1. "Give us our eleven days!" The English calendar riots of 1752 From: Robert Poole, Time’s Alteration: Calendar Reform in Early Modern England (UCL Press/Taylor & Francis, 1998).
The populace of every country, consider the year as a certain regular period, the length of which is painted out by nature herself; and, with a clamour that bids defiance to reason, oppose every alteration. John Bonnycastle, Introduction to astronomy (1786).
"Give us our eleven days!" must be one of the most-quoted slogans of the eighteenth century, but also the least understood. Hanoverian England is strewn with entertaining riots, from the Jacobites at the beginning to the Jacobins at the end. In the middle lie the calendar riots, with their famous baffled cry. The popular slogan against the official correction of the calendar in 1752 was immortalised by William Hogarth, on a placard in his contemporary picture An Election Entertainment. There is no better illustration of just how stupid the mob could be, and no history of the period is complete without at least a passing reference to the well-known calendar riots. In 1820 James Scarlett, prosecuting counsel at the trial for treason of "Orator" Hunt and others in the aftermath of the "Peterloo" meeting, found in the episode the ideal instance of the dangers of arousing the mob.
The ridiculous folly of a mob had been exemplified in a most humorous manner by that eminent painter, Mr. Hogarth. It was found necessary many years ago, in order to prevent a confusion in the reckoning of time, to knock eleven days out of the calendar, and it was supposed by ignorant persons that the legislature had actually deprived them of eleven days of their existence. This ridiculous idea was finely exposed in Mr. Hogarth's picture, where the mob were painted throwing up their hats, and crying out "Give us back our eleven days." Thus it was at the present time; that many individuals, who could not distinguish words from things, were making an outcry for that of which they could not well explain the nature.1
1
Curiously enough, this most colourful of English riots has largely escaped academic study, despite the attention given to eighteenth-century popular unrest over recent decades. To unravel what happened (and what did not happen) in 1752 will fill a book. First, however, we must follow the trail of the "Give us our eleven days!" riots back through the sources to that obscure and intriguing moment in the middle of the eighteenth century when the English people fell out with their own calendar.
"Give us our eleven days!"
Modern scholarship has enlarged on the account which James Scarlett was able to give of the 1752 calendar riots. G. J. Whitrow's more recent Time in History conveniently summarises the main elements of the episode as generally understood, with a striking addition.
In 1752, when the British government decided to alter the calendar, so as to bring it into line with that previously adopted by most other countries of Western Europe, and decreed that the day following 2 September should be styled 14 September, many people thought that their lives were being shortened thereby. Some workers actually believed that they were going to lose eleven days' pay. So they rioted and demanded "Give us back our eleven days!" (The Act of Parliament had, in fact, been carefully worded so as to prevent any injustice in the payment of rents, interest, etc.) The rioting was worst in Bristol, in those 2
days the second largest city in England, where several people were killed.2
All the general histories of the eighteenth century have something to say about the calendar riots, from the oldest standard works to the most recent of textbooks.3 Basil Williams' volume in the authoritative Oxford History of England notes that "the bill ... passed without difficulty in Parliament, but aroused much antagonism outside ... for some time the most popular cry in the country was 'give us back our eleven days'."4 Derek Jarrett's England in the Age of Hogarth notes that "in 1752 ... there had been violent protests at the apparent loss of eleven days". Peter Quennell writes: "This 'popish' innovation both puzzled and dismayed the British proletariat; and the cry 'give us back the eleven days we have been robbed of' was taken up by the conservative mob, who felt that eleven precious days had been wrenched out of their life-span".5 Such references could be multiplied. Not surprisingly, this most memorable of episodes has enjoyed a flourishing existence well outside the realms of academic history. The Encyclopaedia Britannica announces sagely that it was "public misunderstanding" and suspicion of the reform that caused the riots.6 The rationalist Everyman's Encyclopaedia refers scathingly to the "vulgar and ignorant prejudice" of "the mob", while the less judgmental Children's Britannica explains patiently that "because many people did not understand the reason for this [reform]... they rioted in the streets". The Times' science writer of 1982 sought a new angle: "the peasants took to the streets. 'Give us back our eleven days,', they chorused in anger, assuming a week and a half to have been blasted out of existence by some early space invader machine." The English calendar riots have become one of the most often used examples of human gullibility, alongside the American "War of the worlds" scare of the 1930s.7 The calendar riots have not been short of academic interpreters, both hostile and sympathetic. The episode is most commonly held to reflect profound social differences in the rate of intellectual progress. As an early twentieth-century historian put it: "Polite society readily accepted a reform introduced under such auspices; but the pious shuddered at the prospect of tampering with saints' days, and the commonality grudged that their lives should be shortened by act of parliament."8 A biographer of lord Chesterfield, the architect of the calendar reform act, makes a similar point: for Chesterfield, the continental Gregorian calendar "represented the cosmopolitanism of France as opposed to British insularity", an insularity exemplified still in stubborn adherence to "the Anglo-Saxon standards of measurement as opposed to the metric system."9 More recently, for 3
the social historian Dorothy Marshall in Eighteenth-century England the episode demonstrates how "eighteenth-century society, particularly at its lower levels, was held together by tradition. Change was suspect just because it was change."10 For the political historian J. B. Owen in The eighteenth century, the way the act was "carried through in 1751 despite the howls of the uninformed mob to 'give us back our eleven days'" provides an instance of the superior political resolve of the Pelham ministry.11 Recent historians have shown greater sympathy towards the rioters. W. A. Speck comments that the outcry was not simply "the blind reaction of an ignorant mob", but that "the change gave reasonable ground for concern at all levels of society, necessitating nice calculations about rents, leases, debts and wages, as well as superstitions about saint's days and holy days".12 Roy Porter uses the occasion to remark that "where traditional and new, popular and polite, culture confronted each other, there was often objectively little to choose between them", and suggests that fears about loss of wages may have been well-grounded.13 Paul Langford also warns against drawing simple conclusions about "a dislocation between patrician and plebeian culture". For the educated classes, "the