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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
Previously unpublished letters of William Stukeley (1687-1765) to Alexander Gordon (?1692-?1754) are printed with a commentary to commemorate the tercentenary of Stukeley's birth. The letters are important as being the only correspondence extant between Stukeley and Gordon, and because they sum up many aspects ofStukeley's personality and shed light on his early preoccupation with the Druids.
1 Brown, I. G., ‘“Gothicism, ignorance and a bad taste”: the destruction of Arthur's Oo'n’, Antiquity, xlviii (1974), 283–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Critick in Antiquity: Sir John Clerk of Penicuik’, Antiquity, li (1977), 201–10Google Scholar; id., The Hobby-Horsical Antiquary (Edinburgh, 1980)Google Scholar.
2 Stukeley, William: an Eighteenth-century Antiquary, 2nd edn. (London, 1985) and Appendices I and IIGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid., 153.
4 Ibid., 50-1,88.
5 Ibid., 84-5.
6 Ibid., 38, 45-6.
7 On the Carausius episode see ibid., 139-41.
8 Lukis, W. C. (ed.), The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, and the Antiquarian and other Correspondence of William Stukeley, Roger Samuel Gale, etc., 1, Surtees Soc. lxxiii (1882), 202Google Scholar, Gale to Stukeley, 6 Feb. 1727/8.
9 Sottish Record Office [hereafter S.R.O.] GD18/5030/4,24 June 1726; cf. Stukeley to Clerk, GD18/5027/5, 18 Apr. 1726.
10 National Library of Scotland [hereafter N.L.S.] MS 1252, fo. I, Clerk to John Mackenzie of Delvine, 2 Oct. 1723. “N.L.S. MS 3044, fo. 87”, Clerk to Robert Arbuthnot, 22 Feb. 1726.
12 N.L.S. Adv. MS 23.3.26, fo. 21, Clerk to Patrick Lindsay, 4 Apr. 1739.
13 On Gordon as musician see Morey, Carl, ‘Alexander Gordon, scholar and singer’, Musicdf Letters, xlvi (1965), 332–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Highfill, P. H., Burnim, K. A. and Langhans, E. A. (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800, vi (Carbondale, Illinois, 1978), 273–5Google Scholar.
14 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/4, Gordon to Clerk, 26 Dec. 1723.
15 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/1.
16 S.R.O. GD18/5032/3/2.
17 S.R.O. GD18/5023/4, Clerk to Gordon, 6 Apr. 1724.
18 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/11, Gordon to Clerk, 6 Oct. 1724.
19 N.L.S. Adv. MS 29.1.2 (iv), fo. 75, Gordon to James Anderson, 19 Aug. 1723.
20 Society of Antiquaries of London MS 268, ‘Minute Book of the Antiquarian Society, 1722’, fo. 33v.
21 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/11, Gordon to Clerk, 6 Oct. 1724.
22 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/13, 23 Nov. 1724.
23 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/17 and /18, 12 Feb. and 4 Mar. 1724/5.
24 S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/28 and /30, 29 Jan and 16 Feb. 1725/6.
25 On Clerk in general, see Brown, I. G., ‘Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676-1755): aspects of a virtuoso life’, unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. Cambridge (1980)Google Scholar.
26 Brown, I. G., ‘Modern Rome and Ancient Caledonia: the Union and the politics of Scottish culture’, in Hook, Andrew (ed.), A History of Scottish Literature, II (Aberdeen, 1987), chap. 2Google Scholar.
27 Tacitus, , Agricola, 29–38.Google Scholar In fact, the name of the Caledonian leader is given as Calgacus, which is derived from the Irish calgach, ‘swordsman’: see Ogilvie, R. M. and Richmond, I. (eds.), Cornelii Taciti de Vita Agricolae (Oxford, 1967), 253.Google Scholar Stukeley, however, was following a good Roman tradition in his indifference to the use of ‘c’ or ‘g’ (ibid., 64-5). Gordon, too, used the form Galgacus ( Itinerarium Septentrionale: or, ajourney thro’ most of the counties of Scotland, and those in the North of England (London, 1726), 37–40Google Scholar), as did Sir John Clerk ( Lukis, , op. cit. (note 8), 184)Google Scholar.
