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Theregnal years of English and British monarchs are the officialregnal years of themonarchs of theKingdom of England from 1066 to May 1707, theKingdom of Great Britain from May 1707 to January 1801, and theUnited Kingdom since January 1801. The regnal calendar ("nth year of the reign of King X", abbreviated to "n X", etc.) continues to be utilised in many official British government and legal documents of historical interest, notably parliamentary statutes prior to 1963, and prior to 1867 in the case law collected in the year books, nominative reporters, and digests, and in the reports republished in the English Reports and Revised Reports.

For centuries, English official public documents have been dated according to theregnal years of the rulingmonarch. Traditionally,parliamentary statutes are referenced by regnal year, e.g. theOccasional Conformity Act 1711 is officially referenced as "10 Ann. c. 6" (read as "the sixth chapter of the statute of the parliamentary session that sat in the 10th year of the reign of Queen Anne").

Regnal years are calculated from the official date (year, month and day) of a monarch's accession. For example, King George III acceded on 25 October 1760. That marks the beginning of his first regnal year. His second regnal year starts on 25 October 1761, his third regnal year on 25 October 1762, and so on. When a monarch dies, abdicates or is deposed, the regnal year comes to an end (whether the full year has run its course or not). A new regnal year begins from a new date, with a new monarch.

As different monarchs begin their reigns at different times, the exact month and day when a regnal year begins varies across reigns. For example, Elizabeth I's regnal year starts on 17 November, James I's on 24 March, Charles I's on 27 March, and so on.

The table below gives the dates of the regnal years forKings of England (and subsequentlyGreat Britain), from 1066 to the present day.^[1] These are officialde jure dates, and may or may not coincide with whether a particular king hadde facto power or not at that time. For example, as theCommonwealth era wassuppressed in the official record, the regnal years of Charles II are measured from 30 January 1649 (the day his father Charles I was executed); as a result, when Charles II actually became king, on 29 May 1660, he was already in his 12th regnal year. (For thede facto tabulation of English rulers, see any conventionallist of English monarchs.)

Regnal years on the table below are recorded only for Kings of England (and subsequently Great Britain, and later the United Kingdom). These are not regnal years ofKings of Scotland norIreland, which have their own regnal dates.

The regnal year is distinct from the official "legal year" – that is, the calendar used for legal, civic and ecclesiastical purposes. The legal year also did not always coincide with the start date for the historical year. Until the 13th century, the English legal year began atChristmas (25 December). From the 13th century until 1752, the legal year began on 25 March (Lady Day).^[2] It is only since 1752 that the legal year was re-set to coincide with the start of the historical calendar year (1 January) (seeCalendar (New Style) Act 1750).^[3]

These date differences can also be confusing when sorting dates in old documents before 1753. For example, the reign ofCharles I came to an end with his execution on 30 January 1649, but contemporary records such as the House of Commons Journals record this as 30 January 1648.^[4] To account for this complication, it is customary for historians referring to official or legal events between 1 January and 25 March to write the year down in "double-barreled" format (e.g. "30 January 1648–49", the former being the legal year, the latter the historical year).

The regnal years listed below are given in normal historical date (not legal year). So a parliamentary statute that was passed on, say, 10 February 1585 (in normal calendar date) would be dated in the official record as 10 February1584 (the legal year), and simultaneously said to have been passed in the 27th year of Elizabeth I (the regnal year that started on 17 November 1584).^[3]

Adoption of 1 January as the start date for the year was one ofGregorian calendar reforms introduced byPope Gregory XIII in 1582, and was quickly adopted in most Catholic countries. Protestant Scotland began using 1 January in 1600 (but not the rest of the Gregorian calendar until 1752). The double-barreled format was commonly used in Dutch documents, as two provinces (Holland & Zeeland) had adopted the Gregorian reform early (1583), but the remaining provinces of the Netherlands only adopted it later (1700).