reform of the calendar had a certain symbolic significance in terms of the conflict of enlightenment and bigotry", but "the hostility which it aroused was not mere unreasoning atavism. The Act caused complications for the celebration of birthdays and anniversaries and irritated many who saw no necessity even for a minor inconvenience in the cause of conformity to established continental practice. It also worried churchmen ... There were political undertones ..."14 For John Stevenson, the "furore" of 1752 evinces a certain sophistication. "Protest about the 'lost' days was not simply a display of irrational ignorance, but was based on concern about interference and complication of many important transactions. As such it throws light on contemporary society and can be rendered at least comprehensible by a closer examination of the impact of a particular piece of legislation." Such an examination is, however, not forthcoming.15 These modern interpretations are more open-minded than their predecessors, but no better footnoted. The hand-me-down phrasing running through decades of references to the calendar riots invites a certain scepticism about the agreed details. The riots, like the Snark, are universally known but defy detection. Their main function, one suspects, is to provide some light relief in that Sargasso sea of eighteenth-century English history, the rule of the Pelhams. Their origin must lie further back than we have so far looked, but here there are problems for the tale has become confused in the telling. The election at which Hogarth depicted the riot was the Oxfordshire seat, where one of the whig candidates was associated with the recent calendar reform act, and the 4
disturbance has been located "at the hustings".16 However, scholars usually see the agitation as a revival of an earlier episode. The eminent Hogarthian, Ronald Paulson, explains: "the Oxfordshire people ... are specifically rioting, as historically the London crowd did, to preserve the 'Eleven Days' the government stole from them in September 1752 by changing the calendar".17 Whitrow, quoted above, locates the fatal, riots in Bristol. But when? And what was the actual occasion for riot? For Whitrow it was the loss of eleven days' pay, for others the loss of eleven days of life, or outrage at "the supposed profaneness of changing the saints' days." The most commonly cited date for the riots is 1752, that is, "at the period when the bill took effect".18 At this "violent change", according to the official history of the Royal Society, "the mob pursued the minister in his carriage, clamouring for the days by which, they supposed, their lives had been shortened".19 It is, however, hard to see how the change would have appeared "violent" in an age when only the literate numbered the days, or why "the minister" would have been abroad in his carriage at the appropriate moment, or indeed who the relevant minister was, for the act was (like most eighteenth-century legislation) a private member's initiative. A later account identified the minister as Chesterfield himself, but Chesterfield was not a minister at the time, although he did sponsor the bill.20 Owen's suggestion that the disturbances occurred at the passage of the act the previous year seems more plausible, but even here there are problems for (as will be seen) the bill itself was non-controversial, and disturbances outside parliament were usually related to some kind of conflict within the chambers. John Hale's magisterial survey of renaissance civilization locates "popular resentment at the what was seen as filching of ten days from a man's life" in the 1580s, when the reformed Gregorian calendar was first introduced in continental Europe; the reference, alas, is once again missing.21 Clearly there are some crossed lines to be untangled. The trail first shows signs of freshness when we get back to the writings of the evangelical rationalist W. E. H. Lecky. His bestselling England in the eighteenth century was first published in 1876 and reissued several times thereafter. His influential and detailed exposition is worth quoting in full.
The old Duke of Newcastle, whose timid and timeserving nature dreaded beyond all things an explosion of popular feeling, entreated Chesterfield not to "stir matters that had long been quiet," or to meddle with "new-fangled things," and although the reform was ultimately carried through without difficulty, these apprehensions were not wholly 5
groundless. A widespread irritation was for a time aroused. Much was said about the profanity of altering saints-days and immovable feasts. At the next election one of the most popular cries against Lord Macclesfield's son was, "Give us back our eleven days!" When, many years later, Mr. Bradley died of a lingering disease, his sufferings were supposed to be a judgement due to the part he had taken in the transaction; and the feelings of many were probably expressed in a saying that was quoted during the debate on the naturalisation of the Jews, "It is no wonder he should be for naturalising the devil who was one of those that banished old Christmas."22
Here is a nicely coherent set of anecdotes illustrating the depths of ignorance and superstition in a pre-rationalist society. Better still, Lecky cites his sources, and weighty sources they are. One is the then-standard History of England, a seven-volume work written a generation earlier by Philip Henry Stanhope, Lord Mahon, a titled descendant of the calendar reforming earl of Chesterfield. For the seeker of riots, however, this turns out to be a wrong turning. Mahon emphasises his ancestor's skill and vision in piloting the calendar reform through despite the fears of fainter hearts, in including "provisions and safeguards" against injustice, and in writing in the press "to prepare the minds of the people for the change". The measure is stated to have encountered "resentment ... both deep and lasting", but that is all.23 Nor do the rioters appear in another of Lecky's sources, Matthew Maty's 1778 life of Chesterfield, based on Chesterfield's own writings. Here, we learn that despite the problems "in overcoming people's prejudices", "a bill so wisely contrived, and so eloquently supported by eloquence and reason, passed without any opposition in both houses".24 A similar, if less sycophantic, account is to be found in the 1829 Memoirs of the Administration of Henry Pelham by archdeacon William Coxe: "At the period when the bill took effect, the populace marked their dissention, by exclaiming, 'Give us back our eleven days!' and by other tumultuary indications." The actual riots remain elusive, however; Coxe's only source is Hogarth.25 In Lecky's other sources we do find evidence of popular opposition to the calendar reform, albeit falling short of riot. The story about the death of the astronomer royal James Bradley comes from Bradley's biographer, S. P. Rigaud. Rigaud reports that during Bradley's final illness, "many of the common people attributed his sufferings to a judgement from heaven for his having been instrumental in what they considered to be so impious an undertaking".26 One may be sceptical about the extent to which "many of the common people" were aware of the astronomer royal's state 6
of health, or indeed of his unobtrusive role in the calendar reform, but it fits the story well. So too does the anecdote paired with it by Lecky, extracted from Cobbett's Parliamentary History. In 1753 the MP Robert Nugent spoke in the commons on the controversial "jew bill".