28 Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 53-8, 173–4Google Scholar.
29 Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733). His seat was Wilton House, near Salisbury. Stukeley seems to have been confused as to whether Pembroke's title in the Roman Knights was derived from the name of a British chieftain ( Itinerarium Curiosum. Or, an account of the Antiquities and remarkable Curiosities in Nature or Art, observed in travels through Great Britain (London, 1724), 128Google Scholar) or a supposed Roman ‘statuary in brass’ whom he alleged (incorrectly) had been mentioned by Pliny (Bodleian Library, Oxford [hereafter Bodl.], MS Top. Wilts, e. 6, p. 178).
30 This may refer to the Society of Antiquaries (which met on Wednesdays in the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street) or to the Roman Knights. Gordon was admitted to the Antiquaries only in February 1725, and to the Knights in November 1724. It may be that the ‘Club’ cryptically referred to by Stukeley in his Commonplace Book is in fact the group intended here: see Lukis, , op. cit. (note 8), 98Google Scholar.
31 ‘He [Newton] calls antient Statues, Bustos, &c, by way of derision Old Babys': Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. e. 260, fo. 5. Stukeley also uses this phrase in a letter to Sir John Clerk, 30 Nov. 1725: S.R.O. GD18/5027/4.
32 For Pembroke's collection, see Michaelis, Adolf, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain (Cambridge, 1882), 42–7, 667-715,Google Scholar which includes a bibliography of the antiquities at Wilton. Pembroke hated to have a bust without a name, and was constantly christening and re-christening his sculptures.
33 The statue of Marcus Aurelius can be seen in drawings made by Stukeley at Wilton in 1723-4: Bodl. Gough Maps 33, fo. 19, and MS Top. Wilts, c. 4, fos. 7, 17, 24. On copies of the statue, see Haskell, F. and Penny, N., Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (London, 1982 repr.), 252–5Google Scholar.
34 Heneage Finch, 5th Earl of Winchelsea (c. 1656-1726).
35 Algernon Seymour, Lord Hertford (1684-1739/40), later Duke of Somerset and Earl of Northumberland. His seat was Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire. For the origin of Winchelsea's and Hertford's titles in the Knights, see Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 174Google Scholar.
36 Stukeley had been in medical practice in Boston, Lincolnshire, after leaving London in 1710, and became a freeman of the town in 1713.
37 Anna Maria Seymour (d. 10 July 1723), wife of the celebrated actor Anthony Boheme: see Highfill, P. H., Burnim, K. A. and Langhans, E. A., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Mus-cians, Dancers, Managers… in London, 1660-1800, II (Carbondale, Illinois, 1973), 186Google Scholar.
38 Celebrated pleasure gardens in Southwark: see Weinreb, B. and Hibbert, C. (eds.) The London Encyclopaedia (London, 1983), 217Google Scholar; Phillips, Hugh, The Thames about 1750 (London, 1951), 106–7Google Scholar. Stukeley had drawn marbles from the Arundel collection there before these fragments were removed to houses in the country: Bodl. MS Top. Gen. e. 61, fos. 48v-9, 93-5.
39 It was to his frequent attacks of gout that Stukeley attributed taking up riding for his health, and it was riding in the summer months that attached him to the English countryside and to its antiquities: Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. e. 121, fos. 26, 28.
40 Perhaps the Mr Bryan mentioned in a letter of Stukeley to Samuel Gale: Lukis, , op. cit. (note 8), 232.Google Scholar He cannot be traced in a Scottish context. However, there is a reference to the effect that ‘Mr Bryan shewd the Society of Antiquaries in 1724 two drawings of the whole coast of Scotland, upon the Firth of Forth as high as Stirling, and of the Cluyd to Glasgow, and of the Solway Firth to Carlyle’: see Gough, Richard, British Topography (London, 1780), II, 577.Google Scholar These drawings had been made by John Adair, the Scottish surveyor and mapmaker who had worked for Sir Robert Sibbald. Adair had also drawn Arthur's O'on, and it is possible that Bryan had shown copies of these drawings to Stukeley; on 16 Mar. 1719/20 Stukeley had brought his papers and drawings of Arthur's O'on to the Society of Antiquaries: Soc. Antiq. London MS268, fo. 1.