Most of the European continent had already transitioned from 25 March to 1 January by the mid-17th century, when there were many English exiles abroad. Use of the double-barreled format (e.g. 1674-75 or 1674/75) begins to occasionally appear in England, both in private and public records, already by the late 17th century. English writers of this era (e.g.Samuel Pepys's diary), tended to stick to the 25 March start date, especially if they were writing only for English audiences. Nonetheless, manyEnglish periodicals (newspapers, magazines, reviews, almanacs), which exploded in the early 1700s, used the historical year with 1 January start date and did not bother with double-barreling.^[5]

The 1751 Act reforming the legal year also officially introduced to England theGregorian calendar on Thursday 14 September 1752. Up until then, England had been using theJulian calendar, which by that time was eleven days behind the calendar of most countries on the European Continent. So events before 1752 in English records often differ from European records, and it is sometimes necessary to refer to both sets of dates using "Old Style" (Julian) and "New Style" (Gregorian) notation, (seeOld Style and New Style dates). By way of calculation, OS was ten days behind NS until 1700, and eleven days behind NS after 1700.

• e.g.William of Orange's armada landed in England on 5 November 1688 (OS) or 15 November 1688 (NS).
• e.g. QueenAnne died on 1 August 1714 (OS) or 12 August 1714 (NS).

Anyone handling old dates need to be cautious with variations. A document dated 5 March 1611 in England would be dated 5 March 1612 in Scotland, 15 March 1612 in France and 5/15 March 1611/12 in the Netherlands.

The dates in the table below follow the English calendar (OS until 1752, NS thereafter).

To calculate the regnal year from a particular date, one subtracts the first regnal year from the calendar year in question. The year is not adjusted if the month and day falls before the regnal date, and if it falls on or after the regnal date, add one. Finally – for the regnal year of William III after Mary's death (that is, from 28 December 1694 onwards) – one also adds 6.

• Example 1: 4 July 1776. This falls in the reign ofGeorge III, whose first regnal year is 1760; so 1776 – 1760 = 16th year of his reign (4 July is before 25 October).
• Example 2: 2 May 1662. This is in the reign ofCharles II, whose first regnal year is 1649. So 1662 – 1649 = 13, add 1 because 2 May is after 30 January, so the date falls in the 14th regnal year of Charles II.
• Example 3: 31 December 1695. This falls in the reign ofWilliam III alone (after Mary's death), whose "first" regnal year is 1694; so 1695 – 1694 = 1, add 1 because 31 December is after 28 December, and also add 6 because the date is after Mary's death (on 27 December), so the date falls in the "8th" year of his reign.

On many legal documents, including the head of statute rolls and statute compilations up until the mid-19th century, the regnal year is usually written out in Latin, e.g. "Anno Regni Georgii II vicesimo nono", meaning the 29th year of the reign of KingGeorge II. This is commonly referred to simply as "29 George II" in most English texts.

In dense or compact legal citations, the royal name is often abbreviated, and the royal ordinal is sometimes converted from Roman to Arabic numeral (e.g. "29 Geo.2").

Uniquely in the case of the Tudor queenElizabeth I, the first monarch of that name, her abbreviated legal citations are usually rendered without an ordinal number, so the 25th year of Elizabeth I is simply "25 Eliz." However, ordinal is retained on subsequent monarchs, e.g. the 25th year of the modern queenElizabeth II retains the numeral as 25 Eliz. 2.

Numbering (in Latin) for regnal year (anno):

Between 13th and 15th Centuries, it was common for English official and legal documents (acts, writs, deeds, etc.) to be dated by reference to the weekday relative to a nearbyreligious feast date and the regnal year (e.g. "Monday after feast ofSt. Luke Evangelist, 3 Henry V" for 21 October 1415).

Translating a feast citation to a historical calendar date involves looking up theliturgical calendar for the regnal year in question. The standard reference for date conversion is C.R. Cheney'sHandbook of Dates.^[9]

England had four "quarter days" on which certain transactions, notably the payment of rents, were conducted every year:

• (1)Lady Day (feast of the Annunciation) (25 March)
• (2)Midsummer Day (feast of St. John the Baptist) (24 June)
• (3)Michaelmas Day (feast of St. Michael and all Angels) (29 September)
• (4)Christmas Day (feast of Nativity), (25 December)

It is not uncommon to find English documents or court judgments relating that a certain action goes into effect or has to be undertaken by one of these quarter days.