Even at this present time, there is among the country people a very general clamour against the New Stile Act; and as I have been, ever since my appearing for a general naturalization of foreign Protestants, represented as the author of every thing they think bad, I was said to be the author of that act, and am now said to be the author of this Jews act; on the hearing of which an old woman made this judicious remark, "Ay," says she, "it would be no wonder should he be for naturalizing the devil, for he was one of those that banished old Christmas."27
Hogarth apart, Lecky's sources thus yield evidence of ignorance and clamour, but no riots. (So too, read carefully, does his account). The same is true of every printed reference to the calendar reform before 1820. The decades between the 1760s and the 1820s offer only a polite silence about this embarrassing outburst of national ignorance. Writers after 1760 quickly forgot any problems there may have been with the reform, preferring to emphasise its enlightened character and its benefits to the national economy. Thus, Adam Anderson's elephantine History of commerce explained how "useful to commerce and chronology" it had proved "to reduce our stile to that of almost all the rest of Europe", avoiding "errors and mistakes in business".28 The earliest commentator, the historian Nicholas Tindal in 1759, simply noted deferentially that "the act was modelled with great skill and learning by the Earl of Macclesfield and has been productive of many excellent consequences".29 We must go back to the 1750s before the polite silence about the calendar affair is broken, by rude laughter from two very different satirical voices: the off-key braying of lord Chesterfield, and the hearty guffaw of William Hogarth. All our references to calendar riots are in fact traceable to these two sources. Lord Chesterfield, the architect of the calendar reform of 1752, was both minister and wit, though in political semi-retirement at the time. His Letters to his son were one of the bestsellers of the age, notorious for their irresponsible cynicism, the work not of a patriot but of a cosmopolitan sybarite associated with the introduction of effete foreign fashions and "macaroni manners" into a post-Walpolean England already deficient in moral fibre.30 In his letters to his son, 7
in his character sketch of the timid duke of Newcastle (mentioned by Lecky), and through the columns of his magazine The World, Chesterfield presented a portrait of himself as the fearless apostle of enlightenment against aboriginal English insularity, prejudice and neophobia. His role in the reform is considered below, but his exploits grew in the telling. In March 1753 Chesterfield's fellow-wit Horace Walpole, writing in The World, mocked those upholders of fundamental principles in church and state who had allegedly insisted "how great the harmony was in the old establishment between the holidays and their attributes ... and what a confusion would follow if Michaelmas-day, for instance, was not to be celebrated when stubble geese are in their highest perfection", and who attacked the calendar "reformation" as tending "to discountenance good old practices and venerable institutions". A year later another contributor expanded on the theme.
The alarm was given, and the most fatal consequences to our religion and government were immediately apprehended from it. The opinion gathered strength in it's course, and received a tincture from the remains of superstition still prevailing in the counties most remote from town. I know several worthy gentlemen in the west, who lived for many months under the daily apprehension of some dreadful visitation from pestilence or famine. The vulgar were almost everywhere persuaded that nature gave evident tokens of her disapproving these innovations. The objection to this regulation as favouring a custom established amongst papists, was not heard indeed with the same regard as formerly, when it actually prevented the legislature from passing a bill of the same nature; yet many a president of a corporation club very eloquently harangued upon it, as introductory to the doctrine of transubstantiation, making no doubt that fires would be kindled again in Smithfield before the conclusion of the year. This popular clamour has at last happily subsided, and shared the general fate of those opinions which derive their support from imagination, not reason.31
All this is (or was) amusing stuff, but it amounts to almost the entire total of contemporary evidence for riots at either the passage or the implementation of the act. Horace Walpole's own memoirs of the period, which may be the earliest retrospective account, relate only that "the bill passed easily through both houses".32 The riot depositions in the Public Record Office, ministerial papers, newspapers, periodicals and other writings of the time bear the same silent witness to the lack of 8
outward controversy over this particular piece of legislation. The middle years of the century, indeed, becalmed between the "forty-five" and the seven years' war, between the ages of Walpole and of Wilkes, were famously uneventful, even before Namier’s project to drain them of all meaning. Birds, claimed Horace Walpole, might have made their nests in the speaker's chair safe from any disturbance by political debate. The general election of 1754 was the least widely contested of any in British history. In one constituency, however, the contest was prolonged and intense: Oxfordshire, the scene of Hogarth's "Election" series. It is, after all, here that we must seek the elusive calendar rioters. What did prompt Hogarth to portray the slogan "Give us our eleven days!" in his famous picture?
