''The Description of Britain'', also known by its
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
name ' ("On the Situation of Britain"), was a
literary forgery
Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir ...
perpetrated by
Charles Bertram
Charles Julius Bertram (1723–1765) was an English expatriate in Denmark who "discovered"—and presumably wrote—''The Description of Britain'' ( la, De Situ Britanniae), an 18th-century literary forgery purporting to be a mediaeval work on ...
on the historians of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. It purported to be a 15th-century manuscript by the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
monk
Richard of Westminster, including information from a lost contemporary account of
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
by a
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
general
A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED ...
('), new details of the
Roman roads in Britain
Roman roads in Britannia were initially designed for military use, created by the Roman Army during the nearly four centuries (AD 43–410) that Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire.
It is estimated that about of paved trunk ...
in the style of the
Antonine Itinerary, and "an antient map" as detailed as (but improved upon) the works of
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance ...
. Bertram disclosed the existence of the work through his correspondence with the antiquarian
William Stukeley by 1748, provided him "a copy" which was made available in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
by 1749, and published it in Latin in 1757. By this point, his Richard had become conflated with the historical
Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester ( la, Ricardus de Cirencestria; before 1340–1400) was a cleric and minor historian of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster. He was highly famed in the 18th and 19th century as the author of '' The Description of Britain'' b ...
. The text was treated as a legitimate and major source of information on
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered wa ...
from the 1750s through the 19th century, when it was progressively debunked by
John Hodgson,
Karl Wex,
B. B. Woodward, and
J. E. B. Mayor. Effects from the forgery can still be found in works on British history and it is generally credited with having named the
Pennine Mountains.
"Discovery"
Charles Bertram
Charles Julius Bertram (1723–1765) was an English expatriate in Denmark who "discovered"—and presumably wrote—''The Description of Britain'' ( la, De Situ Britanniae), an 18th-century literary forgery purporting to be a mediaeval work on ...
was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
expatriate living in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
who began a flattering correspondence with the
antiquarian William Stukeley in 1747 and was vouched for by
Hans Gram, the royal librarian to
King
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...
Frederick V. After a few further letters, Bertram mentioned "a manuscript in a friend's hands of
Richard of Westminster,... a history of
Roman Brittain... and an antient map of the island annex'd." A "copy" of its
script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
was shown to
David Casley, the keeper of the
Cotton Library
The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection ...
, who "immediately" described it as around 400 years old. Stukeley thereafter always treated Bertram as reliable. He "press'd Mr Bertram to get the manuscript into his hands, if possible... as the greatest treasure we now can boast of in this kind of learning." Stukeley received the text piecemeal over a series of letters which he made available at the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
's
Arundel Library in London in 1749. He had received a drawing of Bertram's map by early 1750, which he also placed at the library.
Authorship
Bertram described his text's author as "Richard, monk of Westminster" ( la, Ricardus monachus Westmonasteriensis). There had been a
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
named Richard at
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
in the mid-15th century and this was the approximate date offered by Bertram to Stukeley. Stukeley preferred instead to identify Bertram's "Richard of Westminster" with
Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester ( la, Ricardus de Cirencestria; before 1340–1400) was a cleric and minor historian of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster. He was highly famed in the 18th and 19th century as the author of '' The Description of Britain'' b ...
('), who had lived at Westminster in the late 14th century and was known to have
journeyed to
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
and to have compiled another history known as the ''
Historial Mirror''. Bertram fully adopted the suggestion and published his account under the name ', from the
archaic Latin form of
Cirencester
Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...
's name.
It has
since become clear that the text was the work of an 18th-century forger. Bertram claimed to have borrowed the text from a friend who admitted he had come by it as an act of theft from an English library. Its complete absence from other manuscript lists and the lack of any trace of it among Bertram's surviving papers in Copenhagen has generally led to the conclusion that Bertram himself was Pseudo-Richard.
Text
Stukeley read his analysis of the work and its itineraries before the
Society of Antiquaries and published his paper with its extracts in 1757. He was excited that the text provided "more than a hundred names of cities, roads, people, and the like: which till now were absolutely unknown to us" and found it written "with great judgment, perspicuity, and conciseness, as by one that was altogether master of his subject". His account of the itineraries included an engraving reorienting
Bertram's map to place north at the top.
Later in 1757, at Stukeley's urging, Bertram published the full text in a volume alongside
Gildas
Gildas ( Breton: ''Gweltaz''; c. 450/500 – c. 570) — also known as Gildas the Wise or ''Gildas Sapiens'' — was a 6th-century British monk best known for his scathing religious polemic ''De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae'', which recount ...
's ''
Ruin of Britain'' and the ''
History of the Britons
''The History of the Britons'' ( la, Historia Brittonum) is a purported history of the indigenous British ( Brittonic) people that was written around 828 and survives in numerous recensions that date from after the 11th century. The ''Historia Br ...