Many old legal documents (especially court documents likeplea rolls) do not contain any specific day, but simply record the "law term" and regnal year (e.g. "Michaelmas term, 5 George II", meaning sometime in Oct-Nov, 1732).

Since time immemorial, there was a division between "holy days" (dies feriales), dedicated to God alone, where no official or juridical business could be conducted, and "law days" (dies juridicos) when cases could be judged, writs issued, lawsuits filed, etc.

Traditionally (allegedly since the days ofEdward the Confessor), the English law days were grouped and divided into four "law terms", that is periods when the higher English law courts would be open (all other days were deemed "holy days" or reserved for agriculture). Each law term lasted about three weeks, and was named after the major religious feast which immediately preceded it. So the four law terms of England were referred to as "Michaelmas term" (the first, Oct-Nov), "Hilary term" (Jan-Feb), "Easter term" (Apr-May) and "Trinity term" (Jun-Jul).

The law terms were primarily established for theCourt of Common Pleas, which was separated from the king's court in 1190s and sat in Westminster since 1234. The terms were also adopted by theKing's Bench once it also became sedentary. It was more loosely followed by theExchequer of Pleas. TheCourt of Chancery, by contrast, was "always open". In practice, the law terms were a little flexible and had varied lengths, depending on the court or volume of business, and sometimes stretched well past the prescribed dates, with breaks if a major religious festival landed within the law term. TheLaw Terms Act 1830 (11 Geo IV & 1 Will IV c.70) fixed exact calendar dates for the law terms (with only slight adjustments if they landed on a Sunday).

The law terms were abolished in the1873 Judicature act (36 & 37 Vict c.66), but the old statutory terms continued to be used as a measure of time for legal awards. By force of tradition, the same term labels are still applied today for sittings of theHigh Court of Justice and theCourt of Appeal, but no longer have the same meaning.^[10]

• "Hilary term" (Jan-Feb): the Hilary term originally ran from the feast ofSt. Hilary (13 January) toSeptuagesima (Ninth Sunday before Easter, usually early February, thereby breaking up beforeLent), but the full Hilary law term for Common Pleas ran specifically from the octave of St. Hilary (23 January) to 12 February (if it landed on Sunday, then the next day). In the 1830 act (1 Will IV c.70), the Hilary law term was fixed from 11 January to 30 January.^[11] Today the Hilary sitting runs from 11 January to the Wednesday beforeEaster Sunday (March/April).
• "Easter term" (Apr-May): traditionally ran fromoctave of Easter (week after Easter) toAscension Day (usually May). The 1830 act fixed it to begin on 15 April and end 8 May (with adjustments if the dates landed too close to Easter Sunday).^[12] Today, the Easter sitting runs from second Tuesday after Easter to Friday beforeWhitsunday (usually late May).
• "Trinity term" (Jun-Jul): ran from octave of Whitsunday (usually early Jun) to mid-July (break for harvest). Early on, it began in the octave ofTrinity Sunday, but full term only began from the first Wednesday afterCorpus Christi day (thus a week-and-half after Trinity Sunday). A 1540 act (32 Henry VIII c.21) brought that up by a week, and made it officially begin the first Monday after Trinity Sunday and the full term from Friday after Corpus Christi (thus the first Friday after Trinity).^[13] Today, the Trinity sitting runs from second Tuesday after Whitsunday to July 31.
• "Michaelmas term" (Oct-Dec): originally the full Michaelmas term ran from the fourth day of the octave of the feast ofSt. Michael (9 October) to 28 November (beforeAdvent Sunday). An act of 1641 (16 Charles I c.6) pushed the begin date forward to 23 October (fourth day of three weeks of St. Michael). A 1752 act (22 Geo. II c.48) pushed it further forward, so the Michaelmas law term began on the Morrow ofAll Souls' Day(3 November) and the full term on fourth day of Morrow (6 November). The 1830 act fixed the term as beginning on 2 November and ending on 25 November.^[14] Today, the Michaelmas sitting runs from 1 October to 21 December.