41 Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 58–60.Google Scholar Arthur's O'on had been the subject of Stukeley's first publication. It was Gordon's reading of this pamphlet which had inspired him to work on Roman antiquities in Scotland: see the preface to his Itinerarium Septentrionale, op. cit. (note 27).
42 The chief source for the history and ethos of the Roman Knights is Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. c. 401. The Society was instituted on 23 July 1722 by Stukeley, Gerard Vandergucht, and John Pine (Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. e. 121, fo. 31), but it was not until 1724 that Gordon, Roger Gale and Clerk, e.g., were admitted. An annual Praetorium was held in November at the Fountain Tavern: Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. e. 667/1, fo. 14.
43 Bremenium is High Rochester in Redesdale: see Rivet, A. L. F. and Smith, C., The Place-Names of Roman Britain (London, 1979), 276.Google Scholar Bodl. MS Gough Gen. Top. 15 is a volume of plans of Roman sites with pages dedicated to individual Knights; it is in effect a book of the Roman Knights, with pages for their ‘seats’. Page 1 is Bremenium, and the dedication to Gordon is heavily deleted, which may indicate a later falling-out with Stukeley.
44 Gordon's last recorded musical performance in London was in June 1723. However the reference suggests that he was preparing work for the winter concert and opera season of 1723-4.
45 I have been unable to trace any theatrical or musical work of this title.
46 This is presumably the linear earthwork known as the Catrail. Gordon first mentions this in his Proposals for his book on the Roman antiquities of Scotland which were issued on 1 Feb. 1724/5. Here he promised to describe ‘another inferior Wall of Separation never as yet mentioned to the Publick, the Tract of which (as the Author traced it) appears distinct for 22 Miles, running ‘twixt the Solway Firth and the Firth of Edinburgh.’ For Gordon's full account see id., op. cit (note 27), chapter xi, 101-5. Gordon joined up disconnected field monuments to suit his theory of a supposed native limes made as a Roman-Caledonian frontier on conclusion of a treaty with Severus. For modern discussion of the Catrail (Roxburghshire) and The Pict's Work Ditch (Selkirkshire), see Scot., R.C.A.H.M., An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Roxburghshire, II, (Edinburgh, 1956), 479–83Google Scholar; id., An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Selkirkshire (Edinburgh, 1957), 126–7.Google Scholar In a letter to Gordon of 6 Apr. 1724 Sir John Clerk jokingly refers to the earthworks as ‘Vallum Gordianum’: S.R.O. GD18/5023/4.
47 Wilton: see above, note 29Google Scholar.
48 Of the Roman Amphitheater at Dorchester (London, 1723)Google Scholar; the work is dated 7 Nov 1723. It was reprinted by Stukeley, in his Itinerarium Curiosum, op. cit. (note 29), as pages 155–68Google Scholar of the ‘Iter Dum-noniense’. The monument is known as Maumbury Rings: see Bradley, R., ‘Maumbury Rings, Dorchester: the excavations of 1908-1913’, Archaeologia, cv (1976), 1–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Sir John Clerk was a Baron of the Scottish Court of Exchequer and consequently was frequently referred to as ‘the Baron’, or ‘Baron Clerk’.
50 Gordon's comedy Lupone, or The Inquisitor was not published until 1731, but clearly it was written in 1723. The play was first performed 15 Mar. 1731 at the New Haymarket Theatre, and there were at most two other performances: see Scouten, A. H. (ed.), The London Stage 1660-1800, iii: 1729-41, I (Carbondale, Illinois, 1961), 123, 129.Google Scholar The play is an attack on the Inquisition in Naples: Lupone, a Dominican friar, is chief inquisitor. Gordon was devoted, as th e dedication to Cosmo, Duke of Gordon, states, to ‘exposing those whose employment is to promote the most pernicious error that ever deluded mankind…’.
51 Hill, Aaron (1685-1750), playwright, manager, critic and poet. The work referred to is King Henry the Fifth; or, the Conquest of France by the English.Google Scholar See Avery, E. L. (ed.), The London Stage 1660-1800, ii: 1700-29 (Carbondale, Illinois, 1960), 748Google Scholar; Highfill, P. H., Burnim, K. A. and Langhans, E. A. (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers… in London, 1660-1800, VII (Carbondale, Illinois, 1982), 298.Google Scholar The first performance was at Drury Lane, 5 Dec. 1723, with scenery of a new type.
