History is normally dominated by tales of kings, queens, generals, politicians and the like. We don’t often get to hear the stories of ordinary folk so today I’m going to tell you such a story and also how it reflects a major change in the way the calendar works.
Just to the south of the Taylor’s House in West Stockwell Street that I discussed in my last blog entry, on the other side of Quaker Alley is St. Martin’s Church. Most tours of Colchester, including mine, will include this as a stop so I won’t tell you about it here. However, in its churchyard is something that tends not to be included that often on tours at present.
It is the grave of Jacob Ringer which you can see in the picture above. As the original inscription is a bit worn and difficult to read, an extra plaque with the words of it has been added at one end. He was a Flemish, who the Colchester people called the Dutch, bay maker. Bay was a woollen cloth similar to the baize that is found on snooker tables today. He died on the 20th January 1680 and this is the only bay maker's grave left as well as being the earliest marked grave in the city.
He was very wealthy as is shown by his grave which has an imported stone slab covering it. There are other indications of his wealth that still survive too. In 1648 during the English Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament, Colchester was under siege between 11th June and 28th August of that year when a Royalist army barricaded themselves inside the town walls when they were encircled by a Parliamentary one laid by Lord-General Fairfax.
When the Royalists finally surrendered normal practice was to give the winning army twenty-four hours to loot and pillage the town. To avoid this Fairfax instead imposed a fine of £14,000 on the town. It is always difficult to calculate how much that would be today, but it would be at least £2,000,000, maybe much more, today. The town was in a poor state. They were starving, disease was everywhere, there was extensive damage and trade including that of bays, had been impossible So Fairfax partially relented and reduced the fine to £12,000 which was still an enormous amount of money.
The town’s people made the Dutch pay just over half of it even though they were only about 10% of the population, possibly because they viewed them as wealthy. The list of who paid and how much and Jacob’s name is on it. It’s another indication of his wealth as he paid £10 towards the fine. If we allow for the caveat I put above, £10 then could be worth about £1,400 today, almost six month’s wages for a skilled craftsman like Jacob. Later on, Fairfax took pity and gave the town another £2,000 back, but the Dutch only got £100 of it.
We also have another indication of his wealth. At this time people liked to be buried in linen shrouds. It was traditional as Christ had been buried in one. It was also cheaper than woollen cloth like bays. The problem was much of it was imported from abroad. So to boost the English wool trade in 1666 “An Act for burying in Woollen“ was brought into law. It insisted that everyone except plague victims had to buried in woollen shrouds and coffins could only be lined with wool.
There were of course lots of plague victims at the time and it’s also not clear how much notice was taken of it anyway. Parliament clearly wasn’t satisfied and on 25th March 1677 they introduced a beefed-up version of the Act. Every burial now required two witnesses to produce written affidavits, within eight days of the burial, confirming that a woollen shroud had been used. Clergy were also required to record in a register what fibre had been used.
A hefty fine of £5 was imposed if an affidavit wasn’t provided. Some rich people chose to pay the fine, which went to the poor, but Jacob chose not to as the records show affidavits were produced for him. He must have decided he could afford the wool. It had been his livelihood after all. I can’t now find a reference for it, but I have heard he did leave his widow quite well off so perhaps he decided to give his money to her, rather than pay the large sum of £5 as a fine.
When the light is right, on his gravestone you can see a skull and crossbones. It shows quite well in my picture above. It does not mean that he died of the plague, nor does it mean he had a side hustle as a pirate. It is a what is known as a “Memento mori” which is Latin for “remember that you have to die”, It is a symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death.
Finally, a note about the date. The grave says he died on 20th January 1680. However, it is likely it is likely that he actually died in 1681 on 30th January. So, what’s going on? You may have noticed above that the Woollen Act came on 25th March. It was known as Lady Day as it is the day on which the Virgin Mary was traditionally regarded to have become pregnant with Christ. It is nine months before Christmas Day so you can see why it was chosen to mark that event.