William Hogarth and the Oxfordshire election
Hogarth could not have chosen a better constituency than Oxfordshire to illustrate the general election of 1754. There is no evidence that he visited the county at this time (or that he did not), but he was certainly familiar with the extensive coverage in the London press and with some of the squibs and songs published in the capital. The county was one of the last strongholds of Jacobite 9
toryism, where a determined attempt to split the local political establishment by the court whigs caused a prolonged and celebrated election battle. The tory candidates were adopted as early as August 1752 and the whigs in the autumn. The eighteen-month long campaign thus covered the calendar reform of September 1752 and ensuing period of adjustment, including the first two new Christmas days. It also covered the entire period of the agitation over the "jew bill", a government supported measure for the easier naturalization of foreign jews which provoked a political whirlwind and a government climb-down which bears comparison with the Walpole administration's epic defeat over the excise twenty years before. The tory, or "old interest" candidates, were Lord Wenman and the sitting MP Sir James Dashwood. Dashwood, a local landed magnate known as the "jolly brewer", was the sitting MP since 1740, a prominent Jacobite sympathiser and the leading opponent of the "jew bill". The whig or "new interest" candidates were the local Sir Edward Turner, whose most memorable feature in this context was his punnable name, and the outsider Lord Parker. Parker was the son of the earl of Macclesfield, who as a leading astronomer and fellow of the Royal Society had played a leading role in the calendar reform. Parker himself (as MP for Newcastle) had chaired the committee stage of the calendar reform act in the Commons.33 The contest was celebrated for going to a replay; so chaotic was the poll that the sheriff despairingly returned all four candidates, leaving the Commons to adjudicate. After a year of wrangling the whigs, who had polled fewer votes, were declared elected. It took another three years to settle the constitutional issues, and longer still to settle all the bills.34 In such a contest, every issue was bound to be exploited. Parker's personal connections made of the calendar reform a sideshow, but it had the makings of an election issue for the tories in other ways too. The new calendar could be portrayed as a popish import, for it involved adopting the Roman Catholic Gregorian calendar used on the continent, originally promulgated by the pope in 1582. Furthermore it had been passed under a whig government currently reviled for favouring foreign jews. It was rumoured (falsely) that the measure had been pushed through by the whig cabinet while the king was out of the country.35 This revived the old tory theme of "whiggery" and "popery" as an unholy alliance conspiring to undermine church and state. It may also have helped to deflect the charge of popery from Dashwood himself, who was rumoured (like Bonnie Prince Charlie) to have "kissed the pope's toe" on a visit to Rome. The calendar issue was paraded in a number of tory squibs. A song entitled "Old England. Old Interest. Old Style. Old Time" lampooned the whig astronomer's son thus: 10
The next recommended was P-rk-r the SMALL, Whose Character - Faith, is just nothing at all: Nay, 'twas whispered in Oxford by some simple Loon, That He was put up by the Man in the Moon.36
"A New Ballad" continued both theme and metre:
And as for his long-look'd-for Friend, on my Troth, His fine moving Speeches are nothing but Froth; Our Time he has alter'd and turn'd it about, So he like Old Christmas shall too be turned out.
Tho' Lords and great Placemen do with him combine, "Twill signify nothing when honest Men join; Drink Wenman and Dashwood, and stand to the Tack, We want no old Turner nor new Almanack.37
Another song, "The Rump Revived" used the most worn-out of political metaphors to urge that "My Lord [Parker], at the bottom, was for the New Style".38 "The Jew's Triumph" laboured to link the calendar reform to two other well-worn tory themes, popery and jewry:
In seventeen hundred and fifty-three, The style was changed to P-p-ry, But that it is lik'd, we don't all agree; Which nobody can deny.
When the country folk first heard of this act, That old father style was condemned to be rack'd, And robb'd of his time, which appears to be fact, Which nobody can deny; 11
It puzzl'd their brains, their senses perplex'd, And all the old ladies were very much vex'd, Not dreaming that Levites would alter our text; Which nobody can deny.39
Jackson's Oxford Journal carried a burlesque account of "Proceedings of the Old Interest Society held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, May 1, O.S., 1753", at which it was "Resolved, That the New Stile and the New Interest are highly prejudicial to the Interest of England, and calculated only for the benefit of H-n-v-r." The account of the alleged meeting referred to "TurnStiles, Turners and Turnips".40 Another spoof notice in September 1753 attempted a sub-Swiftian satire on the pretensions of astronomers.
On the 14th of this month will be held the anniversary Jubilee of the New-Style, when an excellent Discourse will be preached on the Occasion by Professor B--ss on the following Text — Sun stand thou still; after which the Society of Conjurors, with their President Lord M——d, will proceed to the sign of the Constellation called the Bear, and the evening will conclude with Star-gazing.
Hogarth, too, had satirised star-gazers and moon-lookers.41 The theme was taken up, to the dirge of the national anthem, in "Another New Song".
Old Christmas is turn'd out, And thou art turn'd about, TURNER for ever! Since that our Style is new, So shall our Members too, Who to please Lady S__ Eke shall endeavour.
Society Royal 12
So learn'd and loyal, Chymists and quacks: Almanack-Makers all, Butterfly-takers all, Leave your Gimcracks.42
Later came news of a nobleman's servant whose wife had produced a child after only three months of marriage: "The gentlemen of the New Interest say it is a happy Effect of the Alteration of the Stile; those of the Old Interest bluntly say 'tis Bastardy". Another newspaper piece managed to botch together ribaldry, quackery and politics in one sentence: "the Cunning Ones seem to doubt whether new Sentiments will find as easy a Passage as the New Style has done.'43 The calendar issue was not simply about low politics. The authors of the squibs clearly expected their jibes would find a response within the electorate. Complaints about the new Christmas were more than rhetorical; as will be seen in a later chapter, there is evidence of widespread popular resistance to the new Christmas and adherence to the old, eleven days later on 5 January. Nor was Christmas the only calendar custom disrupted by the new calendar. A year almost to the day after the introduction of the new calendar, Jackson's Oxford Journal carried this advertisement about the fairs at Charlbury.
