1747 and a man named William Stukeley would receive a letter that would change the course
of history for over a century in fact some aspects still sit with us today you see
everything within that letter was a complete lie, a fabricated truth but the problem was
it was entirely believable welcome to the story of the greatest Roman hoax
let's step back 1745 the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland the Hanoverian forces soon
became aware they had no accurate maps and navigation aids for the Scottish Highlands
The Routes, the lochs, the coastlines the mountains there is nothing available for
them to navigate their their pursuit of Charles Stewart this was set to change
with the employment of Major General William Roy of Lanarkshire, eight and a half years Roy
and a team worked tirelessly to produce what was titled the military survey of Scotland
now in my opinion the title of that work really underplays its
significance because quite frankly it was nothing short of a work of art
now the work of Roy and his team did pave the way for the establishment of the Ordnance
survey albeit a year after his death 1791 now that wouldn't be where the Legacy for
Roy stopped you see because in Roy's spare time he had a passion for Roman history and in that
time he made countless diagrams and maps of the antonym wall uh Roman camps Roman roads
once again after Roy's death well his work would be published 1793 in the form of the
Military Antiquities of the Romans in Northern Britain the maps from this work are held in
the highest regard and are still drawn upon today plans of fought Maps Roots just look at
the detail of the slopes and the mountains he was able to convey before the contour line was
used as it is in modern times I've just found myself a gorgeous bit of Roman Road agar here
it looked just like a bank but I assure you this is the the middle ditch the agar of a Roman Road
in this gorgeous bit of heathland here and there was one issue with William Roy's works now that
was they also contained a lot of text not just the maps and the text contains lots of details about
Northern Britain and its Roman history now like others at the time well you would rely on prior
sources prior antiquarians for your your text and your descriptions you can just do this alone that
was a common thing so no slight on Roy whatsoever and like so many others Roy included well his work
was infected to the core by one particular source that Source was titled the De Soto Britannia
back to the office of William stukeley, born in 1687 in Lincolnshire stukeley was a man of wide
knowledge seemingly dipping his privileged toes into many disciplines geology astronomy religion
Classics ethics logic you name it little came of any of these quests for knowledge
and instead he spent much time riding on Horseback recording pre-history shizzle
Avebury and Stonehenge were particular obsessions of Stukeley's and he did countless drawings and
calculations and measurements giving us a really good picture of what they looked like certainly
laced back in his era 11th of June 1847 the letter and stukeley wrote "it was full of compliments
as usual from foreigners", the letter was from Charles Julius Betram an English lecturer at the
Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen in the letter after countless compliments Bertram suggested that
he has seen a previously unknown medieval document Betram was not in possession as yet however it
was written by a monk Richard of Winchester now Stukeley conjected that this Richard of Winchester
could actually be Richard of Cirencester or Richard of Westminster because for him that
fitted but he remained really frustrated because he had no evidence provided to him by Betram and
he continued to press Betram, Betram said well you're just gonna have to wait the document the
manuscript is in the hands of another Englishman who stole it from a library somewhere in the world
now stukeley did some more due diligence because of his frustration with the lack of any evidence
whatsoever stukeley pressed him and pressed him and asked others about Betram but they all the
others said well no no Betram is of sound mind so this led stukeley to continue the belief that
what Bertram had in his hands was going to change the world and it certainly did that
Eventually after much exchange of letters Betram sent a convincer Betram sent a facsimile of the
first page of this manuscript now such was the quality it was declared that it was 400 years
old and this seemed to fit perfectly with a theory of Richard Cirencester,
stukeley was now convinced that we were now in possession of a Works called the De Situ Britannia
Stukeley was hooked on this just this one front page it took another three years for betram to
send the remaining document the remaining manuscript and once he did Stukeley got his
teeth into it straight away you can imagine his excitement and it drooled upon him that
this document relied on a lot of previous authors so it almost gave it some gravitas that it too
picked out parts that were already known that was fine but then it did contain hundreds of
New pieces of information from towns to provinces and territories and even went to name territories
that had previously been disputed in fact it named a new territory north of the antonine wall