52 This is probably John Gay's The Captives, produced in Jan. 1723/4.
53 See above, note 37.
54 Elisha Kirkall (1682-1742). He made large chiaroscuro and mezzotint reproductions of drawings and paintings; as Vertue noted, he produced ‘large prints after a new manner from all others, being a Mixture of Etching, metzotint. &c. stamps of wood, to make the Tinctures, in which he succeeded to Admiration’: Vertue Notebooks, III (6), Walpole Soc. xxii (1933-1934).Google Scholar For discussion of his specialized mixed-media technique, see Hodnett, Edward, ‘Elisha Kirkall: master of white-line engraving in relief’, The Book Collector, xxv (1976), 195–209.Google Scholar It was Kirkall who engraved the plates of prospects of Stonehenge—those four ‘new views of Stone-Heng in its present Situation’—which were included in the 1725 edition in one volume of Jones, Inigo and Webb, John, The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone-Heng, Restored and John Webb, A Vindication of Stone-Heng, Restored (London)Google Scholar: cf. below, note 72. Harris, J., Orgel, S. and Strong, R., The King's Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court (London, 1973), 83Google Scholar, refer to the ‘very elegant engravings’ in this edition but without mentioning Kirkall.
55 Probably Dr John Kennedy (d. 1760), the numismatist and protagonist in Stukeley's ‘Oriuna’ controversy, and collector of coins of Carausius, and of Greek and Roman coins in general. But this is ‘Mr’ Kennedy, and it could just be (in view of Gordon's musical interests) Alexander Kennedy, the Scottish founder of an eminent family of London violinmakers, but the date seems rather early for him. It is is also possible that the allusion is to James Kennedy, who catalogued the Wilton collection, for which see below, note 56.
56 Stukeley attempted to compile an account of the sculpture at Wilton: see Bodl. MS Top. Wilts. e. 6. Inside the front cover of this book is a note to the effect that Lord Pembroke interfered so much that Stukeley abandoned the project. The evidence for this is clear: Pembroke has scribbled all over the catalogue in his illegible hand, altering, erasing and adding his own observations. In letters to Clerk, Roger Gale confirmed the difficulties encountered in helping Pembroke with his collection: the work of others was unravelled by the Earl ‘like Penelope's wool’ (S.R.O. GD18/5030/26, 30 Aug. 1732, et sqq.). Pembroke acquired works from the Arundel, Mazarin and Giustiniani collections, and the Wilton collection came in time to be notorious for ‘the large number of spurious pieces, the abominable restoration and the absurd nomenclature’: Michaelis, , op. cit. (note 32), 670.Google Scholar The ‘new cargoe’ alluded to by Stukeley is the sculpture bought by Pembroke from other collectors ruined in the South Sea Bubble crash of 1720: see Kennedy, James, A Description of the Antiquities and Curiosities in Wilton-House (Salisbury, 1769), 53Google Scholar, for those works (including the ‘Julius Caesar’ mentioned here) acquired by the Earl in ‘South-Sea Time’.
57 Clerk seems not to have been formally enrolled among the Roman Knights until the Praetorium in Nov. 1725: see letter of Stukeley to Clerk, 30 Nov. 1725, S.R.O. GD18/5027/4. For his title he took ‘Agricola’, with ‘Castra Alata’—thought to be the Roman name for Edinburgh—as his seat. The choice of title is significant: it was not that Clerk had to be Agricola because Celtic names were running short ( Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 53Google Scholar), but rather that this choice deliberately reflected Clerk's profoundly Roman life and outlook: see Brown, I. G. 1977, op. cit. (note 1), 203Google Scholar.
58 Thomas Gordon (d. 1750), miscellaneous writer and literary hack favoured by Sir Robert Walpole. He was most celebrated as a translator of Tacitus (1728), a version which was regarded as standard in the eighteenth century.