The FAIR formerly held on the 29th Day of September, will be holden on the 10th day of October. The fair formerly held on St Thomas's Day [21 December] will be holden on the first Day of January. Lent Fair will be holden on the second Friday in Lent. The Fair formerly held on the second Friday in May, will be holden on the second Friday after Old May Day, unless when the 12th of May falls on a Friday, then to be holden on the Friday next following; and so to be continued, unless any of the above days falls on a Sunday, and then to be held on the Monday following.44
Confusion would be understandable. What has happened here is that the Lent fair, linked to Easter, is now linked to the new Easter, whilst all the others are observing their old calendar dates, on the same natural days as before but eleven nominal days later. In the case of St Thomas Fair, this has sent it jumping over the official Christmas, from 21 December to New Year's day. All this was 13
perfectly in line with the act, which specified that fairs were to maintain their natural (old-style) days. The fairs at Banbury went old style too, moving to old St Luke, old Lammas, the Thursday after old Michaelmas, and the Thursday after old Twelfth day. Bampton August Fair, however, was moved forward to a new style date, while farms were offered for sale or let from "Lady Day next" without specifying whether old or new. Unexpectedly, local celebrations for the king's birthday were held on the old-style date, despite the ostensible provisions of the calendar reform act that such anniversaries should be observed new style.45 Nor were the tory jibes about the new Christmas unfounded; there is widespread evidence of popular attachment to old Christmas day in the years immediately after the calendar reform. It would be no surprise if the people of Charlbury had decided to continue to observe Christmas on the old date, four days after the St Thomas fair as usual, rather than on the new date, which was now a week before the fair. If all this appears confusing to the reader, the impression is probably accurate. The effects are explained in chapter ten below, but what is clear is that the Oxfordshire tories were drawing upon a genuine well of popular confusion and resistance when they propagated verses and slogans against the calendar reform.46 We can conclude that the famous "Give us our eleven days!" placard in Hogarth's print is part of a composite satire on the ignorance and deceit of the electoral process, drawing upon printed propaganda rather than upon observed crowd behaviour, and aimed as much at the rhetorical excesses of party propaganda as at the gullibility of the mob. It is not a depiction of a real calendar riot, either in Oxfordshire or anywhere else. The slogan, like so much else in Hogarth's work, is an inspired invention, and perhaps also a product of his lifelong preoccupation with the symbolism of time.47 The calendar rioters are a magnificent myth.
The construction of a myth
It has to be said at the outset that the "give us our eleven days!" myth has been independently exposed by at least three other writers, albeit with curiously little impact upon the historiography. The truth about "the legendary English time riots" was sniffed out some time ago by Paul Alkon, in the course of an essay arguing for a sophisticated time awareness amongst the educated classes of eighteenth-century England.48 More recently James Stevenson, in an unpublished dissertation, has 14
come to separate but similar conclusions. Both writers conclude after investigating a range of primary material (in Alkon's case, published material, and in Stevenson's parish records as well) that the legislation was uncontroversial and its implementation smooth. Stevenson in turn is able to quote a 1954 study by one H. Watkins,49 who suspected that stories of riots in London and Bristol were "considerably exaggerated" and whose researches in the press and various archives drew a blank. Further research reinforces these conclusions. In the archives, in the press, and in contemporary literature, there is evidence of confusion and complaint, and of educated disdain for the objections of the uneducated, but of calendar riots at either the passage or implementation of the act, there is no sign. It is difficult, of course, to prove a negative, although in historical study the burden of proof lies the other way. We can, however, do the next best thing and examine the construction of the myth of the calendar riots. Where did it arise, and why? Alkon's suggestion is that Hogarth was indirectly responsible for creating it, and Lecky for spreading it as a rationalist myth in the later nineteenth century, and this certainly goes some way towards explaining its twentieth-century currency. What we are dealing with, however, is not so much a single canard as a whole school of red herrings. The earliest commentator on Hogarth's election print noted merely that the slogan "alluded to the alteration of the stile", which "gave great displeasure throughout England".50 This phrasing was echoed by John Nichols, Hogarth's primary biographer, whose commentary provided the basis for all others until quite recently. Ronald Paulson, indeed, was able to add little in the first edition of his definitive biography of Hogarth; by the time of the second edition, twenty years later, the historiographical enhancement quoted above could be made.51 Earlier still, a poem from 1759 (published soon after the "Election" series was completed) portrays the disturbance as an election riot, not as a calendar riot or an allusion to one.52 The printed comments of Chesterfield and others (as we have seen) mocked not the plebeian mob but rather superstitious and change-resistant backwoodsmen of all classes. Of this character too were Chesterfield's comments on the duke of Newcastle, whom he described as:
Exceedingly timorous, both personally and politically, dreading the least innovation, and keeping, with a scrupulous timidity, in the beaten track of business as having the safest bottom. 15
I will mention one instance of this disposition, which I think will set it in the strongest light. When I brought the bill into the house of lords, for correcting and amending of the calendar, I gave him previous notice of my intentions. He was alarmed at so bold and undertaking, and conjured not to stir matters that had long been quiet; adding, that he did not love new fangled things. I did not, however, yield to the cogency of these arguments, but brought in the bill, and it passed unanimously.53
Contemporary sources, then, portray not rioting mobs but anxiety born of ignorance at all social levels. This is set against wisely-executed reform whose smooth implementation allayed the concerns it had raised. The next major commentator on Hogarth, John Ireland, writing in the 1790s, elaborated somewhat: "the alteration of the style ... gave great umbrage, and excited a violent clamour among the advocates for old customs, and adherents to ancient forms."54 Horace Walpole's satirical blasts had been directed not only against "the vulgar" but against otherwise "worthy gentlemen" in the country and "many a president of a corporation club". After their lordships had passed the calendar bill, Chesterfield, preening himself over the success of his rhetoric, wrote:
Every numerous assembly is mob, let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses, and their seeming interests alone are to be applied to. Understanding they have collectively none ...55
Chesterfield’s “mob” was the house of Lords. Similarly, the target of Hogarth's print of an election mob which gave history the "give us our eleven days" slogan was the folly of the political classes as much as that of the manipulated mob. The full-blown riot myth, with the plebeian mob its socially specific target, took longer to congeal. The reformulation of the calendar episode was taken forward a step in 1786, when John Bonnycastle, of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, published an expanded version of his lectures on astronomy. His chapter on the reform of the calendar, while still unspiced by tales of actual riot, offered a neat synthesis of the model of the rational reform resisted by the superstitious mob. Bonnycastle's first premiss was the importance of "a well regulated calendar" 16
