In a book I'm currently reading:
Quote:
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You can deduce that drinking was the norm on British Sundays from these Puritan bans on alcohol, which were never fully enforced, not even in the seventeenth century, at the height of Puritan power. Puritan efforts to legislate Sunday drinking out of existence have left on the record a pungent portrait of the raucous Sundays common when the laws were enacted.
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OK. But then:
Quote:
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The Sunday Law enacted under King James VI in 1656 reads:
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Now hold on there. King James VI? Generally when referring to King James in the seventeenth century he's James I, his English number. James VI refers to his Scottish title. But in any case, not only was James long dead in 1656, there wasn't even a king at all. Hence the Puritan blue laws; it was the period of the Commonwealth in England.
So in trying to figure out what exactly the author meant, I had an aha! moment and thought maybe she was referring to a Scottish law passed during James's reign there and had transposed the numbers, i.e., 1566. But no dice; James became King of Scotland in 1567. Close, but doesn't work.
Sigh. Yet another instance where an author doesn't know what she's talking about and is wittering based on half-assed research. But I did come up with a fascinating but totally irrelevant fact which may have influenced the author whose topic is the Jewish Sabbath: the Gematria for Sunday Law is 1656!