Time in Scotland

Care has to be taken in examining historical dates in Scotland, especially when these are being discussed by English historians or are related to events in English history. This is because of the different calendars used by England and Scotland for a significant period of history.

By the middle ages it was recognised that the Julian calendar, which had been designed in Roman times, was unsatisfactory. This was because it did not take account of the length of the year, determined by the exact time taken by the earth to revolve around the sun. This was a slight but cumulative error which gave rise to progressive shifts in the seasons.

Pope Gregory decreed that a new calendar should be designed which took account of these shifts (the concept of leap years was introduced) and this was adopted throughout the Roman Catholic world. This new innovation became known as the Gregorian Calendar.

The problem arose from the fact that post-reformation Scotland was far from the Roman Catholic community in idealogy, as indeed was England since the time of Henry VIII (1491 - 1547).

However, the Scots were pragmatic folk, and they realised that trading with countries such as France was being hampered by the use of a different calendar. Conforming with England was not such a priority. Thus in 1600, Scotland adopted the Gregorian Calendar.

Even following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the two countries continued on different calendars for more than 150 years. Thus there was a difference of eleven days between Scotland and England during this period, which sometimes results in ambiguity in the dates of historical events.

It was not until 1752 that England swallowed its principles and adopted what they had regarded as a Papist invention. It was not easy to move to this new calendar; people widely believed that they were being robbed of the intervening days and they protested.

Interestingly, Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918, which results in the fact that what is widely known as the October revolution was actually in November! Ethiopia still uses the Julian calendar.

A further confusion results from another change which was adopted in Scotland. In 1600 the definition of what date marked the start of the year was changed. Prior to 1600 the start of the year was regarded as the 25th March (which was the beginning of Spring). After that date the 1st January was adopted as the start of the year.

Interestingly the 25th March was retained as the start of the financial year by the government. But this was the 25th March by the old Julian calendar. If we make the appropriate correction, we get to the 6th April which is the start of the government year (often regarded as the Tax Year) today.