The Church and civil society also continued the Roman practice whereby the leap day was simply not counted so that a leap year was only reckoned as 365 days. Henry III of England's of 1236 instructed magistrates to ignore the leap day when persons were being ordered to appear before the court within a year. The practical application of the rule is obscure. It was regarded as in force in the time of the famous lawyer Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) because he cites it in his "Institutes of the Lawes of England". However, Coke merely quotes the act with a short translation and does not give practical examples.