Although corrected at times, partially updated, and reprinted at regular intervals, this Handbook has not, until now, been subjected to a thorough overhaul since it was first published in 1945. But “the urgent need to revise some tables as we pass into a new millennium now presents an opportunity not only to review its contents yet again, but also to reflect some changes in the study of English history.… There has, however, been no attempt at such radical revision or enlargement of scope that it would turn Cheney’s original work into something very different” (Preface). The Handbook was, and is, “strictly limited to the dating of records which a student of English history will commonly encounter”. This might appear to be a comparatively modest ambition but the pitfalls awaiting unwary students of English mediaeval history are daunting and far from simple, and are rendered less daunting only by a thorough grounding in the facts presented here. First of all, some understanding must be gleaned of the Old Style Julian calendars so‐called because it was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 bc, and modified by the New Style, or Gregorian calendar. introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Having overcome this little temporal difficulty the student is then qualified to tackle such questions as the Christian year, the civil reckoning of time, or the date of Easter. We are reassured, in this new edition, that it is a relatively simple matter now, with a computer, to use an algorithm to calculate the date of Easter in any given year. This algorithm, 11 lines long, has all the appearance of an equation from hell, at least to a student historian, unless by a singular happy chance he is also a Senior Wrangler.
Chapters 2 to 5 all comprise lists of dates with whatever text is appropriate and/or necessary: Rulers of England and regnal years (rulers from the English settlement to ad 1154, regnal years from that date, and Exchequer years of British rulers); List of Popes (St Peter and his successors to ad 590, and from Gregory the Great to Pope John Paul II); Saints’ days and festivals (a list, other festivals, in annual chronological order, days of the week, and the dating of Episcopal acta); and Legal chronology (the limit of legal memory, limitation of actions, the law terms, Chancery and Star Chamber, parliament and statutes, and tables of law terms, etc.). If all these seem mundane, and no more than tedious to compile, examine the additional textual matter and it soon becomes clear just how much historical scholarship and erudition have been brought into play. A full tabulation of the Roman calendar comes next, with a brief indication of how this can be confused by slips of the quill by careless clerks and chroniclers. We are then reunited with the perpetual complexities of calculating Easter, with four chapters dealing with the Celtic and Roman (Alexandrian) Easter Days ad 400‐768, calendars for all possible dates of Easter ad 400‐2100, Easter Days according to Old Style ad 400‐1752, and to New Style ad 1583‐2100. The Handbook rounds off with the English calendar for 1752 (when 11 days were lopped off); the dates of adoption of the Gregorian calendar in European countries, territories and provinces and, new to this edition, the French Revolutionary calendar.
It is vastly encouraging that a book of this nature is still deemed to be essential for students of history. Whether such scholarship can continue for much longer to be applied is becoming more and more debatable as history in the school curriculum is overshadowed by less demanding, or socially inclusive, subjects. But we can at least console ourselves that, for the moment, scholars and academic publishers are still willing to devote resources to revising and updating essential academic research tools. This one, of course, is of the highest quality.
