Help!

[erastes]

Happy birthday treva2007! Have a good one!

HELP! I have a real dilemma.  Most of my sources - books, internet, historians - tell me that Charles I was executed on 30th January 1649.

However!  Look at this.  An actual newspaper reporting the death of Charles I - gives full details of the execution and the speech....

in 1648...!!!!!!  What's a historical writer to do? Aside from panic, that is? It's not just on page one that is say 1648 -it says it on the last page too.

OMG - True Blood. What a great show - just gets better all the time.  Makes me gag, makes me giggle, makes me go awww, and rowrl (over moody broody Eric).  Loving it.  I wish they hadn't  shown the dog running out of the bar though, as it would have made the cliffhanger even funnier. Now that's my idea of a shifter - silly dog - nothing Alpha or sexy about that.

Comments

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

In my sources I have: 19 NOV 1600 Dunfermline Palace - 30 JAN 1649 Whitehall, London. But at home I have an essay on the Stuart family (a very serious book) and I can check.

Elisa

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes - 30th Jan 1649 is in all my books.

But what about that newspaper??

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Could they have misprinted the year? (I know when I'm writing checks that it takes a few times to actually remember to change the year. Maybe the typesetter was different that day and got it wrong?)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Ah - see below. All is answered. *loves the flist*

[stacia-seaman.livejournal.com]

Re: the new year: If I'm remembering correctly, the legal year in England started in March, not January, at that time? So in our system, 30th January is 1649, but according to the system in place at the time, 1649 did not begin until March and thus the execution took place in 1648 in contemporary accounts.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Right: In the mediaeval Europe (from 1175 in ) the legal year started on Lady Day - 25th March. By 1560 most countries had changed and started the year on 1st January. Scotland carried out this change in 1600. In England and Wales an Act of Parliament was needed to effect the change from 1st January 1752.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~jk.calisto/calisto/england/new_year.htm

[erastes.livejournal.com]

There's only one word for this.

BUGGER.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

GOOD GOD.

This is more confusing - now I don't know what to do.

(thank you, though)

[mrs-norrington.livejournal.com]

The calendar year back then started in March. The new year didn't start in January until 1752 I believe, so if I were cataloguing the newspaper I would enter the date as 30 Jan 1648/49.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

as I said below.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(and thanks)

[mrs-norrington.livejournal.com]

I know, it's confusing. Strictly speaking if you're writing the pov of a character of the period it would be accurate to say 1648. Of course, that might confuse the reader too...so I understand the dilemma.

Since I'm studying to be an archivist I have to deal with that issue a lot. If it helps at all, there are books out there called Book of Dates that gives scads of information on regnal years, holidays, etc.


Interestingly enough, Charles II dated his regnal year in records as the year of his father's death despite not actually 'reigning' until after Cromwell's death.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

And so he should do too!

I read somewhere - Discworld I think - that the smallest particle of recorded time was that of succession, after the king dies and the new one takes over.

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Have a read of this; it should set your mind at rest:

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3358

[erastes.livejournal.com]

OMG. This doesn't help at all. This means that all my dates are going to be wrong.

Argh!

(but thank you kindly - how on EARTH did not miss this piece of information???)

So - what date do I put on chapter on bloody day he died? 1648 and feel smug when people write and call me on it, or 1649 and say testily "YES, I KNOW" when anyone says it was "officially" 1648?

[viggofest.livejournal.com]

An author's note at the end?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I think so. I am thinking perhaps that the book needs a bloody glossary - NOT what m/m readers are generally wanting....

:)

I'll ask the publisher, that's probably the best idea.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I'd go with an author's note at the back, stating that yes, the year was 1648 by the way people then reckoned time, but that this would confuse contemporary readers, so you stuck with the modern dating system.

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

I suggest your dating follow the common convention understood and accepted by modern scholars. ie, modern present day calendar, and if you are worried about leading academics trawling over your research to leave rude reviews on Amazon, then put an afterword in the end.

My dates are complicated by a calendar that is pre-Julian, and pre-Gregorian, so I just ignore them, and give them as modern style dating. Mainly because if I head a chapter: August 7070, people will assume I'm writing sci-fi/dystopia, so minimise the confusion and go with common standard convention. It's the bloody story that matters, anyway.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you. *calms down*

I'm not often such a Diva....

:)

shut up.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Actually, I find author's notes and comments and glossaries and reading lists really damn cool. I love having the historical bits verified and knowing what the author changed -- see the Sharpe books or the book I'm currently reading (And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander) -- they have oodles of notes and historical things, and I eat that with a spoon.

[marquesate.livejournal.com]

Yup, as others said, a different calendar. The same confusing thing happens with Pepys' diary :-) the Gregorian calendar was not adopted in Britain before 1751, thus the New Year begins on 1 March (Calculus Florentinus/Annunciation style) and not on 1 January.

Give me back my 11 days!

[aunty_marion]

Having read all these responses, I am now officially educated - I didn't know that! (I suppose I could possibly have found it out, but...)

However, it does remind me of my first encounter with a computer; it was a remote terminal *gasp* to a mainframe *gasp*, installed in a room in North Staffs Poly with the mainframe all the way down in Birmingham! *gasp*. OK, this was 1970 - I suspect the 'mainframe' was all of 8K. And it had been programmed to one thing, and one thing only, multi-tasking not having been invented yet; you put in your date of birth, and it told you how many hours (approximately) you'd spent eating, sleeping, playing, going to school, etc. Results were actually *printed* on paper tape! Cor, the miracles of modern science. Me being me and a smartarse, I put in Richard III's date of birth. And got back a snotty bit of paper tape printout (which I still have somewhere!) saying that it was not programmed to deal with dates before 1751.

[cheshyre]

Yeah, what others said about the calendar year shift.

By the period calendars,
* Kit Marlowe was born in February 1563
* Shakespeare was born in April 1564
* Kit is 2 moths older than Will.
Most history books (and works of fiction) generally just simplify the matter and number the years the way they are now, starting in January.

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

But... I am so confused, as they already showed Sam and that dog together.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Did they? I must have missed that! Heh!!

[cynbaby.livejournal.com]

Sam needs something to get his insperation from. ;)

[cynbaby.livejournal.com]

Damn you for getting me hooked on that series. DAMN YOU.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Bwahahah!!!

[feed-your-muse.livejournal.com]

I saw the first episode last night...I see what you mean about Jason; I'm pretty sure he wasn't that nekkid, that often, in the books! ;P

Did you watch the version with Japanese subtitles? I couldn't find a non-subtitled version which added a bit of surrealism to the experience. Characters speak. There are Japanese subtitles. Then there are English subtitles. ::blink::
I enjoyed it though. Apparently HBO programmes are often shown on E4 and (I think) one of the Sky channels. Deadwood was an HBO series, so with any luck True Blood should show up here at some point!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Some of them are on Megavideo which was bigger and non subtitled, but I just ended up getting used to it!

Glad you liked it!