Definition
Martinmas is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, observed on November 11th. In legal contexts, it functions as a term day or quarter day — one of four fixed points in the calendar year used to mark the beginning and end of tenancies, calculate rent payments, fix the dates of contracts, and determine periods of service. It is the third of the four cross quarter-days of the year.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): St. Martin's Day, 11th November. A Scottish quarter day.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November; often called martlemans. Associated with a period of calm, warm weather around that time, sometimes called Martinmas summer or Indian summer.
The common meaning tracks the calendar feast day. The legal significance lies not in the religious observance but in Martinmas functioning as a legally operative date — a contractual anchor for rents, leases, wages, and terms of service. A researcher encountering Martinmas in a historical deed or lease is reading a date-certain with specific legal consequences, not merely a note about a saints' day.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The four cross quarter-days of the English and Scottish legal calendar are Candlemas (February 2), Whitsunday (variable, around May), Lammas (August 1), and Martinmas (November 11). Scottish law recognized these days as term days for the payment of rents and the commencement or conclusion of service contracts. The English quarter-day system used a different set of days (Lady Day, Midsummer, Michaelmas, Christmas), making Martinmas more distinctively prominent in Scottish legal practice than in English.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical leases, agricultural tenancies, or employment contracts — particularly Scottish sources — will encounter Martinmas as a legally operative date rather than descriptive calendar language. Identifying which quarter-day system a document uses (Scottish vs. English) is essential to calculating term dates correctly. A lease running from Whitsunday to Martinmas in a Scottish document has a precise legal duration; misreading it as loose seasonal language will distort interpretation.
The spelling variants flagged across the historical dictionaries — Martilmas, Martlemas, and Martlemans — are common in older manuscripts and printed instruments. These corruptions can create indexing gaps in corpus searches. A search for "Martinmas" alone may miss documents using variant forms. Researchers should cast wide nets when searching digitized collections of early modern deeds, burgh records, and estate papers.
Martinmas also appears in employment and service law contexts, particularly in Scottish cases involving agricultural servants and domestic workers, where the term day determined when a worker's engagement legally ended and whether wages had fallen due. Disputes over whether payment was owed as of a particular Martinmas appear in both sheriff court records and reported cases.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence agree on the core definition: November 11th, feast of St. Martin of Tours, third of the four cross quarter-days. All three cite Wharton as the underlying authority, suggesting these entries derive from a common source rather than independent analysis. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry contains an apparent transcription artifact — text about masters and servants appears mid-entry, almost certainly a printing error that bled text from an adjacent entry — and should not be read as linking Martinmas substantively to the law of master and servant.
None of the historical dictionary entries fully explain why Martinmas matters legally, treating it as a calendar identification problem rather than a transactional mechanism. The significance of term days as structural anchors in lease and service law goes unaddressed, which is the primary reason researchers need to look beyond the dictionary entry when working with documents that invoke Martinmas as a legal date.
Jurisdictional Note
Martinmas carries greater legal weight in Scottish legal history than in English. Scottish property and employment law relied on the four cross quarter-days as term days in ways that English law, which used its own quarter-day system, did not. Researchers working with English sources will find Martinmas less frequently operative than those working with Scottish deeds, burgh records, or agricultural tenancy documents.