As historically the annual accounts of theExchequer ended precisely on Michaelmas Day (29 September), the Michaelmas law term is traditionally considered the first law term of the year.

These law terms apply only to England (Scotland has different law terms entirely).

Some old English universities (e.g.Oxford) use the same labels for theiracademic terms, but their dates should not be confused with law term dates.

Regnal years were also used for the records at theExchequer since the earliest days (before 1130). However, the royal fiscal accounts were calculated for one year, always starting on the Morrow ofMichaelmas Day (day after feast of St. Michael) (30 September) and ending on Michaelmas Day (29 September). The timing of the "exchequer year" did not vary with the reign. Nonetheless, exchequer years were also referenced by royal names and numbers. Citations of Exchequer documents can be tricky as the relationship between the labels used by the Exchequer and the regnal year proper used by theChancery is unstable.

Exchequer fiscal accounts were reckoned retrospectively (from the end of the exchequer year backwards to its beginning). So for the first two centuries, thePipe Rolls and memoranda of the Exchequer were assigned the label of the regnal year on which thefinal day (29 September) fell.^[15][16] This meant that the royal names and numbers assigned to exchequer years overlap and often conflict with the regnal years used by the Chancery, e.g. Henry II's 35th regnal year ended with his death on 6 July 1189, but the exchequer year which began on 30 Sep 1188 continues until 29 Sep 1189, which lands in the first regnal year of his successor Richard I. Thus the entire exchequer year (1188–89) is retrospectively labelled and referenced as "1 Richard I". Future receipts from, say, December 1189, are added to "2 Richard I" in exchequer year (1189-90), but are actually received during "1 Richard I" in regnal year.

The rule changed in 1307. Edward I's 35th regnal year ended with his death on 2 July 1307, and if the old rule had been followed then the exchequer year which began on 30 Sep 1306 and continued until 29 Sep 1307 should have been "1 Edward II", the first regnal year of his successor Edward II. But the rule now changed so that the regnal year that formed themajority of the retrospective year ending on Michaelmas Day should be the label for the exchequer year.^[17] So the exchequer year of (1306-07) is actually (and more sensibly) labelled "35 Edward I", while the exchequer year of 1307-08 is "1 Edward II". This new rule brought the exchequer year more closely in alignment with the regnal year (but still overlaps regnal years).

The rule was changed back again in 1483. After the brief reign of KingEdward V, which ended with his premature death on 9 April, 1483, the final day of the exchequer year (29 Sep 1483) landed in the regnal year of his usurper Richard III. The exchequer year of 1482-83 was labelled "1 Richard III". So it seems the prior rule (label by final day) was reinstated. Yet two years later, the rule reverses again: Richard III died on 22 August, 1485, and the final day (29 Sep 1485) landed in first regnal year of the Tudor king Henry VII, yet the 1484-85 exchequer year is labelled "3 Richard III" (label by majority).^[18]

The rule seems to change again in 1548. The Exchequer year that began on 30 September 1547 and ended on 29 September, 1548 is given the label "1 Edward VI". KingEdward VI first regnal year started 28 Jan, 1547 and ended 28 Jan 1548. That means that the first regnal year of Edward VI only overlaps with the first four months of his first exchequer year - clearly not the majority of the 1547-58 exchequer year. So the rule now seems to be for exchequer years to be labeled by the regnal year at thestart of the exchequer year (30 September), rather than the final day or the majority. This first day rule continues through subsequent years and reigns down to 1831. The difference between exchequer years and regnal years can sometimes be quite dramatic, e.g. Elizabeth's regnal year (starting 17 November) only overlaps with the first two months of the corresponding exchequer year bearing the same label. George III's regnal year (starting 25 October) only overlaps for the first month of the corresponding exchequer year, i.e. George III's first exchequer year begins 30 Sep, 1761, but his first regnal year "1 George III" ends less than a month later (25 Oct, 1761), yet the whole exchequer year (Sep 1761 to Sep 1762) is referenced as "1 George III" in the pipe roll, despite 11 months of it being in regnal year 2 George III.^[19]

