LORD CHESTERFIELD was not, by all accounts, a very cheerful chap. "Frequent and loud laughter," he declared, "is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the way in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things, and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal or so ill bred as audible "laughter." But if he did not leave the world a jollier place, at least he left it in a more orderly state - Lord Chesterfield's Act of 1751 regularised the calendar, and inter alia settled once and for all the vexed question of when the year begins.
The year, being a perfect circle, can begin on any day you like, the most popular choices over the centuries being March 1st, March 25th, December 25th, and, of course, January 1st. Moreover, sometimes two or more of these different conventions were in use simultaneously, a separate calendar being used for ecclesiastical records, fiscal transactions and personal correspondence.
In the early days of the Roman republic, the New Year began in March on the day the new consuls took office. In 153 BC, however, this transfer of power was rescheduled to January, and the first of that month became New Year's Day, an arrangement which survived the Julian reformation of the calendar in 46 BC and became the standard for most of southern Europe. But further north in France, the situation was a mite confused: prior to AD 800, New Year's Day was on March 1st; then for nearly two centuries it was March 25th; and from AD 996 to 1051 it coincided with Easter before finally reverting to January 1st.
Prior to the Norman conquest of England, the New Year in these parts began on Christmas Day. In 1066, the Normans brought with them the Roman habit of beginning the year on January 1st, but this continental affectation lasted for barely a century: from 1155 onwards New Year's Day was Lady Day, March 25th, and so it remained for most fiscal and legal purposes until 1751.
After 1582, however, the inhabitants of England and Ireland had to contend with the awkward fact that everybody else in Europe (even including Scotland from 1600) began their year in January. This led to the curious custom for the next century and a half of giving a double year date for the 12 over lapping weeks: Samuel Pepys, for example, might well have described hips date of birth as February 23rd, 1632/3.
Lord Chesterfield's Act, however, decreed that the day after December 31st, 1751, should be January 1st, 1752, and so it should be in perpetuity.