for the smooth running of public affairs. "The first care of every society, after providing for its most pressing wants and necessities, has always been to establish some uniform method of reckoning time," he wrote. "Perpetual confusion" would follow ensure if this were neglected. In the perverse attitudes to the calendar of priests and plebeians in ancient times could be found a parallel with more recent events. In ancient Rome, the manipulations of priests had upset the regular progression of years until the "learned and enlightened" Caesar had reformed the calendar. "The ancient calendar was so obviously defective, that it was impossible not to perceive the disorder it occasioned; and yet the multitude were still averse to reformation." Similarly, until 1752 calendar differences had "occasioned great confusion in the commercial affairs of the different states of Europe", yet the reform was opposed by "the uninstructed part of mankind", amongst whom "to change the observance of certain religious feasts ... is looked upon as an impious innovation", and with whom reason deferred to the Glastonbury thorn. Against this, "The mathematicians, indeed, more influenced by scientific considerations, then cavils about points of religion, were continually crying the necessity of correction, and proposed several methods of obtaining it, which might be adopted without inflaming the minds of the multitude." No option, of course, was perfect, but to choose the least imperfect demonstrated rationalism and maturity.56 Bonnycastle's work was certainly influential, for a few years later an acquaintance of his was prompted to publish his own Almanac according to the true time, citing Bonnycastle's words and adding his own complaints about "the absurdity and want of reason" of any who opposed a further secular reform of the calendar "on the grounds of any innovation respecting the Festivals". Like Dr Johnson’s true genius who could be recognised by the confederacy of dunces against him (he implied), an "exact and true measure of time" would be known from the attacks of the forces of custom and ignorance upon it.57 This intellectual tale was given a social twist in the regency period. We first encounter the full-blown riot myth in 1820 propounded by the QC James Scarlett, as set out at the beginning of this chapter, to provide a convenient illustration for the authorities of the culpable folly of arousing mobs for any political purpose. At this point, Scarlett appears to have had no other source for it than Hogarth's picture, although his use of the story suggests that he expected it to be recognised; his point was that the defendants must have known the danger of arousing a mob, and were therefore guilty of treason.58 Coxe's account of 1829 subtly recycled Chesterfield's narrative. He emphasised that while the act "was strongly opposed, even among the higher classes", this was because of 17
"apprehensions" about the financial complications of the changeover, apprehensions which were easily dispelled by the "perspicuity and provisions of the act". "The clamour of the people", however, was superstitious and therefore more obstinate: "years elapsed before the people were fully reconciled to the new regulation."59 Coxe's reference to the "tumultuary indications" of "the populace" appears to be the first deliberately written account of calendar riots. A fervent whig, and historian of the colourless Pelham administration, Coxe was writing at the end of his 80-year life and near the height of the crisis over catholic emancipation, which he supported. For Coxe and his readers, the contrived outcry of the provincial mob against the popish calendar had its modern parallel in that of "Kentish clodpolls and bigots" against catholic emancipation.60 A generation later the anti-Catholic issue again provided the context for the issue to be raised. In the aftermath of the "papal aggression" of 1850 (when the full apparatus of the church of Rome was re-established in England), the Gentleman's Magazine published a distinctly respectful account of the English rejection of the original Gregorian calendar in 1582.61
The Pope, as a temporal sovereign, had no authority to enforce his new calendar upon any but his own subjects — even if he had any such authority over them.... The new calendar was put forth by him as an ecclesiastical superior, and with all the unchristian arrogance which would seem necessarily to appertain to his doings in that character.
The author went on to explain how "theological prejudice" had blocked the new calendar in England for 170 years, to be succeeded by the "ignorant opposition" of the "rabble" in Chesterfield's day,
... hooting and exclaiming "Give us back our eleven days!" The result is humiliating, and yet encouraging. If the Pope had put forth the alteration in any other way than that which suited his ecclesiastical despotism, it would probably have been adopted at once. But in spite of all the prejudice with which his insolence surrounded the question, we see in this narrative an example of that great fact which history so clearly teaches; the absolute certainty of the ultimate triumph of truth. Its entrance may be opposed by prejudice, it may be driven out by power, its return may be barred by mountains upon mountains of ignorance, bigotry and falsehood; — it matters not. Be faithful, you who uphold its cause; succeed it must! 18
The author has here performed the sleight-of-hand of supporting both the protestant opponents of calendar reform, in the name of anti-popery, and the pope's calendar reform, in the name of scientific truth. He was Augustus de Morgan, professor of mathematics at London University and writer of popular science. De Morgan was also a contributor to the British Almanack and its annual Companion. These had published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge since 1828 in an attempt to counter the malign influence of the existing popular almanacs, whose astrology, superstition and ritual anti-popery were deplored by the SDUK's founder, Charles Knight. De Morgan's elaborated anecdote about "the mob" pursuing "the minister" to demand the return of their eleven days first appeared here, appropriately enough; as both protestant and mathematician, de Morgan himself was in a position both to criticise the papal calendar, for being inaccurate and autocratically imposed, and to ridicule the anti-papal mob, for opposing it for the wrong reasons, thus making the story serve the twin purposes of protestantism and progress.62 A few years later the government saw fit to remove from the prayer book the observances of restoration day and gunpowder plot day, which were seen as inciting ignorant anti-popery. De Morgan's story also lent itself to a rationalist message. It is interesting to note that the strong version of the riot myth emerged in the 1820s at around the same time as another protestant—scientific myth. Jeffrey Burton Russell has traced the development of "the story of Christopher Columbus, the bold young rationalist who overcame ignorant and superstitious churchmen and superstitious sailors" to prove that the earth was round to this period; specifically, to a sketch by the American writer Washington Irving.63 Another near relative may be the myth that the Elizabethan magus John Dee had his laboratory destroyed in his absence by a furious mob who mistook mathematical instruments and writing for the apparatus of black magic. In fact, it seems that associates gradually despoiled Dee's library during his long absence abroad, although the story continues to be repeated.64 De Morgan's version of the calendar riot story was (as has been seen) picked up almost word for word in Weld's official History of the Royal Society, which in turn may have been drawn upon in Stanhope's standard History of England and which was almost certainly drawn upon in Lecky's popular and influential history of the eighteenth century. With such impressive authorities available, as well as the evidence of Hogarth's print, later authors and encyclopaedists have been able to improvise with confidence upon the tale. The recent trend towards sympathetic reinterpretation of the motives of the mob suggests that the calendar rioters will 19
continue to have their uses long after this book is out of print.65
In one way this inquiry has reached a conclusion. The calendar rioters were a myth; they were the late Georgian equivalent of an urban myth — a rural myth, perhaps. In another way, there have been more questions than answers. How did the common people react to the calendar reform? What actually happens when a calendar is reformed? What effects did it have? Why was it done in England so much later than on the continent? Why did the calendar need reforming anyway? To answer these questions involves going back to the original Gregorian reform of 1582. The next chapter begins by looking at the significance of calendar reform within the wider context of time and society in early modern England.
