Michaelmas Day

In modern times we're used to printed calenders and digital readouts.  If we want to indicate a day, it's easy to say October 11 of x-year and let that be that.  People in Medieval times used different means for indicating dates.  While calendars and almanacs were available, they were expensive.  Clocks and chronometers were non-existent.  Everyone rich or poor alike were familiar with the feast, fasts and holidays of the liturgical calendar.  If something was supposed to happen on October 11, it was much simpler just to say Michaelmas, and be done with it.  BTW: Michaelmas is now on September 29 of each year, given the switch in the 16th century to the Julian Calendar.  The Plantagenets and their contemporaries would have known the Gregorian Calendar, instead.

Michaelmas, or Michael's Mass, was the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel.  More properly, it was the feast day of the four known archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, sometimes called the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels.  By Church custom, it was a day of Obligation, similar to Christmas and Easter, when all faithful were supposed to attend mass.  Because it was a special day, it was easy for people to keep track of and use as a references.  Because it fell in October, it came after the year's harvest had been gathered in.  Rents and other obligations were often made due on Michaelmas Day.  If the reeve on a particular estate were elected by the peasants, the elections were held on this day.  Later, when people were free to trade their labor, laboring fairs and fairs in general were often held on Michaelmas.  It became a day to mark the third financial quarter of the year, as well as one of four legal terms or court sessions.  Michaelmas is still used as the start of legal terms in England and other countries which base their law on English common law.  In countries whose legal tradition hails back to England, Michaelmas is often celebrated as a red mass, in honor of lawyers, judges and the legal profession.