year changes in registers - completed

[searchr]

I'm quite confused about dates of events from registers e.g. seen online in Lincs to The Past.
Here's an example: http://www.lincstothepast.com/Records/RecordDisplayTranscript.aspx?oid=546004&iid=437158
After December 1702 comes January 1702. Then we have April 1703. It continues happily until December 1703. Then we have January and February 1703 before the heading 1704 and April and other months after it.
It's as if years start from April.
This isn't isolated. It happens in lots of old general registers. This one has the months with headings, but it often happens also where the months aren't discretely under their own headings.
They have a year heading, with April as the first month, and January, Feb & Mar still under that year heading after December.
Can anyone please explain?

[searchr]

Worked it out! I can't believe this is a thread I can actually close. I'll have to learn how now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates
This explains about old style and new style. Julian seems to be old and Gregorian new.
The legal year in England, from the 12th century to 1752, used to start on 25th March, or Lady Day.
The article gives corrections, but it's all still a bit confusing really.

[KGarrad]

Correct!

The Julian calendar didn't cope with century leap years and, by the time the Gregorian calendar was taken up in England, the 2 calendars were 11 days out!
So, Wednesday 2nd September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14th September 1752

Other countries went over at different times.
Russia in 1918, for example.

[searchr]

Thanks so much.
That makes it much clearer.