1
The trial of Henry Hunt ... with the addresses of the several defendants (Manchester, 1820),
p. 12. Scarlett's point was to demonstrate the wilfully inflammatory character of some of the slogans on the Peterloo banners. In reply, Hunt claimed that the defendants had been
20
"confined for eleven days and nights", and cried: "Give us back our eleven days of sweet liberty!" (p. 90).
2
G. J. Whitrow, Time in History (Oxford, 1987), p. 1. G. Holmes and D. Szechi, The age of oligarchy (London, 1993), p. 240 (compendium of
3
events, by Szechi).
4
B. Williams, The whig supremacy 1714-1760 (Oxford, 1939), pp. 354—5. D. Jarrett, England in the age of Hogarth (London, 1974), p. 27; P. Quennell, Hogarth's
5
Progress (London, 1955), p. 249.
6
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973 & 1974 edns, under "calendar" (by the astronomer C. A.
Ronan).
7
Everyman's encyclopaedia, 3rd edn (London, 1949—50); Children's Britannica, 2nd edn
(London, 1969), both under "calendar"; Alan Hamilton, "400 years on, and only two hours out", The Times, 21 Oct. 1982, p. 8; The wobbler no. 5 (September 1995).
8
I. S. Leadam, The history of England 1702—60 (London, 1909; repr. New York, 1967), p.
423.
9
Samuel Shellabarger, Chesterfield (London, 1935), p. 264. Dorothy Marshall, Eighteenth-century England, 2nd edn, (London, 1974), pp. 227—8. J. B. Owen, The eighteenth century (London, 1974), p. 74. W. A. Speck, Stability and strife (London, 1977), pp. 254—5. Roy Porter, English society in the eighteenth century (Harmondsworth, 1982), pp. 294—5. Paul Langford, A polite and commercial people: England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), pp.
10
11
12
13
14
283—4. Langford is unusual in not mentioning actual riots.
15
[Check quote]. John Stevenson, Popular disturbances in England, 1700-1832, 2nd edn
(London, 1992), pp. 3—4.
16
W. H. Craig, The life of lord Chesterfield (London, 1907), p. 308. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1992—3), iii, p. 164. William Coxe, Memoirs of the administration of Henry Pelham (2v., London, 1829), ii, pp.
17
18
178—9.
21
19
C. R. Weld, History of the Royal Society i (London, 1848), pp. 514-8, citing A. de Morgan,
"On the Ecclesiastical Calendar", in Companion to the [British] almanac for 1845 (London, Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge), pp. 1-36: p. 12.
20
The Gentleman's Magazine xxxvi (1851), p. 459. John Hale, The civilization of Europe in the renaissance (London, 1993), p. 569. W. E. H. Lecky, England in the eighteenth century (1878; 2nd edn, 1906), pp. 334—5. Philip Henry Stanhope (Lord Mahon), History of England iv (London, 1844), pp. 21—2;
21
22
23
see also from the 1858 edition, iii p. 340 and iv pp. 14—15.
24
M. Maty, Miscellaneous works of the late Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield
(2vols, London, 1778), i, pp. 197—9.
25
Coxe, Pelham, ii, pp. 178—9. J. P. Rigaud, Miscellaneous works and correspondence of James Bradley (Oxford, 1832),
26
pp. lxxx—lxxxii. Rigaud's source for this may have been a private communication, but his papers in the Bodleian Library do not, on selective inspection, appear to throw any light on the origin of this tale.
27
Cobbett's Parliamentary History (henceforth Cobbett) xv, p. 136. Both these stories are
picked up in Lecky, England in the eighteenth century, i, p. 268. Nugent had introduced the "jew bill", with the government's support, in February 1751.
28
For example, Adam Anderson, An historical and chronological deduction of the origin of
Commerce, 4 vols. (London, 1787—9), iii, pp. 283-6; John Potter, A system of practical mathematics, 2nd edn. (London, 1757), appendix, "A plain account of the Gregorian or new stile"; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st edn (Edinburgh, 1773), entry under "Astronomy".
29
N. Tindal, The continuation of ... Rapin's history of England, 21 vols. (London, 1757—63),
xxi, p. 436.
30
These qualities are nicely expressed in Horace Walpole's anecdote about the time when
Chesterfield in Dublin was disturbed in his bedchamber by bishop's announcement that the Jacobites were about to rise. "I fancy they are, my lord", he replied, for it is nine o'clock". Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the last ten years of the reign of George III (2v., London, 1822), i, pp. 44—6. Walpole's memoirs may have been drafted as early as 1752: see p. viii.
