and that to set us right it would be necessary to give credit for
eleven days which nobody was conscious of having enjoyed. The law,
however, had said that it should be so. Accordingly, the day after the
2nd of September, 1752, was called the 14th, to the great indignation
of thousands, who reckoned that they had thus been cut off from nearly
a fortnight of life which honestly belonged to them. These persons
sturdily refused to acknowledge the Christmas Eve and Day of the new
calendar. They averred that the true festival was that which now began
on the 5th of January _next year_. They would go to church, they said,
on no other day; nor eat mince-pies nor drink punch but in reference
to this one day. The clergy had a hard time of it with these
recusants. It will be well, therefore, to quote one singular example
to show how this recusancy was encountered. It is from a collection of
pamphlet-sermons preserved by George III., none of which, however,
have anything curious or particularly meritorious about them save this
one, which was preached on Friday, January 5, 1753, "Old Christmas
Day." Mr. Francis Blackburne, "one of the candid disquisitors," opened
his church on that day, which was crowded by a congregation anxious to
see the day celebrated as that of the anniversary of the Nativity. The
service for Christmas Day, however, was not used. "I will answer your
expectations so far," said the preacher in his sermon, "as to give you
a _sermon on the day_; and the rather because I perceive you are
disappointed of _something else_ that you expected." The purport of
the discourse is to show that the change of style was desirable, and
that it having been effected by Act of Parliament, with the sanction
of the King, there was nothing for it but acquiescence. "For," says
the preacher, "had I, to oblige you, disobeyed this Act of Parliament,
it is very probable I might have lost my benefice, which, you know, is
all the subsistence I have in the world; and I should have been
rightly served; for who am I that I should fly in the face of his
Majesty and the Parliament? These things are left to be ordered by the
higher powers; and in any such case as that, I hope not to think
myself wiser than the King, the whole nobility, and principal gentry
of Great Britain"!!

The peasants of Buckinghamshire, however, pitched upon a very pretty
method to settle the question of Christmas, left so meekly by Mr.
Blackburne to the King, nobility, and