Dates

[ausborn]

When you come an old book with a date such as "20 Edward III", what does it mean? I know, it is a stupid question.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Dates

When you come an old book with a date such as "20 Edward III", what does it mean? I know, it is a stupid question.

It's a perfectly good question!!!

That's a regnal date. 20 Edward III means the 20th year in the reign of Edward III. So to convert regnal dates to a calendar date you need a list of the starts of the various reigns.

There's a Wikipedia article for English monarchs here.

If you look at the table you see that Edward III ascended to the throne on 25 January 1326/7. So 1 Edward III started on 25 January 1326/7 and ended on 24 January 1327/8. That means 20 Edward III started on 25 January 1345/6, and ended on 24 January 1346/7.

(Note that what counts is the date the throne was inherited, and not the date of coronation.)

There are also regnal year calculators on the web. For example, here. It's very easy to be "off by one" when you "do it yourself", since the first year of a reign is 1, not 0, (so to get the 20th year, you add 19, not 20) and because of the difference of when a Christian year started (1 January), and when the English legal year started (25 March), and the way they interact with the starting date of each monarch's reign. And you have to take into account which calendar is being used.

[Jan Powell]

Re: Dates

I have a nifty app on my iPhone for just this. It's called English Calendar. It has ecclesiastical calendar, regnal years, old and new style dates, day of the week. I use it heaps.