Stukeley was absolutely sold on this now others had their reservations but perhaps
because stukeley was The Chosen One by Bertram that he was blind to all the
excitement of these new Revelations 1757 he published all of the itineraries from
these manuscripts combined with this he put a lot of pressure on Bertram to publish the
entire manuscript himself stukeley himself published more in a series
of papers later a book an account of Richard of Cirencester monk of Westminster and of his works
"the whole is written with great judgment perspicuity and great consciousness"
I emphasize with Stukeley for someone else that loves the notion of the root well I get how he
was drawn into it and this is where Betram really went to town because one of the itineraries one
of the roots that Bertram had listed was from Inverness to Exeter that's almost a lengthened
breadth of Britain so I do get how stukeley was drawn in the the manuscript had many places to
the north of this further north than we ever thought the Romans went before in fact I think
cawdor is the northernmost Roman Fort but even that's not absolutely confirmed as Roman as yet
speaking of Roman forts I'm stood right in the middle of this road to the Roman Road
um a Roman station a Roman mansio here in Milland or Milland or Milland however you
want to pronounce it and in that field just there you can see some Earthworks just there that's
part of maybe 350 to 300 feet square that was this Roman mansio in fact if I crossed the road
here where you see a better example in this field because it's got some red flowering grass and the
red flowering grass sort of sits the top of the embankments around that station the Roman posting
station and as I say this road went right through the middle which is obviously a Roman thing to do
it's only one of many gorgeous Holloways I've been walking down today but it is
Roman and we know it's Roman because it's on the alignment and it zigzags perfectly
it Still Remains a beautiful walk today perhaps a bit more sunken than what it was when it was
constructed and we have touched briefly on the concerns raised by others at the time
that seemingly stukeley didn't see himself and perhaps if he wasn't as blind with excitement
maybe he too would have had similar concerns about this manuscript it was placed on his lap
take for example the map if if you apply the information in the map to known locations as
stupidly did then you can identify numerous Latin place names one of which was Mon grumpium now for
the Aged antiquarian that knows his beans well this should have stuck out like a sore thumb you
see the name should have read mons grumpuis, mon grampian was actually a text error from a
1476 print of the works from tacticus now had Richard of Cirencester has been known of such
a place or battle from other works without any doubt he would have spelled it grampius
and that might be being a tad harsh on poor old stupidly especially when you consider the number
of print runs from the 1759 betram Latin version well there was only a handful and perhaps that was
for good reason you see when stukeley's translated version came out thereafter wow it had a number of
issues not deliberately of course on stukeley's part but as we would later discover the Latin
in the original version was so poor it was like URI sticking English in a translator online to
Latin and it was just almost like the word for word there was no real flow to it whatsoever
so Stukeley's own translation didn't really help matters because then that became the go-to for all
Scholars and that in itself did flow okay because stukeley wrote it and translated it himself they
did that instead of looking at the original manuscript by and large because there wasn't one
for the next 100 years this work continued to be cited and used for numerous Publications
names were taken from it such as the penine mountain range in the 1820s William Roy based
so much of his text work on this desperately and fruitlessly trying to fit Richard Of Cirencester
work into his own work on the ground why ever would he consider this in itself was a fake
and well 1866 1867 a series of Publications in the gentleman magazine finally debunked
the whole thing that was long after patrons death and of course Stukeley
himself they both lay blissfully unaware in their own way foreign
Why did Betram
choose to do this hoax there's a clearly a heck of a lot of work over a number of
years that went into it ultimately he must have known that he would have been found out why did
he choose stukeley again I think that's something we're never gonna know sadly but perhaps it was
to discredit stukeley work in some way knowing that if he published this well maybe it would
undermine him somehow I don't know maybe there was a pass between stukeley and Bertram that we
don't actually know about but there isn't much to suggest that is the case now Betram in his
uh other life outside of the hoax as well he did write a lot of poetry and literature I'll leave
you with one quote that may give us a slight insight into why he created this hoax in the
first place which "Tis a great weakness to be credulous nothing being more common than lying"
thanks for watch everybody what are you making this type of production
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