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'''William Stukeley''' {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRS|FSA}} (7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765) was an English [[antiquarian]], physician and [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of [[archaeology]], he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric monuments of [[Stonehenge]] and [[Avebury]] in Wiltshire. He published over twenty books on archaeology and other subjects during his lifetime. Born in [[Holbeach]], Lincolnshire, as the son of a lawyer, Stukeley worked in his father's law business before attending [[Corpus Christi College, Cambridge|Saint Benet's College, Cambridge]] (now Corpus Christi College). In 1709, he began studying medicine at [[St Thomas' Hospital]], [[Southwark]], before working as a [[general practitioner]] in [[Boston, Lincolnshire|Boston]], Lincolnshire.
From 1710 until 1725, he embarked on annual tours of the countryside, seeking out archaeological monuments and other features that interested him; he wrote up and published several accounts of his travels. In 1717, he returned to London and established himself within the city's antiquarian circles. In 1718, he was elected a Fellow of the [[Royal Society]] and became the first secretary of the [[Society of Antiquaries of London]]. In 1721, he became a [[Freemasonry|Freemason]] and, in 1722, co-founded the Society of Roman Knights, an organisation devoted to the study of [[Roman Britain]]. In the early 1720s, Stukeley developed a particular interest in Stonehenge and Avebury, two prehistoric [[stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany|stone circles]] in Wiltshire. He visited them repeatedly, undertaking fieldwork to determine their dimensions.▼
▲From 1710 until 1725, he embarked on annual tours of the countryside, seeking out archaeological monuments and other features that interested him; he wrote up and published several accounts of his travels. In 1717, he returned to London and established himself within the city's antiquarian circles. In 1718, he was elected a Fellow of the [[Royal Society]] and became the first secretary of the [[Society of Antiquaries of London]]. In 1721, he became a [[Freemasonry|Freemason]] and, in 1722, co-founded the Society of Roman Knights, an organisation devoted to the study of [[Roman Britain]].
In 1726, Stukeley relocated to [[Grantham]], Lincolnshire, where he married. In 1729 he was ordained as a cleric in the [[Church of England]] and appointed vicar of [[All Saints' Church, Stamford|All Saints' Church]] in [[Stamford, Lincolnshire|Stamford]], Lincolnshire. He was a friend of the [[Archbishop of Canterbury]] [[William Wake]], who encouraged him to use his antiquarian studies to combat the growth of [[deism]] and [[freethought]] in Britain. To this end, Stukeley developed the belief that Britain's ancient [[druid]]s had followed a [[monotheism|monotheistic]] religion inherited from the [[Patriarchs (Bible)|Biblical Patriarchs]]; he called this druidic religion "Patriarchal Christianity". He further argued that the druids had erected the stone circles as part of serpentine monuments symbolising the [[Trinity]].
In 1747, he returned to London as rector of [[St George the Martyr, Holborn]]. In the last part of his life, he became instrumental in British scholarship's acceptance of [[Charles Bertram]]'s forged ''[[Description of Britain]]'' <ref>"''The Description of Britain'', also known by its [[Latin]] name ''{{lang|la|De Situ Britanniae}}'' (''On the Situation of Britain''), was a [[literary forgery]] perpetrated by [[Charles Bertram]] on the historians of [[English history|England]]. It purported to be a 15th-century<!--sic--> manuscript by the [[England in the Late Middle Ages|English]] monk [[Richard of Westminster]], including information from a lost contemporary account of [[Roman Britain|Britain]] by a [[Roman Empire|Roman]] [[dux|general]] (''{{lang|la|dux}}''),<!--Not necessarily dux Brittaniarum--> new details of the [[Roman roads in Britain]] in the style of the [[Antonine Itinerary]], and "an antient map" as detailed as (but improved upon) the works of [[Claudius Ptolemy|Ptolemy]]. Bertram disclosed the existence of the work through his correspondence with the antiquarian William Stukeley by 1748, provided him "a copy" which was made available in [[London]] by 1749, and published it in Latin in 1757. By this point, his Richard had become conflated with the historical [[Richard of Cirencester]]. The text was treated as a legitimate and major source of information on [[Roman Britain]] from the 1750s through the 19th century, when it was progressively debunked".</ref> and wrote one of the earliest biographies of Sir [[Isaac Newton]]. Stukeley's ideas influenced various antiquaries throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in addition to artists like [[William Blake]], although these had been largely rejected by archaeologists by the second half of the 19th century. Stukeley was the subject of multiple biographies and academic studies by scholars like [[Stuart Piggott]], [[David Boyd Haycock]] and [[Ronald Hutton]].
