ABSTRACT
How many daies, or how much tyme, is become superfluously admitted into our vulgar kalendar?
John Dee, A playne discourse (1583) What is interesting about the reception of the Gregorian calendar in England is not that
it was rejected, but that it came close to being adopted. The privy council, the judiciary and the leading men of science approved it, and although the bishops sought to block it they came close to being outmanoeuvred. The episode has usually been seen-when it has been noticed at all-as a typical example of “little Englandism”, or as a parochial fit of antipopery. It deserves to be taken much more seriously, for it throws light upon the relationship between science and religion, and between church and state, in Elizabethan England. Above all, perhaps, it was a climactic episode in the thought and career of the court magus John Dee, whose advice to the government on the reform is the only one of his major works which has escaped scrutiny.