The varying rules for labelling exchequer years make it sometimes tricky for historical researchers. Adding to the confusion,issue rolls andreceipt rolls used by the Exchequer, which take Michaelmas Day and Easter Day as endpoints, nonetheless employ the chancery's regnal year calendar in labelling rather than the exchequer year (happily, their entries also include weekdays and month, making it easier to pin down and sort dating conflicts).

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Since Medieval times, laws passed by Parliament were inscribed onStatute Rolls (until 1483) and thereafter onParliament Rolls (until 1850). A roll was literally a long continuousscroll of vellum parchment, upon which the acts ("chapters") of a parliamentary session, passed and assented, were written down. A new roll was started at the beginning of a parliamentary session, and labelled by the regnal year in which that session sat. The rolls were stored in various scattered locations around Westminster and London, up until the establishment of thePublic Record Office in 1838.

TheParliament of England has passed statutes from 1235 to 1707, many of which are still in force inEnglish law jurisdiction (England and Wales). A parliamentary statute is permanent and remains in force until explicitly repealed (although many statutes were passed with in-built expiration dates).

Th Parliament of England was converted into theParliament of Great Britain in 1707 (with the union of Scotland) and theParliament of the United Kingdom in 1801 (with the union with Ireland). While politically unified, they were not legally unified. Continued legal separation for Scotland was guaranteed in Article 19 of the 1707Treaty of Union, and a similar guarantee was made for Ireland in theAct of Union 1800.^[20] As a result, theUnited Kingdom retains three distinct and separate legal systems (English law,Scots law andNorthern Ireland law) and three separate legal jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland). Laws passed by the UK parliament in Westminster have to note which of the three legal jurisdictions (or all) they apply to. The regnal year method of legal citation covered in this article pertains strictly to English law jurisdiction, and does not necessarily apply to other jurisdictions.

Statute laws are cited not by parliament, but rather byparliamentary session. A parliament usually has multiple sessions. An "adjournment" interrupts a session, a "prorogation" ends a session, and a "dissolution" ends a parliament. A session is labelled by the regnal year in which that session sat up until its prorogation.

In English tradition, a parliamentary session passes only one public act or "statute", albeit a statute with various "chapters". The parliamentary session is labelled by the regnal year in which that session sat. Every public act passed by that session (and given royal assent) is assigned a chapter number (c.1, c.2, c.3, etc.). So the legal citation of a law or public act involves citing the regnal year and chapter, e.g. a public law will be cited as "15 Charles II c. 4", meaning "the fourth chapter of the statute passed by the parliamentary session that sat in the 15th year of the reign of Charles II".

Parliaments can also pass "private acts" (acts affecting only a specific individual or group). These are also given chapter numbers, but kept on a separate list since 1539 and not always printed. Nonetheless, they are cited the same way (by regnal year and chapter number). This may sometimes cause confusion as a private act can have the same session and chapter number as an entirely different public act. To differentiate, some writers useRoman numerals for private acts (c.i, c.ii, c.iii, etc.) and reserveArabic numerals (c.1, c.2, c.3, etc.) for pubic acts. But this is not a universal convention. Indeed, the recent recommended convention is to reserve Arabic numerals for pubic general acts, Roman numerals for local acts, and italicized Arabic numerals for personal acts.^[21]. This is not always easy to differentiate in print or not followed in older sources. When citing a private act, it is advisable to clearly label it "private" to differentiate it from the public act. The default assumption as that the citation "15 Charles II c.4" refers to a pubic act, unless otherwise noted.

