ABSTRACT
That monster custom, who all sense doth eat. Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 4
Our dance of custom, round about the oak. Shakespeare, The merry wives of Windsor, act 5, scene 5
Having undertaken an extensive jurney around the 1752 calendar reform, we can now return with greater understanding to the episode with which we began: the legendary calendar riots. In Chapter 1, this “rural myth” was unpicked in detail and shown to be an inspired fiction, set in motion by Hogarth and completed from this and other eighteenthcentury materials by early nineteenth-century rationalists. We are now in a position to see the myth in its cultural context, to understand its deeper meaning, and to trace its wider resonances.
