Credit and Blame
Blame for the acceptance of the forgery fell hardest on the reputation of William Stukeley, and he was (and often still is) held to be most responsible. However, Stukeley relied on the opinions of others more capable than himself to judge document validity. The messenger was assailed because the message that he carried was later found to be false.
The works of those who accepted and used the Bertram's fictions were disparaged, accompanied by charges of "antiquarianism" and sloppy scholarship. Edward Gibbon is among the most notable to be so criticised, but he was never more than one person out of the entirety of the academic world that had accepted the forgery without criticism.
Read more about this topic: De Situ Britanniae
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—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
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—Chinese proverb.
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“Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth;
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We cannot hear each other speak.”
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