If a single parliamentary session overlaps the regnal year start date, it is given a double-label, e.g. Charles II's regnal year begins January 30, so the parliamentary session that ran from October 1670 to April 1671 is labelled "22 & 23 Charles II" (the session that sat from the 22nd to the 23rd year of Charles II's reign).

If there are two sessions within the same regnal year, they are differentiated by a "statute" or "session" suffix (e.g. 13 Charles II St. 1 is a different session than 13 Charles II St. 2). Finally, some sessions were prorogued without passing an act, and thus have no legal statute label at all.

In the event of two sessions within the same regnal year, the chapter numbering would reset and the sessions are differentiated by the suffixes: "statute 1" & "statute 2" (abbreviated "stat.1" and "stat.2" or "st.1" and "st.2") or alternatively "session 1" and "session 2" (abbreviated "sess.1" and "sess.2" or "s.1" and "s.2"). It is sometimes alleged that "sess.2" is used if it is a new session of a continuing parliament and "stat.2" if it is the first session of a new parliament. But that does not seem to be consistently true. Whether "sess." or "stat." is applied depends on the compilation used.

For example,Mary I, whose regnal start date is on 6 July 1553, hadthree parliamentary sessions within her first regnal year - two sessions within her first parliament (Oct-Dec, 1553), and a third session in her second parliament (Apr-May, 1554). TheTreason Act 1553 is cited "1 Mar. sess.1 c.1" is it was passed in the first session of her first parliament,^[22] whileLegitimacy of the Queen, etc. Act 1553 is cited "1 Mar. sess. 2 c. 1" as it was passed in the second session of her first parliament^[23] and finallyQueen Regent's Prerogative Act 1554 is cited as "1 Mar. sess. 3 c. 1" as it was passed in the first session of her second parliament.^[24] All three are within her first regnal year (6 July 1553 to 5 Jul 1554).

TheRiot Act is cited as "1 Geo. stat. 2. c. 5", was passed in the first session of the second parliament of the first year of the reign ofGeorge I.

TheLong Parliament presents an anomaly, since it was convened by the KingCharles I of England on 3 November 1640 and went through various incarnations until it was finally dissolved on 16 March 1660. Since its first session of 1640 was never prorogued by royal command, its first session officially never ended, and all its surviving acts are labelled "16 Charles I".

Before the modern era, a statute of parliament was usually only givenroyal assent on the last day of the parliamentary session (just before prorogation). Even if assent for a specific act was actually given earlier, it was not noted in the statute text. So the order of chapters in a statute is usually meaningless, and gives no indication of when during the session it actually passed. Historians trying to affix a conventional calendar date to a specific act have to dig for clues in the Commons Journal, or simply assume all acts were assented at once on the final day. This was changed by theActs of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793 (33 Geo.3 c.13) which required the clerk of parliament to explicitly record the date of passage and assent. So it is only from 1794 onwards that statutes explicitly include the calendar date of an act.

Peculiarly, before 1794, it was also the case that an act was assumed to go into legal effect not on the final day of the session (the date of royal assent), but rather on thefirst day of the session in which it was passed. That means that parliamentary acts applied retrospectively to the start of the session, several weeks or months before they were actually passed and assented. To avoid injustices, it was common for parliamentary legislation to explicitly specify in the text the date when a new law, regulation, or tax would begin to apply. But not always. If a commencement date was not specified, the parliamentary act applied retrospectively to the start of the session, and magistrates could prosecute or impose penalties on actions that were perfectly legal at the time. This often provoked indignation and outrage.William Blackstone, in his influential 1765Commentaries, railed againstretrospective laws, insisting laws should apply only to the future.^[25] Remembering the English experience, Americans were careful to include a categorical prohibition onex post facto laws in theUS Constitution in 1789. The 1793 Commencement Act finally remedied this, and thereafter laws only applied from the date of assent recorded by the clerk in the statute. This was reinforced in theInterpretation Act 1978.