== Biography ==
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It was while at Avebury in 1723 that he began a draft of the ''History of the Temples of the Ancient Celts''.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=51}} This work drew upon his fieldwork at both Avebury and Stonehenge as well as his field-notes from other prehistoric sites and information obtained from the 'Templa Druidum' section of Aubrey's ''Monumenta Britannica''. The work also cited Biblical and Classical texts.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=88}} In the book, Stukeley discussed how prehistoric people might have erected such monuments using sledges, timber cradles, rollers and leavers.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|pp=88–89}} He devoted much space to refuting the suggestion, made by [[Inigo Jones]] and J. Webb, that Stonehenge had been erected by the Romans, instead attributing it to the prehistoric—or as he called it, "Celtic"—period.{{sfnm|1a1=Piggott|1y=1985|1p=88|2a1=Haycock|2y=2002|2pp=124, 128}} The druids are mentioned only briefly in the book, when Stukeley suggested that they might be possible creators of the stone circles.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=88}}
In 1724, Stukeley returned to Avebury and Stonehenge, returning via [[Ringwood, Hampshire|Ringwood]] and [[Romsey]] before heading up to [[Lincoln, England|Lincoln]] and then back down to Kent later in the year. This was the final year in which he conducted fieldwork at Avebury. The [[Oxford English Dictionary]] lists that the first known use of the word ''relationship'' is from 1724, in his writings.<ref>{{Cite web |title=relationship NOUN |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/relationship_n?tab=factsheet#25958517 |website=Oxford English Dictionary}}</ref> In 1725, Stukeley engaged in the last of his great tours, this time with Roger Gale.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|pp=71, 73, 96}}
This took him from [[Dunstable]] up into the Midlands, where he visited Coventry, Birmingham, Derby and Buxton before heaving west to Chester and then north for Liverpool and the [[Lake District]]; there he visited stone circles like [[Long Meg and Her Daughters]] and [[Castlerigg stone circle]]. From there, Stukeley and Gale travelled further north to [[Whitehaven]] and then [[Hadrian's Wall]], following it along to Newcastle before heading south back to London via Durham and Doncaster.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=74}}
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His idea that the druids once formed a monotheistic priesthood akin to those of modern Christians also owed an influence from older sources.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=103}} [[Michael Drayton]]'s 1612 poem ''[[Poly-Olbion]]'' had for instance portrayed them as wise, monotheistic sages and philosophers.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=103}}
By the time he became a cleric, he
The idea that Britain was God's chosen nation was a recurrent idea in Stukeley's thought.{{sfn|Haycock|2002|pp=120–121}} He thought that Britons should emulate the ancient Romans.{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=120}} Stukeley believed that God had created the Roman Empire to prepare for the arrival of Jesus and to assist in the spread of Christianity throughout Europe.{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=119}} In this, he believed that the ancient Romans had replaced the Jews as God's [[chosen people]].{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=120}} In his view, the Roman Empire collapsed because its inhabitants had corrupted Christianity with what he called "superstitious fopperys" and that this perverted mixture survived as the [[Roman Catholic Church]].{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=120}} Like many English people of his time, he believed that the [[Church of England]], which had split from the Roman Catholic Church during the 16th-century [[English Reformation]], had gained special favour from God; in Stukeley's words, it represented "the main support of religion now upon the face of the earth".{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=115}} Haycock noted that "a leading theme in Stukeley's antiquarian work" was "the resurrection of British history as an archetype for world history, and of Britain as a country historically fit to lead the world into the future".{{sfn|Haycock|2002|pp=112–113}} He criticised Britons who favoured archaeological remains encountered abroad during the Grand Tour, claiming that they were neglecting their own national heritage and adopting continental habits and vices such as effeminacy.{{sfn|Haycock|2002|p=111}}
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In 2005, Hutton noted that there had been "a considerable change of attitude" to Stukeley among scholars over the previous few years, as they had rejected the division into two halves of his life which Piggott had constructed.{{sfn|Hutton|2005|pp=381–382}}
Stukeley was the first person to identify the [[Stonehenge Avenue]] and [[Stonehenge Cursus]], giving these features the names by which they are now known.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|pp=92–93}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Garrow |first1=Duncan |last2=Wilkin |first2=Neil |title=The World of Stonehenge |date=2022 |publisher=British Museum Press |location=London |isbn=978
Piggott noted that Stukeley's speculations on druids, "which seem to us so childishly fantastic", shaped the literary mood of the romantic revival.{{sfn|Piggott|1985|p=12}} Haycock noted that, along with Macpherson and [[Thomas Gray]], Stukeley "helped create the principal historical and literary foundations for the 'Druidical revival' that flourished in the last decades of the eighteenth century".{{sfn|Haycock|2002|pp=234–235}}
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* {{cite journal |last=Piggott |first=Stuart |title=William Stukeley: New Facts and an Old Forgery |journal=Antiquity |volume=60 |number=229 |year=1986 |pages=115–122 |doi=10.1017/S0003598X00058518 |s2cid=163963818 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Reeve |first=Matthew M. |title=Of Druids, the Gothic, and the Origins of Architecture: The Garden Designs of William Stukeley (1687-1765) |journal=The British Art Journal |volume=13 |number=3 |year=2012 |pages=9–18 }}
* {{cite journal |first1=Brian |last1=Robson |first2=David |last2=Bower |year=2016 |title=The Town Plans and Sketches of William Stukeley |journal=The Cartographic Journal |volume=53 |number=2 |pages=133–148 |doi=10.1080/00087041.2015.1112517 |bibcode=2016CartJ..53..133R |s2cid=131794533 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Rousseau |first1=G. S. |last2=Haycock |first2=David |title=Voices Calling for Reform: The Royal Society in the Mid-Eighteenth Century — Martin Folkes, John Hill, and William Stukeley |journal=History of Science |volume=37 |issue=4 |pages=377–406 |year=1999 |doi=10.1177/007327539903700401 |bibcode=1999HisSc..37..377R |s2cid=153943908 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Scoones |first=F |year=1999 |title=Dr. William Stukeley's House at Grantham |journal=Georgian GRP Journal |volume=9 |pages=158–165 }}
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