September

Aside from the calendars in almanacs, the most widely distributed calendars from the start of the Elizabethan reign until the middle of the seventeenth

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Figure 3.4.9 September, Church of England, The Booke of Common Prayer (1611), A6r. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, RB 438000:367.

century (and later) were the perpetual calendars included in the printed Book of Common Prayer (Figure 3.4.9). These were printed in great numbers and every possible size, from folio to 24°.⁵ Each Book of Common Prayer included a perpetual calendar, such as this one from a 1600 Robert Barker Folio edition of the Book of Common Prayer, with the day of the month, the dominical letter, the Roman kalends, and the red- and black-letter saint’s days. Limited astronomical information is also included in this and other Book of Common Prayer calendars: here, the “Dog-dayes end” on September 5th-6th, and the Sun enters Libra on September 12th (information which is not as exact as that in the annual almanacs). The most significant aspect of this calendar, though, is the tethering of every day to a particular biblical reading, a practice that infused the annual calendar with the word of God.

October

Thomas Bretnor, a physician, mathematician, and teacher in London, compiled almanacs from 1607 to 1618. He became a byword for almanacs generally; Middleton goes after him by name in No Wit No Help like a Woman’s. This October calendar with blanks (Figure 3.4.10),

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Figure 3.4.10 October, Thomas Bretnor, A New Almanacke (1616), B4v-B5r. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, RB 46191.

Sample calendars, 1518-1640 279 from a Bretnor 1616 almanac, survives in a series of bound almanacs in the Huntington Library owned by a relative of Chief Justice Sir Henry Montague, whose instituture is recorded correctly for November 18th, 1616. The entries are sparse. October includes one unfinished entry (for the 15th), and the single notation of a journey for the 18th: “I went to Winchester.”

This 1616 calendar captures the way in which the amount of astrological information in the annual almanacs gradually increased in the seventeenth century. Beneath the first heading on the left-hand page, Bretnor includes standard information on the rising and setting of the Sun—adjusted every ten days—and the length of the planetary hours. The calendar itself provides the day of the month, dominical letter, saint’s day with law terms, and location of the Moon in the twelve signs, but also (in the penultimate column) the aspects of the seven planets: conjunctions, oppositions, tri-unes, quadratures, etc. The final column adds information on high tide at London Bridge on each day. The second page of the almanac lists on the left the day of the month and the Roman kalends, and, to the right, the day of the month in the Gregorian calendar, with the associated dominical letter. The astronomical and astrological information in Bretnor’s calendar is perfectly at home with the conventional calendar poem at the top of this page, which reminds readers that medical interventions are acceptable in October, if necessary and used with caution, and this month is a good time for outdoor exercise fitting one’s social station.