'' traditionally ascribed to
Nennius. Bertram's preface noted that the work "contains many fragments of a better time, which would now in vain be sought for elsewhere". The preface goes on to note that, "considered by Dr. Stukeley... a jewel... worthy to be rescued from destruction", Bertram printed it "from respect for him". The volume included
a map as well, differing from Stukeley's in several features apart from its orientation.
It contained 18 routes ( la, itinera) of the type found in the
Antonine Itinerary, compiled from fragmentary accounts of a Roman general, adding over 60 new and previously unknown stations to those mentioned in the legitimate account. Best of all, it filled up the entire map of Scotland with descriptions and the names of peoples, the part of Britain about which the least was known with any certainty. It would later be determined that it was actually a clever mosaic of information gleaned from the works of
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...
,
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
,
William Camden
William Camden (2 May 1551 – 9 November 1623) was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of ''Britannia'', the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ''Ann ...
,
John Horsley, and others, enhanced with Bertram's own fictions.
Map
Bertram's letters to Stukeley proposed that the map accompanying the text was even older than Pseudo-Richard's text. His letters state that he bought a
copperplate to engrave it himself. Either this original copperplate or a freehand drawing was sent to Stukeley in late 1749 or early 1750 and formed the basis of the version reoriented and published by Stukeley in his 1757 ''Account''.
Bertram's own engraving appeared in his 1757 ''Three Authors'' but was dated to 1755. It retained the "original" map's orientation, placing east at the top of the map, but did not disguise that Bertram had tidied it up. It is inscribed with a note that it was engraved and done entirely by Bertram. Stukeley later employed this version for the 2nd edition of his own ', published posthumously in 1776.
Reception
Acceptance
Once it had been accepted as genuine, ''The Description of Britain'' exerted a profound effect upon subsequent theories, suppositions, and publications of history. It was the premier source of information—sometimes the only source—for well over 100 years.
Contemporary authoritative works include
Gibbon's ''
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to th ...
'', which is well-footnoted with his sources of information. ''De Situ Britanniae'' appears among his references to sources on ancient Britain, usually cited to its emended author,
Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester ( la, Ricardus de Cirencestria; before 1340–1400) was a cleric and minor historian of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster. He was highly famed in the 18th and 19th century as the author of '' The Description of Britain'' b ...
. Major-General
William Roy
Major-General William Roy (4 May 17261 July 1790) was a Scottish military engineer, surveyor, and antiquarian. He was an innovator who applied new scientific discoveries and newly emerging technologies to the accurate geodetic mapping of ...
's technical ability at surveying was the inspiration for the creation of the
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...
. He spent much of his research on
ancient Scottish history trying to follow the fictional itineraries described in ''De Situ Britanniae''. His historical work, ''
Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain'', relies on the forgery and is consequently deficient as a contribution to history, though his maps are still held in the highest regard.
William Forbes Skene
William Forbes Skene WS FRSE FSA(Scot) DCL LLD (7 June 1809 – 29 August 1892), was a Scottish lawyer, historian and antiquary.
He co-founded the Scottish legal firm Skene Edwards which was prominent throughout the 20th century but disappeare ...
, in his introduction to ''Celtic Scotland'', written after ''De Situ Britanniae'' was debunked, disparaged several once-influential histories that relied on it, including
Pinkerton's ''Enquiry'',
Chalmers's ''Caledonia'', Roy's ''Military Antiquities'', and Robert Stuart's ''Caledonia Romana''.
No serious modern historian cites an argument based on the fictional ''De Situ Britanniae'', but conclusions based upon it are still cited indirectly. For example, the influential and respected
Barry Cunliffe's ''Iron Age Communities in Britain'' places the ancient
Selgovae
The Selgovae (Common Brittonic: *''Selgowī'') were a Celtic tribe of the late 2nd century AD who lived in what is now the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and Dumfriesshire, on the southern coast of Scotland. They are mentioned briefly in Ptolemy's ' ...
people far to the east of their only known location, contradicting their placement by the sole legitimate source,
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance ...
. This misplacement relied on William Roy's attempt to make the map of the peoples of ancient Scotland fit ''De Situ Britanniae''.
Debunking
Enough doubts had arisen by 1838 that the
English Historical Society did not include ''The Description of Britain'' in its list of important historical works. Still, the end did not come until 1845. In that year the German writer effectively challenged the authority of the ''Description'' in the ''Rheinisches Museum''. He had been working on a new edition of
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
's ''
Agricola
Agricola, the Latin word for farmer, may also refer to:
People Cognomen or given name
:''In chronological order''
* Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40–93), Roman governor of Britannia (AD 77–85)
* Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, Roman governor of the mi ...
''. Consulting the ''Description'', he found that it included impossible
transcription error
A transcription error is a specific type of data entry error that is commonly made by human operators or by optical character recognition (OCR) programs. Human transcription errors are commonly the result of typographical mistakes; putting one’ ...
s that had been introduced to editions of Tacitus by
Venetian printers in the 15th century. His work was translated into English and printed by the ''
Gentleman's Magazine
''The Gentleman's Magazine'' was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term '' magazine'' (from the French ''magazine' ...
