Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
In the Christian calendar, Lady Day is the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) and the first of the four traditional Irish and English quarter days. The "Lady" was the Virgin Mary. The term derives from Middle English, when some nouns lost their genitive inflections. "Lady" would later gain an -s genitive ending, and therefore the name means "Lady's day."
[edit] Non-Religious Significance
In England, Lady Day was New Year's Day up to 1752 when, following the move from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, 1 January became the start of the year. A vestige of this remains in the United Kingdom's tax year, which starts on 6 April, i.e. Lady Day adjusted for the lost days of the calendar change (until this change Lady Day had been used as the start of the legal year).
As a year-end and quarter day that conveniently did not fall within or between the seasons for plowing and harvesting, Lady Day was a traditional day on which year-long contracts between landowners and tenant farmers would begin and end in England and nearby lands (although there were regional variations). Farmers' time of "entry" into new farms and onto new fields was often this day[1][2]. As a result, farming families who were changing farms would travel from the old farm to the new one on Lady Day. After the calendar change, "Old Lady Day" (April 6), the former date of the Annunciation, largely assumed this role. The date is significant in some of the works of Thomas Hardy, e.g., Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd.
The logic of using Lady Day as the start of the year is that it reckons years A.D. from the moment of the Incarnation, which is considered to take place at the moment of the conception of Jesus at the Annunciation rather than at the moment of his birth at Christmas. See also New Year.
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Annotations
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Originally posted to 15 March 1659/60 entry by Susanna:
This was the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrated on March 25. “Known popularly as Lady Day in honour of the Virgin Mary, it was a favourite date for the payment of quarterly rents and dues. From the twelfth century to 1752 it also marked the formal beginning of the year…” (Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun) So on the 25th of March 1659/60 becomes 1660, and Pepys is paying his quarterly rent early, as he will be at sea when it is due.
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Originally posted to 15 March 1659/60 by David Bell:
As annotated earlier this year, in discussion of the calendar differences, the date of the formal year-end for accounting, etc, shifted to the current April date when the calendar was changed in the middle of the next century.However, in Britain at least, Estate Agents will still refer to “Lady Day” for this particular quarter day, though in contracts they use the calendar date.
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Quarter Days
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I believe that under English law, it is still the case that rent on a lease is payable on the “usual quarter days” unless the lease states to the contrary.
I was told at law school that you can remember the usual quarter days because for the first three, the second number is the same as the number of letters in the month (and even law students know the date of Christmas!)