59 Sheeles, John, composer: see Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Library to 1980 (London, 1986), LII, 83.Google Scholar Stukeley had written words for a song of his in 1720, ‘Hail Janus who shuttest out the sliding year’: British Library 1.530(141). Sheeles shared Stukeley's and Gordon's antiquarian interests. He was a candidate for admission to the Knights in 1723 as Tigellius; and he is recorded as making antiquarian expeditions with Stukeley in the London area in 1723 and 1724: Lukis, , op. cit. (note 8), 71, 75Google Scholar.
60 The Latin tag about hearth and home echoes the sentiments of Stukeley's address to the Praetorium of the Knights in 1723 when he encouraged the members to defend all that they held most dear: see Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 55Google Scholar.
61 See above, note 50.
62 The Harveian Oration was delivered at the Royal College of Physicians on 18 Oct., being St Luke's Day.
63 cf. Stukeley's address to the Praetorium, Nov. 1723: Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. c. 401, and Piggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 55Google Scholar.
64 Clerk's letter, to which Stukeley refers, is probably that on Hadrian's Wall of which a copy is preserved in the Clerk papers: S.R.O. GD18/5023/4, 6 Apr. 1724. This letter is alluded to by Gordon (then in Edinburgh): S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/9, 7 Apr. 1724.
65 William Aikman (1682-1731), portrait painter, who was Clerk's cousin. He moved permanently to London in 1723 where he frequented virtuoso and literary circles: see D. and Irwin, F., Scottish Painters at Home and Abroad 1700-1900 (London, 1975), 43Google Scholar; Macmillan, D., Painting in Scotland: the Golden Age (Oxford, 1986), 9–14.Google Scholar Clerk hoped that Stukeley might be able to help Aikman in London: S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/6, Gordon to Clerk, 29 Dec. 1723. Aikman later told Clerk that he had not yet made contact with Stukeley: ‘… we live so far from one another, and our amusements so different, that I am afraid we shall not meet often.’ (S.R.O. GD18/4593,15 Feb. 1724.) It i s clear that Clerk also asked Aikman to assist Gordon in any way possible: S.R.O. GD18/4583, Aikman to Clerk, n.d. [but 1723]. An additional piece of evidence (from a letter of Clerk to Laurence Charteris, 8 Jan. 1724, S.R.O. GD18/5245/4/58) suggests that Clerk began to correspond with Stukeley through Aikman.
66 John Campbell: see [Wood, Marguerite], The Lord Provosts of Edinburgh 1296-1932 (privately printed, Edinburgh, 1932)Google Scholar; cf. Aikman to Clerk, n.d. [but c. 1723], S.R.O. GD18/4582.
67 S.R.O. GD18/4594, Aikman to Clerk, 7 Apr. 1724; the painter was to pay five guineas to Stukeley as a subscription for a book - i.e. Itinerarium Curiosum.
68 Algernon Seymour, Lord Hertford, was elected President on 22Jan. 1723/4: see Evans, J.A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956). 68Google Scholar.
69 From this vague description it is difficult to be positive in the identification of the site. However, it is just possible that the passage refers to the discovery of the Rudge Coppice villa site, at Froxfield, near Marlborough, on which see Pugh, R. B. and Crittal, E. (eds.), V.C.H. Wiltshire, 1 (1) (London, 1957), 71–2Google Scholar; and Cowen, J. D. and Richmond, I. A., ‘The Rudge Cup’, Arch. Aeliana, 4th ser. xii (1935), 312.Google Scholar Hertford's seat in the Knights was ‘Cunetio’, i.e. Marlborough [recte Mildenhall], Wilts.
70 On the Antiquaries’ Metallographia Britannica project, see Evans, , op. cit. (note 68), 72, andGoogle ScholarPiggott, , op. cit. (note 2), 71Google Scholar.
