474
NOTES AND QUERIES. ui s. m. JUNE 17, 1911.
hardly touches the question of any parish
nowadays holding the vestry for eccle-
siastical business at some other time than
that generally accustomed. W. S. B. H.
Canon 90 enjoins that the choosing of churchwardens shall take place in Easter week, but the courts having decided that an election at any other time is valid in law, it does not appear to matter very much at what precise date the annual meeting of the vestry takes place.
In these parishes, as in others in the City, it is the custom to meet, not in Easter week itself, but in the week immediately following, as experience has shown that many business men leave town for the vacation and do not return till the week is too far advanced to render it convenient for them to attend. Some parishes in the square mile hold the meeting the week before Easter for a similar reason.
WILLIAM McMuRRAY, Vestry Clerk.
St. Anne and St. Agn^s with St. John Zachary.
AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (11 S. S. iii. 409). Perhaps G. H. J.'s third quotation,
After snow the snowdrop, After death comes life,
may be an indistinct recollection of
Out of the Snow) the Snowdrop out of Death Comes Life,
from ' Poet Andrew,' Robert Buchanan's poetic account of his dead friend David Gray, to be found in ' Idyls and Legends of Inverburn,' London, 1865.
EDITOR ' IRISH BOOK LOVER.'
- HAMLET ' IN 1585 : ENGLISH ACTORS
IN SCOTLAND (11 S. iii. 267, 311, 398, 416). The statement quoted by IONIA seems to associate itself, somewhat freely, with the 'Menaphon' allusion (1589) and the description on the title-page of the first quarto (1603) of ' Hamlet '" as it hath beene acted in the two Vniversities of Cambridge and Oxford." V.
Boscombe.
Perhaps a near approach to what is wanted may be found in an article in The National Review, 1896-7, vol. xxviii., entitled 'A Guess at the Origin of Hamlet.' SCOTUS.
IONIA may find some information in chap. iv. of Lee's 'Life of Shakespeare,' which refers to visits to Scotland by an English company in 1599 and 1601. The arrival at Leith by boat is not mentioned, but may be in some of the references given
by Mr. Lee, viz., Knight's ' Life of Shake-
speare,' p. 41, Fleay's ' Stage,' p. 135 ;
MS. State Papers Dom., Scotland, P.R.O.,
vol. Ixv. No. 64. P. A. MCELWAINE.
BIRTHDAYS AND THE CHANGE OF CALENDAR (11 S. iii. 387). After onr belated change of the calendar from the Old to the New Style in 1752 (3 September), all anniversaries of birthdays of living persons were altered (i.e. postdated) by eleven days, as far as the law was concerned. Whether private cele- brations of such anniversaries took place on the statutory dates or on the nominal dates would be a matter of personal and domestic concern.
The reason why, by statute, the birthday of George III. could not properly, after 1752, be celebrated on 24 May is simple and clear. For example, take his first birthday anniversary after his accession, i.e., that in 1761 ; if it had been celebrated on 24 May, it would have been celebrated when he was aged 22 years and 354 days. On 4 June his age was 23 full years. This reckoning of full years was enforced by statute as to every one then living in regard to legal rights and obligations. Concerning birth- days and terms of service the following extract from statute 24 Geo. II., c. 23, sec. 6, is very explicit (this is the statute which enacted the change to the New Style) :
" No Person or Persons whatsoever shall be deemed or taken to have attained the said Age of one and twenty Years, or any other such Age as aforesaid, or to have completed the Time of any such Service as aforesaid, until the full Number of Years and Days shall be elapsed on which such Person or Persons respectively would have attained such Age, or would have completed the Time of such Service as aforesaid, in case this Act had not been made."
The Act provided (sec. 5) against curtail- ment of rights of property, e.g., concerning rents due on certain days. These and such like were not to be accelerated, but were to be payable on the same respective natural days as the same should and ought to have been payable in case the Act had not been made.
It may be said generally that the Act made it clear, as to contracts and ages of persons, that the first year after the Act came into force was to be a full year for each person or contract, and not a year less eleven days. As by statute the moment the 2nd day of September had passed, the day entered upon was the 14th of Septem- ber instead of the 3rd, so there was a corre- sponding alteration of nominal dates re- garding persons and contracts, e.g., 4 June
