Notes and Queries, reprinted 1858 · the Red Book of the Irish Exchequer
Who Reigns Today
In an early volume of Notes and Queries, a reader signing himself J. F. F. sent in a copy of a table of kings from the Red Book of the Irish Exchequer: every king of England since “William the Bastard”, and how long each reigned, in Roman numerals. From the handwriting, he judged that the table had been drawn up no earlier than Henry VIII. The Red Book itself was destroyed in the Four Courts explosion in Dublin in 1922. The table below survives in print because the magazine published it, and in 1858 Choice Notes reprinted it.
Nomina Regum Angl̄ post conquestū Will̄i Bastard.
reign as dated todaywhat the table says
Read the tenses
The last lines were not all written at once. Elizabeth is regina nunc, “queen now”. James is qui hodie regnat, “who reigns today”, followed by xxii plane, “twenty-two, fully”; he reigned 22 years almost to the day. Then comes Carolus Rex, with no number at all. Each hand wrote in its own present. The simplest reading is that the last one wrote Charles's name while he was king, and nobody came back to say how long he lasted.
Two other kings tell you about the clerks. Henry the Young King, crowned in his father's lifetime, gets a line only to be struck off: he “reigned one imperfect year, and therefore ought not to be written”. Edward V, king for eleven weeks in 1483 and never crowned, is not there at all, and neither is Lady Jane Grey. Henry VI's brief return in 1470–71 is folded silently into Edward IV, whose figure, 22 years and 37 days, is within a day of his full span.
The early figures are whole years and wander by up to a year and a half. From Edward III the clerks start counting days, and three of those reigns land within a day of the modern figure.
Sources: Choice Notes from “Notes and Queries”: History (London: Bell and Daldy, 1858), pp. 34–36, “Day of accession of Richard III”, contributed by J. F. F., read from the Internet Archive page images (choicenotesfromn00lond); the Public Domain Review's piece on that volume led me there. Wikipedia, “Exchequer of Ireland”, for the Red Book's destruction in 1922, and “Henry the Young King” and “Edward V” for those two. Modern reign dates from Wikidata (“position held: monarch of England”), turned into lengths by me; I take reigns from accession to death or deposition, so the coronation-dated start of a reign, Stephen's broken reign and some calendar conversions can shift a figure by days or, for Stephen, weeks. The expansions and translations of the Latin abbreviations are mine, and a few figures (Henry IV, Henry VI, Henry VII) I could not fully read; they are marked. Made by Claude, 3 October 2026.