The pre-1794 custom of retrospective dating may cause confusion in the "short titles" for statutes which happen to have a year in the title. Parliamentary sessions often started in Autumn and continued into Spring. So an act that was passed in, say, the Spring of 1554 might nonetheless be given the year "1553" in its short title - as that is when the session began, and thus when the act came into retrospective force. Thus historians often have to tangle with the awkwardness of citing an "act of 1553" responding to events occurring in 1554. Careful writers will take care to mention the actual year of passage in the historical narrative if there is risk of confusion with the year in the short title. Careless writers might not make notice of it and let readers assume the short title year is the actual year of passage, e.g. theBubble Act (6 George I c.18) passed in June 1720 is sometimes mistakenly cited in history books as being passed in 1719 (long before theSouth Sea Bubble began!) simply because its legal short title is the "Royal Exchange and London Assurance Corporation Act 1719" (the session started in November 1719).

Citation labels are not always consistent, and depends on the statute compilation used.

For historical researchers, the most prominent compilations of statutes are the popularStatutes at Large (ed.Owen Ruffhead, 1762–65)^[26] and the similarly-named contemporary rivalStatutes at Large (ed.Danby Pickering 1762–66)^[27] The labels and numbering in Ruffhead and Pickering compilations are identical, and so interchangeable. But their regnal year titles sometimes differ considerably from the officialThe Statutes of the Realm (ed.John Raithby, 1810–22, for theRecord Commission, covering acts up to 1714).^[28] So when citing old statutes before 1714 it is sometimes necessary to check for variances and make note of which compilation is being used.^[29]

The fourth major historical compilation entering the fray was theStatutes at Large of England and Great Britain (ed.T.E. Tomlins and John Raithby,1811, covering acts before 1800),^[30] which is continued as theStatutes of the United Kingdom and Ireland (acts from 1801 until 1869).^[31]

All these statute compilations (except for theStatutes of the Realm) are unofficial, put out by private editors and printers. While well-regarded and treated as authoritative by the legal profession, there was no guarantee they were complete, or that their wording was correct and the law was as stated.

In 1796, a select parliamentary committee, under the chairmanship of Charles Abbott, reviewed the private statute compilations, and their report concluded that they were inadequate - some statutes were missing entirely, others had missing clauses, some had been repealed, etc.^[32] They recommended the establishment of aRecord Commission to oversee the publication of a "authentic and entire record" from the English statute rolls. The officialThe Statutes of the Realm (1817–22) was the result of this effort. However it only went as far as 1714. Legal professionals still had to rely on theStatutes at Large compilations put out by private publishers until the 1860s.

AStatute Law Commission was established in 1854 under lord chancellorRobert Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth to overhaul the compilation of statutes. During this process, they also composed parliamentary bills to formally repeal and clear statutes that are no longer in force, and consolidate some scattered acts into a new comprehensive bills. AStatute Law Committee was appointed in 1868 under the Lord ChancellorHugh Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns, who took over the publication of the compilation. The committee published a series of volumes known asThe Statutes Revised from 1870 to 1885, compiling existing statute law down to 1878, and regarded as official.^[33] After a series of additional acts consolidating statutes, a second revised edition was put out in 1888, removing the ones that were repealed. TheStatutes Second Revised edition compiles statutes from 1235 down to 1920.^[34] The officialStatutes Revised collections follow theStatutes of the Realm labels until 1714, and theStatutes at Large labels thereafter.^[29]

• Citation of United Kingdom legislation
• Acts of Parliament Numbering and Citation Act 1962
• List of English monarchs
• List of British monarchs

• House of Commons (1802) [9 June 1660].Journal of the House of Commons: volume 8: 1660–1667. pp. 59–61.
• "Chapter Five: Table of regnal year of English Sovereigns".Sweet & Maxwell's Guide to Law Reports and Statutes (Fourth ed.). London: Sweet & Maxwell's Guide. 1962. pp. 20–33.
• Cheney, C. R.;Jones, Michael, eds. (2000).A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History.Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks. Vol. 4 (Revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 21–47.ISBN 978-0-521-77095-8.

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