Английская Википедия:Charles Bertram

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Charles Julius Bertram (1723–1765) was an English expatriate in Denmark who "discovered"—and presumably wrote—The Description of Britain (Шаблон:Lang-la), an 18th-century literary forgery purporting to be a mediaeval work on history that remained undetected for over a century. In that time, it was highly influential for the reconstruction of the history of Roman Britain and contemporary Scotland, to the extent of appearing in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and being used to direct William Roy's initial Ordnance Survey maps. Bertram "discovered" the manuscript around the age of 24 and spent the rest of his life a successful academic and author. Scholars contested various aspects of the Description, but it was not recognized as an unquestionable forgery until 1846.

Early life

Charles Bertram was born in LondonШаблон:Sfnp in 1723.Шаблон:Sfnp He was the son of an English silk dyer who was usually accounted to have emigrated to Copenhagen, Denmark, among the retinue of Princess Louisa, a daughter of George II, upon her marriage to Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark in 1743.Шаблон:SfnpШаблон:SfnpШаблон:Sfnp (The prince became King Frederick V three years later.) Other sources suggest the father immigrated earlier, in 1738.Шаблон:Sfnp The father established himself as a hosier in 1744,Шаблон:Sfnp and Charles seems to have benefited from the warm reception that Louisa and her retinue received from the Danes. On 5 July 1747, Charles petitioned the University of Copenhagen's Consortium for admissionШаблон:Sfnp to study history, antiquities, philosophy, and mathematics.Шаблон:Sfnp This seems to have been granted, although students were generally required to adhere to the Danish Church and Bertram remained Anglican.Шаблон:Sfnp He became a friend and protégé of Hans Gram, the royal librarian and a member of the privy council. On 23 March 1748, Bertram petitioned the king to be permitted to give public lectures on the English languageШаблон:Sfnp and became a teacher of English in the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen.Шаблон:Sfnp (Some accountsШаблон:Which name him as a professor, rather than a tutor; if so, that status would have been granted some years later, as he was a new undergraduate in 1747.) His 1749 chrestomathy An Essay on the Excellency and Style of the English Tongue has been called the initiation of English-language printing in Denmark.Шаблон:Sfnp A brother apparently died at sea in 1752,Шаблон:Sfnp and at some point he married Cathrine Marie Gold.Шаблон:Sfnp

Шаблон:Anchor

The Description of Britain

Файл:Richard.of.cirencester.forged.facsimile.jpg
Bertram's "facsimile" of the work's first page.
Файл:MappaBritanniaeFacie3.png
Bertram's 1755 engraved map.
Файл:MappaBritanniaeFacie4.png
William Stukeley’s 1757 map, based on a drawing sent by Bertram by early 1750, cleaned up and reoriented to face north.
Файл:Hereford Mappa Mundi detail Britain.jpg
A redrawn section of the genuine Hereford Mappa Mundi, Шаблон:Circa.

Шаблон:Main article In 1746, Bertram composed a letter to the English antiquarian William Stukeley on Gram's recommendation.Шаблон:Sfnp He hesitated sending it and Stukeley did not receive it until 11 June 1747.Шаблон:Sfnp He found it "full of compliments, as usual with foreigners", and his reply brought a "prolix and elaborate Latin epistle" from Gram in Bertram's favour.Шаблон:Sfnp Gram was widely known and respected in English universities. 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."Шаблон:Sfnp He eventually "confessed" that another Englishman, "wild in his youth, had stolen it out of a larger manuscript in an English Library", permitting its use to Bertram upon his promise of secrecy.Шаблон:Sfnp Stukeley was considering retirement but, receiving a new position in London and hearing of Gram's death, he renewed the correspondence and received a "copy" of its script made by Bertram. David Casley, the keeper of the Cotton Library, "immediately" described it as around 400 years old.Шаблон:SfnpШаблон:Sfnp 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."Шаблон:Sfnp Bertram refused his attempts to purchase the original manuscript for the British Museum,Шаблон:Sfnp but Stukeley had received copies of the text piecemeal over a series of letters and had a version of the map by early 1750.Шаблон:Sfnp Poste notes that the volume appeared in no manuscript catalogues of the era but offered that it could have been stolen at the time of the Cotton Library's fire in 1732.Шаблон:Sfnp There had been a monk named Richard at Westminster Abbey in the mid-15th century and Bertram suggested this date to Stukeley.Шаблон:Sfnp Stukeley preferred instead to identify Bertram's "Richard of Westminster" with Richard of Cirencester, who had lived at Westminster in the late 14th century and was known to have compiled another history.Шаблон:Sfnp Stukeley made the text and map available at the Arundel Library of the Royal Society.Шаблон:Sfnp