22
31
The World, no. 10 (8 March 1753) and no. 82 (25 July 1754), the author identified in a
manuscript note in the British Library’s copy as “Loveybond”.
32
Walpole, Memoirs, i, pp. 44—6. Commons Journals (henceforth CJ), 8 May 1751. Parker later took care to second
33
Dashwood's motion against the "jew bill": see R. Sedgwick (ed.), History of parliament: House of Lords 1715—54 (London, 1970), entry under "Parker".
34
On the election, see in particular R. J. Robson, The Oxfordshire election of 1754 (Oxford,
1949); G. H. Dannatt, The Oxfordshire election of 1754 , Oxfordshire County Council record publication no. 6 (Oxford, 1970).
35
[Blackburne, Francis]. A sermon preached to a large congregation in the country, on ... old
Christmas day (London, 1753).
36
The old and new interest; or a sequel to the Oxfordshire contest, (London, 1753), pp. 50-1. The Oxfordshire contest; or the whole controversy between the old and the new interest
37
(London, 1753), pp. 55—6. "The Tack" was a celebrated tory parliamentary manoeuvre of 1704 against occasional conformity.
38
The old and new interest, pp. 45—7. Quoted in J. Grego, A history of parliamentary elections and electioneering in the old days,
39
(London, 1886), pp.139—41. Grego's account of the election is hopelessly muddled.
40
Jackson's Oxford Journal (henceforth JOJ, 12 May 1753. The account is reproduced in
Dannatt, p. 20. The turnip was reputedly a Hanoverian root, its cultivation supposed to be a hobby of the dull and bucolic George II.
41
JOJ, 8 Sept. 1753. The reference to the sun standing still is to the miracle performed by
Joshua (Josh. 10:12-14) — a stock jibe against the pretensions of calendar reformers. B—— ss is Nathaniel Bliss (1700-64), Savilian professor of geometry and an associate of Macclesfield's. On astronomers, see Hogarth's prints Some of the principal inhabitants of the moon (1724), and A rake's progress viii (1735).
42
The Oxfordshire contest, p. 50. Lady Susan Keck was a tireless canvasser on horseback for
the whigs.
43
JOJ, 25 June 1753; The Oxfordshire contest, p. 10. JOJ, 15 Sept. 1753.
23
44
45
JOJ, 22 Sept. 1753, 19 May 1753, 6 Oct. 1753, 16 June 1753. The practical effects of the
calendar reform are explained in chapters 9 and 10 below.
46
The issue of links between Jacobitism and the old festive calendar, drawing further on the
Oxfordshire example, is taken up again in Chapter 11 below.
47
S. L. Macey, "Hogarth and the iconography of time", in R. C. Rosbottom (ed.), Studies in
eighteenth-century culture, v(Wisconsin, 1976).
48
P. Alkon, "Changing the Calendar", Eighteenth-century life, vii, 2 (January 1982), pp.1—
18. Alkon’s ground-breaking article came to hand during the course of my own work, and comes to broadly similar conclusions in the context of a study of public awareness of science. Alkon points out (p.18, n.25) that the problem with the modern Hogarth commentators is not that they take Hogarth's depiction as one of a real election riot, but that they assume that Hogarth's portrait was inspired partly by real calendar riots elsewhere. As will become apparent, however, whilst I agree that "the English time riots" are a myth, I
49
50
differ from Alkon's view that the reform was efficient and uncontroversial. H. Watkins, Time counts (New York, 1954). John Trusler, Hogarth moralised (London, 1768), p. 43. See also John Nichols,
Biographical anecdotes of William Hogarth, 1st edn (London, 1781), p.121, 2nd edn (London, 1782), pp. 365—6.
51
Paulson, Hogarth (1971 edn), i, pp. 199—200. Nichols, Biographical anecdotes of William Hogarth, 3rd edn (London, 1785), pp. 338—44
52
(where it is also reported that Hogarth had said that only one of the characters was intended for a real portrait).
53
Characters by lord Chesterfield (London, 1778), pp. 48—9. John Ireland, Hogarth illustrated (2 vols, London, 1791), ii, p. 361. Chesterfield to his son, 18 Mar. 1751. The standard edition is The letters of Philip Dormer
54
55
Stanhope 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. B. Dobrée, 4v. (London, 1932), but there are many, and henceforth Chesterfield's letters to his son will be cited by date. Chesterfield had dropped his earlier belief in progress and come to see all humanity as flawed, at all levels and in all periods: David Spadafora, The idea of progress in eighteenth-century Britain (New Haven, 1990), pp. 35—41.
56
John Bonnycastle, Introduction to astronomy (London, 1786), pp. 218—37.
24
57
G. C., The almanack for the year 1797, according to the true time (Dublin, 1797), pp. i—
xx. "A few Copies only are printed, and will be distributed among my friends", confided the anonymous author.
58
See n.1 above. Prints of the work would have been ubiquitous at this time, but Scarlett
refers to the painting, which was at the time in the possession of Garrick's widow in the west end of London. It would later be sold to Sir John Soane, whose museum remains its home to this day.
59
Coxe, Memoirs of the Pelham administration, ii, pp. 178—9. J. C. D. Clark, English society 1688-1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 262, 397—8. GM xxxvi (1851), pp. 451—9. Maureen Perkins, Visions of the future: almanacs, time and cultural change (Oxford,
60
61
62
1996), pp. 23—34, 51—63; and see above, n.19.
63
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the flat earth (New York, 1991), p. 5. Russell's book
offers a thorough debunking of another useful scientific myth.
64
Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee's natural philosophy (London, 1988), pp. 229, 300 n.92; cf
Anne Geneva, Astrology and the seventeenth-century mind (Manchester, 1995), p. 279.
65
As indeed they have done, in the Royal Greenwich Observatory’s millennium souvenir, Stephen Jay Gould’s book on time, and many other places since. (Added 2012).
25
