"Neither shall this act accelerate or anticipate the times of payment of rents, annuities, or other monies, which shall become payable in consequence of any custom, usage, lease, deed, writing, or other contract or agreement, now subsisting, or which shall be entered into before the said fourteenth of September, or which shall become payable by virtue of any act of Parliament. Not to accelerate the payment, or increase the interest of any money which shall become payable as aforesaid, or at the time of the delivery of any goods or other things whatsoever, or the commencement, or determination of any leases or demises of lands, &c., or other contracts or agreements, annuity, or rent, or of any grant for a term of years, &c., or the time of attaining the age of twenty-one years, or any other age requisite by law, usage, or writing, for the doing any act, or for any other purpose, by any persons now born, or who shall be born before the said fourteenth of September; or the time of the determination of any apprenticeship or other service by indenture, or by articles under seal, or by reason of any simple contract or hiring; but all these shall commence, cease, and determine, at and upon the said natural days and times on which they would have happened if this act had not been made." II. LORD CHESTERFIELD'S OWN ACCOUNT. +Source.+--_Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield._ Edited by Lord Mahon, 1845-53. Vol. ii., pp. 115, 116. LONDON, _March 18_, O.S. 1751. MY DEAR FRIEND, I acquainted you in a former letter that I had brought in a bill into the House of Lords, for correcting and reforming our present calendar, which is the Julian, and for adopting the Gregorian. I will now give you a more particular account of that affair, from which reflections will naturally occur to you that I hope may be useful, and which I fear you have not made. It was notorious, that the Julian calendar was erroneous, and had overcharged the solar year with eleven days. Pope Gregory XIII. corrected this error [in 1582]; his reformed calendar was immediately received by all the Catholic Powers of Europe, and afterwards adopted by all the Protestant ones, except Russia [which still (1912) adheres to the old style.--ED.], Sweden and England. It was not, in my opinion, very honourable for England to remain in a gross and avowed error, especially in such company; the inconvenience of it was likewise felt by all those who had foreign correspondences whether political or mercantile. I determined, therefore, to attempt the reformation; I consulted the best lawyers, and the most skilful astronomers, and we cooked up a bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began; I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both of which I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter, and also to make them believe that