It was one of four quarter days during the year on which things like rents were due. For many leases these quarter days are still used for that purpose. The other three are 24th June (Midsummer’s Day). 29th September (Michaelmas) and Christmas Day itself. As it was a quarter day that was not in or between the seasons for ploughing and harvesting, it was traditionally the day on which contracts between tenant farmers and landowners would be agreed. So, in England from 1155 until 1752, March 25th was considered to be New Year’s Day. Therefore, what we would now regard as 20th January 1681 would have been considered at the time to be part of 1680.
So why did it change? In 45BC the Roman Empire adopted the calendar devised by Julius Caesar which became known as the Julian Calendar. By the 16th century it was becoming apparent that the calendar did not allow for leap years properly and was getting out of sync with the solstices and equinoxes. To fix this in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII instructed that all Catholic Countries adopt a new calendar which calculated leap years more accurately. This became known as the Gregorian Calendar. It also changed New Year’s Day to January 1st.
England didn’t consider itself a Catholic Country at this point so it took no notice of the Pope and carried on using the Julian Calendar. The Julian year became known as Old Style and the Gregorian year New Style. To avoid confusion dates falling between 1st January 1st and 25th March were sometimes written with both their Old Style and New Style Years so you would get 20th January 1680/1 or 1680-1681 or they will give the year and refer to it as 1680 (Old Style) or 1681 (New Style). It was known as Double Dating and historians still use these ways to express dates from that era.
There is a further wrinkle. By 1582, the calendar was of out sync by 10 days so it had to be adjusted. Britain didn’t make this adjustment either so when it finally decided to adopt the Gregorian Calendar in 1750, it was 11 days out of sync. The change was introduced in four steps:
31st December 31st 1750 was followed by 1st January 1, 1750 (in the Old Style, December was the 10th month and January the 11th);
24th March 1750 was followed by March 25, 1751 (25th March was the first day of the Old Style year);
31st December 1751 was followed by 1st January 1752 (the switch from 25th March to 1st January 1 as New Year’s Day);
2nd September 1752 was followed by 14th September 1752 (11 days were dropped to conform to the Gregorian calendar).
This is why our tax year starts on 6th April. It used to start on 25th March (the Old Style New Year’s Day) and the 11 day shift moved it to April 5th. Unlike the calendar year, the start of the tax year wasn’t moved, probably due to the chaos in tax returns it would have caused.
“Hang on!” I hear you say “The tax year starts on 6th April, not 5th April! You have even just said so!” This is true, but the major change the Gregorian Calendar made was how Leap Years are calculated. The Romans introduced them because they realised that the year was not 365 days long but was a quarter of a day longer than that so every four years you have to add a day to the calendar to keep it in sync with nature.
When the current way of counting years was introduced, it was decided that a year that could be divided by four would be the year in which the extra day would be added and they became known as Leap Years. However, the year is actually just under 365 and a quarter days long so to allow for this the Gregorian Calendar modified the rule for calculating Leap Years.
In the Gregorian Calendar, a year is only a Leap Year if it can be divided by 4, but not by 100, unless it can also be divided by 400. So, 1794 was a Leap Year, 1800 and 1900 were not, but 2000 was. 2100 won’t be. So, the Treasury moved the start of the tax year from 5th to 6th April in 1800 due to it being a Leap Year in the Julian Calendar, but not in the Gregorian one. So, 6th April has remained the start of the tax year ever since.
At the time of his death, the gap between the two calendars was 10 days and if we shift the year to line up with the New Style, we could say his life ended on 30th January 1681. That is not what appears on his grave though. As part of the Protestant Flemish community who had fled from their homeland to escape persecution from the Catholic Spanish who were ruling Flanders at the time, he and his family would have wanted no truck with Papish dates or calendars and would have used the Old Style date of 20th January 1680.
So hopefully you can now see how an ordinary grave is not so ordinary after all. If you would like to find out about the Siege, there is a whole series of events this weekend in Colchester to commemorate its 375th anniversary year. You can find the timetable of events here: https://www.visitcolchester.com/whats-on/colchester-siege-spectacular-p1861921
If you would like to go on a tour which includes St. Martin’s and Jacob’s grave, I am running one this Wednesday so please join me. You can find the details here.