A celebrated shield, bought by John Conyers from a London ironmonger, was sold after his death by one of his daughters to Woodward. Dr Woodward's Shield, now in the British Museum, is today recognised as a classicising French Renaissance buckler of the mid-16th century, perhaps sold from the Royal Armouries of Charles II, but was thought by Woodward and others to be an original Roman work. Woodward published in 1713 a treatise on the shield which provoked a satire by Alexander Pope, written in the same year but not printed until 1733, on the "follies of antiquarianism". He is mentioned twice in Pope's Fourth Satire of Dr. John Donne, and is one candidate for the original of "Mummius" in Pope's The Dunciad.
Read more about this topic: John Woodward (naturalist)
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