Peter Collinson and William Stukeley

When the antiquarian William Stukeley died in 1765 his botanist friend Peter Collinson prepared an obituary notice for the Gentleman’s Magazine. In this tribute he provided a useful outline of his qualifications, both as a Fellow of the Antiquarian Society and the Royal Society, and his literary achievements, along with a touching account of his final demise from “a stroke of the palsy”. Stukeley is still remembered to this day for his early researches on Avebury and Stonehenge and he made valuable attempts to delineate and interpret the monuments, influencing much 18th century thinking. However, although Stukeley’s reputation, both as an antiquarian and author, was rightly lauded by Collinson he was unfortunately an innocent party to one of the great literary frauds of the period by one Charles Bertram, which was not finally uncovered for another century.

Collinson notes in his obituary “To his interest and application we are indebted for recovering from obscurity Richard of Cirencester’s history of Roman Britain, entitled Britannicarum Gentium etc. Hauniae 1757. The same year, for the benefit of the English reader, with his usual skill and erudition, he published an illustration of these choice remains of antiquity, with a map, and the manner how they came to be discover’d”. Charles Bertram was an expatriate English teacher at the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen and a friend of Hans Gram, the Danish Royal Librarian. Through Gram’s influence Bertram entered into a correspondence with Stukeley and mentioned that he had acquired an early manuscript history of Britain by one Richard of Westminster, later identified by Stukeley as Richard of Cirencester, who had produced other historical works. Bertram was always unwilling to send the original document to Britain, furnishing copies in response to queries.

Over the coming years the text was finally authenticated by Stukeley after consultation with other scholars and he presented his findings to the Society of Antiquaries in 1756 and 1757. At the same time he persuaded Bertram to publish the text of Richard’s supposed work, De Situ Britanniae, in Copenhagen, alongside the genuine histories of Gildas and Nennius. This Danish edition was not readily available in Britain but Stukeley provided Collinson with a copy, which has recently turned up as a result of ongoing provenance work in the special collections at Aberystwyth University. Collinson inscribed this copy “The gift of my friend Doc. Stukeley – P. Collinson F.R.S.” and it is likely that he had this to hand when he prepared the obituary notice.

Included with the text is an “antient map of the island annex’d”, which alongside the itineraries aided Stukeley in the identification of several previously unknown Roman sites. Some contemporary scholars were doubtful of these supposed identifications but they were used by William Roy in his Scottish antiquarian work Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain which influenced early mapping by the Ordnance Survey. It was not until the early 19th century when a new edition of Bertram’s work was finally produced by Hatcher that scholars seriously began to question the validity of the text, noting oddities in the latin style, and the work was finally dismissed after extensive research by Bernard Woodward, the Royal Librarian at Windsor in the 1860’s.

Also on display is a copy of Itinerarium Curiosum from 1724 and Philosophy of Earthquakes from 1756, the latter being of note since it contains an autograph dedication from Stukeley to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Herring. 

Bill Hines (whh@aber.ac.uk)

September 2019

Sources:
Charles Bertram – Britannicarum Gentium Historia Antiquae. Copenhagen, 1757. 

Gentleman’s Magazine. Vol 35, 1765, pp211-212. 

Charles Bertram – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bertram 

William Stukeley - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stukeley