71 John Henri Bastide of the 11th Foot worked on the Board of Ordnance survey of the Highlands of Scotland between 1718 and 1720. He was in this a colleague of Stukeley's friend Andrews Jelfe. Drawings and plans by him are among the Board of Ordnance Plans in N.L.S. MS 1648, Z. 3/5a, 6b, 7a, 8a, 13a and 22a. This last is a plan of the Battle of Glenshiel in 1719. Other drawings relate to the barrack of Bernera at neighbouring Glenelg, close to which are the brochs of Dun Telve and Dun Troddan in Glen Beag. (Both barrack and brochs are conveniently discussed in Close-Brooks, Joanna, The Highlands, R.C.A.H.M. Scot. Exploring Scotland's Heritage ser. (Edinburgh, 1986)Google Scholar). Stukeley exhibited to the Antiquaries ‘a draught of some antient stone Towers in Scotland which were taken by Mr Jelf…’: Soc. Antiq. London MS 265, fo. 62v. If he regarded brochs as ‘Temples of the Druids’ (Bodl. MS Top. Gen. b. 53, fos. 18v-19), Gordon for his part was more judicious, giving an excellent and sane description of the buildings at Glenelg to Clerk on 3 Sept. 1724: S.R.O. GD18/5023/3/10. This was to form the basis of Gordon's fine account in Itinerarium Septentrionale, op. cit. (note 27), 166-9. His and Stukeley's conclusions are interestingly different. ‘By whom [Gordon asked] can we imagine them to have been built, and to what end? Some have supposed them to be the old Temples of the Druids: but so many standing in so small a Space, destroyes that Conjecture.’ Rather Gordon thought them ‘Places of Strength’: ‘… those Fabricks seem to have been thus contrived for the Security of the Inhabitants thereabouts’. His ‘rational conjecture’ about their age put them around 200 B.C., but he did not attribute them to any particular people. It was these buildings which became the ‘Pictish Towers’ of Allan Ramsay's ‘Scots Ode to the British Antiquarians’ of 1726, from which ‘a Scottish Muse her duty sends…’: see Brown, I. G., Poet and Painter: Allan Ramsay, Father and Son, 1684-1784 (Edinburgh, 1984), 38Google Scholar.
72 Stukeley implies that Burlington, as high-priest of the cult of Inigo Jones, would resent any apparent slight on the judgement and scholarship of his hero. In the year that this letter was written, Burlington commissioned William Kent to edit The Designs of Inigo Jones (which was published in 1727), and the new edition of John Webb's A Vindication of Stone-Heng Restored was to be published in 1725 (see above, note 54).
73 See Evans, , op. cit. (note 68), 80Google Scholar.
74 Dr Claude Genebrier's Histoire de Carausius, Empereur de la Grande-Bretagne, Collegue de Diocletien el de Maximien. Prouvée par les Medailles was not published in Paris until 1740; however the manuscript of this work was given its official approbation on 30 Nov. 1724.
75 Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754), Stukeley's former medical teacher and now a neighbour in Ormond Street, delivered the Harveian Oration at the College of Physicians on 18 Oct. 1723. This took the form, for the most part, of a defence of the position of physicians in classical antiquity, showing that they were always honoured. He supported his statements by references to classical literature and by arguments drawn from numismatic evidence. This caused some controversy: see also below, note 77.
76 Haym, Nicola Francesco (c. 1679-1729), author of Del Tesoro Britannico. Pane Prima. Overo il Museo Nummario, 2 vols. (London, 1719-1720).Google Scholar This was also published in English as The British Treasury: being Cabinet the First of our Greek and Roman Antiquities of All Sorts (London, 1719-1720).Google Scholar For his membership of the Knights (as ‘Varro’) see Bodl. MS Eng. Misc. c. 401, p. 7. Stukeley recorded Haym's death in his Commonplace Book thus:’… he understood antient medals & musick’ ( Lukis, , op. cit. (note 8), 134Google Scholar). As a professional musician, Gordon will have known Haym as Handel's librettist.
77 Edmund Chishull (1671-1733), prebendary of St Paul's, was also an antiquary who had travelled in Turkey. Dr Mead published in 1724 Chishull's Dissertatio de nummis quibusdam a Smymaeais in medicorum honorem percussis as an appendix to his own Harveian Oration of the previous year: see above, note 75.
78 The two great London fairs were famous for their range of quality theatrical presentations as well as for their more popular and uproarious entertainments.
79 An establishment presenting entertainments such as female-fighting, bear-baiting and cock- and bull-fights, built near Oxford Road, Marylebone, by James Figg, the celebrated pugilist: see Weinreb, and Hibbert, (eds.), op. cit. (note 38), 276Google Scholar.