'' in October 1846.
British scholars were slow to accept the truth. Some of the routes mentioned by the work had seemed to have been subsequently borne out and excuses were made for the known errors. Further evidence of the falsity of ''The Description of Britain'' came out in the following years, however, until no serious effort could be made in defence of the document. Bertram had on several occasions adopted variant readings and hypotheses unknown before
Camden. Scholars continued to hem both out of embarrassment (the same information that Wex used had been available to them all along) and because they now knew that their accounts of history had been based on a fiction rather than legitimate information. The final confirmation that the ''Description'' was spurious came in 1869, a quarter century after Wex's publication. As part of the
Rolls Series
''The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages'' ( la, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores), widely known as the is a major collection of British and Irish historical materials and primary sources publish ...
, the ''Historial Mirror'' written by the real
Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester ( la, Ricardus de Cirencestria; before 1340–1400) was a cleric and minor historian of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster. He was highly famed in the 18th and 19th century as the author of '' The Description of Britain'' b ...
(his only surviving work) was closely examined over the 1860s by
J.E.B. Mayor, the librarian of the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
. In his 1869 preface to the second volume of the work, he included a thorough 90-page condemnation of Bertram's manuscript. Blame fell hardest on the reputation of
William Stukeley, although it also impugned
Gibbon,
Roy
Roy is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origin.
In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman ''roy'', meaning "king", while its Old French cognate, ''rey'' or ''roy'' (modern ''roi''), likewise gave rise to ...
, and other scholars who had accepted it.
Revisionism
Once the work was no longer defensible, various accounts came forward claiming that there had been serious doubts about the ''Description'' prior to Wex. These were somewhat less than accurate. In general, they attempted to conflate earlier concerns about "Richard of Cirencester"'s supposed sources or about his use of his sources with the more fundamental questions raised by Wex. An example is the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' account, which asserts that Thomas Reynolds was "sceptical as to the value of Bertram's manuscript". Reynolds had been sceptical of the quality of Richard of Cirencester's information, but did not express any doubts about Bertram or the validity of the manuscript. Another tack of latter reviewers was to downplay the magnitude of the earlier acceptance and reliance on the ''Description''. In 1866 and 1867,
B.B. Woodward, the librarian of
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history.
The original c ...
, wrote a series of articles for the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' that challenged the validity of the text. However, his characterisation of ''The Description of Britain'' as "plainly a clumsy forgery by an unpractised hand" is unfair. This same document had been examined in 1749 by
David Casley, the keeper of the
Cotton Library
The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection ...
, and as late as 1840 Sir
Frederic Madden
Sir Frederic Madden KH (16 February 1801 – 8 March 1873) was an English palaeographer.
Biography
Born in Portsmouth, he was the son of William John Madden (1757–1833), a Captain in the Royal Marines of Irish origin, and his wife Sarah Carte ...
of the manuscript department of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
had not only expressed his belief in its validity but also criticised the English Historical Society for its omission of the ''Description of Britain'' in its 1838 list of important works.
Legacy
Thanks to
Roy
Roy is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origin.
In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman ''roy'', meaning "king", while its Old French cognate, ''rey'' or ''roy'' (modern ''roi''), likewise gave rise to ...
and others' reliance on the ''Description'', a number of its inventions found their way onto the
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...
maps. Another example of the ''Description''’s legacy were continuing references—including in the
1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica''—to a naval base at
Dumbarton
Dumbarton (; also sco, Dumbairton; ) is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, on the north bank of the River Clyde where the River Leven flows into the Clyde estuary. In 2006, it had an estimated population of 19,990.
Dumbarton was the ca ...
named Theodosia, long after its sole authority had been debunked.
A passage in Bertram was credited in 1853 by Arthur Hussey as originating the name of the
Pennines. In 2004,
George Redmonds reassessed this, finding that numerous respected writers passed over the origin of the mountains' name in silence even in works dedicated to the topographical etymology of
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
and
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
. He found that the derivation from Bertram was widely believed and considered uncomfortable. In fact, the name appears at least as early as
Camden and Bertram was responsible (at most) with popularizing it against other contenders such as
Defoe Defoe may refer to:
People
*Defoe (surname), most notably English author Daniel Defoe
Places
*Defoe, Webster County, West Virginia, an unincorporated community
Other uses
*Defoe (comics), a zombie story
*Defoe Shipbuilding Company, a former ship ...
's "English Andes".
Notes
References
*
* &
*
*
*.
*
*
*
*
* &
*
*
* &
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Bertram's original 1757 edition
Hatcher's 1809 translation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Description of Britain
Literary forgeries
1749 books
1757 books
Latin pseudepigrapha
18th-century Latin books
Document forgeries