Stukeley examined the text for years before reading his analysis of the work and its itineraries before the Society of Antiquaries in 1756 and publishing its itineraries in 1757.Шаблон:Sfnp 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".Шаблон:Sfnp His account of the itineraries included a new engraving, reorienting Bertram's map to place north at the top. Later in 1757,Шаблон:Refn at Stukeley's urging,Шаблон:SfnpШаблон:Sfnp Bertram published the full text in a volume alongside Gildas's Ruin of Britain and the History of the Britons traditionally ascribed to Nennius.Шаблон:Sfnp Bertram's preface noted that the work "contains many fragments of a better time, which would now in vain be sought for elsewhere".Шаблон:RefnШаблон:Sfnp 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".Шаблон:RefnШаблон:Sfnp This volume's map was the earlier one and Stukeley later employed it for his own Шаблон:Lang published posthumously in 1776.Шаблон:Sfnp

The work was studied critically and various aspects of Pseudo-Richard's text were universally rejected, including his claimed province of Vespasiana in lowland Scotland. Gibbon considered Pseudo-Richard to be "feeble evidence"Шаблон:Sfnp and Pinkerton tersely noted that, where the two differ, "Ptolemy must be right and Richard must be wrong."Шаблон:Sfnp Nonetheless, the legitimacy of the text itself was unquestioned for decades despite no actual manuscript ever being seen by another person.Шаблон:Sfnp Instead, Bertram always provided credible reasons why the actual document could not be made available and provided copies to satisfy each new request for information.

Later life

Stukeley assisted Bertram in joining the Society of Antiquaries in 1756.Шаблон:Sfnp Bertram was succeeded as the naval academy's English teacher by the Swedish Carl Mannercrantz.Шаблон:Sfnp The terminology and accent system he employed in his works, despite claims to originality, seem to broadly mimic Høysgaard'sШаблон:Sfnp and Bertram passed unmentioned by the Danish Biographical Dictionary.Шаблон:Sfnp His Royal English–Danish Grammar was undeserving of its appellation and was published, like all his books, at his own expense;Шаблон:Sfnp nonetheless, it has been noted as "far and away the longest, the most ambitious, and the best" such work in its time.Шаблон:Sfnp The end of its third volume consisted of blurbs and testimonials, including praise from the German Anglicist Theodor Arnold.Шаблон:Sfnp Bertram died a respected scholar at CopenhagenШаблон:Sfnp on 8 January 1765.Шаблон:Sfnp

Legacy

The success of the forgery was partially due to the difficulty in finding Bertram's original text, which had a limited printing in Copenhagen.Шаблон:Sfnp British scholars generally relied on Stukeley's translation, which obscured some of the questionable aspects of the text, until a new volume with the original text and a full translation was published anonymously by Henry HatcherШаблон:Sfnp in 1809.Шаблон:Sfnp By Hatcher's time, it had become impossible to purchase a copy in London or Copenhagen, and his own edition was produced through the loan of William Coxe's copy.Шаблон:Sfnp Bertram's letters to Stukeley were acquired by John Britton and studied by Joseph Hunter.Шаблон:Sfnp

The inability to find a manuscript in Copenhagen after Bertram's death provoked some questions as to its validity.Шаблон:Sfnp In 1827, John Hodgson fully rejected the text as spurious on account of its absence from Bertram's papers in Copenhagen, errors in the "extract"’s paleography, and the work's highly unusual Latin style.Шаблон:Sfnp Enough doubts had arisen by 1838 that the English Historical Society declined to include The Description of Britain in its list of important historical works.Шаблон:Sfnp In 1846, the German scholar Karl Wex conclusively proved at least some passages of the Description were completely spurious.Шаблон:Sfnp He had been working on a new edition of Tacitus's AgricolaШаблон:Sfnp and, consulting the Description, he recognized that it included transcription errors which had been introduced to editions of Tacitus by Venetian printers in the late 15th century.Шаблон:Sfnp His work was translated into English by Beale PosteШаблон:Sfnp and printed by the Gentleman's Magazine in October 1846.Шаблон:Sfnp

Many British scholars were slow to accept the truth.Шаблон:Sfnp Some of the routes mentioned by the work had seemed to have been subsequently borne outШаблон:Sfnp 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.Шаблон:Sfnp The final confirmation that the Description was spurious came in the 1860s.Шаблон:Sfnp Over four articles in 1866 and 1867, Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward thoroughly debunked the workШаблон:SfnpШаблон:SfnpШаблон:SfnpШаблон:Sfnp and, in 1869, J.E.B. Mayor complemented this by thoroughly comparing the Description with the Historial Mirror written by the real Richard of Cirencester (his only surviving work), which he had been reviewing and editing for the Rolls Series.Шаблон:Sfnp Blame fell hardest on the reputation of William Stukeley, although it also impugned Gibbon, Roy, and other scholars who had accepted it.Шаблон:Sfnp

Bibliography

Charles Bertram is the author, editor, or translator of the following works:Шаблон:SfnpШаблон:Sfnp

Notes

Шаблон:Reflist

References

Citations

Шаблон:Reflist

Sources

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Шаблон:Refend

Further reading

Шаблон:Authority control

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