eleven days wrong or beyond the solar year, the preamble proceeds to refer, in a roundabout way, to the Gregorian or new style.[3]
92. Thereafter the needful enactments follow. Briefly these were:—
(a), The year 1751 as such was never finished. It began, of course, on 25th March, and ended as on 31st December, both 1751, a year of 281 days.
