Charles Bertram - The Forgery

The Forgery

Bertram wrote a letter to the celebrated antiquarian William Stukeley in 1746, saying he had access to an old manuscript written by a medieval English monk named Richard of Westminster, and which contained much information on Roman Britain. When Stukeley responded, Bertram followed with another letter and included a letter from Gram, which effectively served as a letter of introduction from a high-ranking Danish official who was widely known and respected in English universities. Bertram then sent a fragment of parchment to Stukeley, and it was verified as 400 years old by the keeper of the Cotton Library. With the seeming endorsement of Gram and a verified 400 year old sample, Stukeley concluded that a genuine manuscript existed and thereafter treated Bertram as reliable. By early 1749 Bertram had provided Stukeley with his copy of the manuscript and map, which were kept in the Arundel Library of the Royal Society.

Stukeley, finding that a chronicler of the fourteenth century, Richard of Cirencester, had also been an inmate of Westminster Abbey, identified him with Bertram's Richard of Westminster, and, in 1756, read an analysis of the discovery before the Society of Antiquaries, which was published with a copy of Richard's map. In 1757 Bertram published at Copenhagen a volume entitled Rerum Gentium Historiae Antiquae Scriptores Tres. This contained the works of Gildas and Nennius and the full text of the forgery, and though Bertram's map did not correspond with that of Richard, Stukeley discarded the latter and adopted Bertram's concoction in his Itinerarium Curiosum posthumously published in 1776.

The uncritical acceptance of the forgery was widespread in Britain. While there were occasional questions as to the location of the original manuscript and map, there was no serious effort to evaluate the validity of Bertram's copy.

The end did not come until 1845, almost a century since the forgery's misinformation had been incorporated into nearly every British publication on ancient British history. In that year the German writer Karl Wex effectively challenged the validity of De Situ Britanniae in the Rheinisches Museum, which was translated into English and printed by the Gentleman's Magazine in October 1846. Further evidence of the falsity of De Situ Britanniae came out in the following years, and by 1870 it had been repeatedly debunked in great detail.