Diana and Michael Honeybone are performing a valuable service to all students of eighteenth-century antiquarianism, sociability and provincial culture in the series of volumes they have edited arising from the archives of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society and those of two of its most active members, Maurice Johnson and William Stukeley; both also fellows of the Society of Antiquaries.

In this volume, the focus shifts from Maurice Johnson to William Stukeley, today the most familiar of all eighteenth-century antiquaries. The volume comprises transcriptions of three lesser-known manuscripts written by Stukeley. The first, ‘Iter Oxoniense’ (1710), is the record of a tour undertaken by a group of Lincolnshire men from Boston to Oxford (now held by the Bodleian). The second is ‘Stanfordia Illustrata’, a manuscript history of Stamford from the sixth to the fourteenth century taking the form of a dialogue, and written 1736–7. This manuscript is now in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi, Stukeley’s alma mater. The final text is the ‘Minutes of the Brazen Nose Society (1736–7)’ the short-lived learned society that Stukeley established in Stamford during his residence there as vicar of All Saints. These minutes too are in the Bodleian.

A substantial introduction provides context and background to Stukeley the antiquary and the texts themselves, while appendices provide further information on the historical figures mentioned in ‘Stanfordia Illustrata’ and biographical details of the members of the Brazen Nose Society. Taken together, the three manuscripts demonstrate the importance of locality for Stukeley: ‘Iter Oxoniense’ concludes with a paean of praise to the beauties of Boston on their return; ‘Stanfordia Illustrata’ is an exercise in celebrating (or inventing) Stamford’s claims to historical distinction as a seat of the Mercian kings and a centre of learning; the minutes of the Brazen Nose Society illustrate Stukeley’s intense engagement with the antiquities of the locality (a large proportion of the papers were presented by him) and his belief – shared with Maurice Johnson – of the importance of combining sociability and learning.

The ‘Iter Oxoniense’ is not a particularly striking piece of domestic travel literature. Its chief interest lies in the explicit intent to use the journal as the focus for winter conversations after the travellers’ return: a striking instance of the ‘afterlife of travel’. In terms of Stukeley the antiquary and future author of Itinerarium Curiosum it is intriguing to see early signs of future hobbyhorses. The Rollright Stones, for example, were a particular highlight of the journey: they were, Stukeley suggested, ‘an heathen temple of our Ancestors, perhaps in the Druids time’ (p 15), and Jewry Wall, in Leicester, he confidently asserted to have been the Roman temple to Janus where a Flamen had resided. His concluding comments, directed at ‘those giddy ramblers’ that travelled abroad, anticipate the criticisms that he would later target at grand tourists who wasted their health and their fortune in foreign travel, when there was so much of greater interest to discover at home (Stukeley Reference Stukeley1776, 2–3); needless to say, Stukeley had never travelled abroad. Local patriotism was articulated within a bullish pride in ‘the Glory of Great Britain, the desireable Mistresse of all Nations’ (p 18). Stukeley the Whig appears in Oxford as a firm supporter of Dr Sacheverell, full of praise for the Tory university’s loyalty to the Stuart monarchy and deeply disapproving of the dominance of dissenters in Coventry’s corporation.

The ‘Iter Oxoniense’ was always intended to be a manuscript to be circulated among friends. Stukeley evidently had ambitions to publish ‘Stanfordia Illustrata’, however, and the volume of sketches that would have illustrated it will be published separately by the Lincoln Record Society under the editorship of John Smith, FSA. ‘Stanfordia Illustrata’ is not your average urban history; for one, it is written as a dialogue between Stukeley (Palaephatus) and his friend William Warburton (Panagius). Warburton was another Lincolnshire local, born in Newark and at that point vicar of Brant Broughton nearby. The second difference is the amount of attention devoted to the Anglo-Saxon era, a period that most urban historians skated over as rapidly as possible due to want of evidence. But, as Stamford could claim no Roman foundation, Stukeley had to invent a different kind of glorious past, and he chose to locate it in the formative period of the English nation. Hengist, he argued, had made his camp at Stamford, building his castle there; the regularity of the street plan – similar to that of Roman camps – reflected Hengist’s own familiarity with Roman military life. Stamford, he argued, continued as a hub of Saxon power under Hengist’s successors, particularly the Mercian kings. Under Alkfrid (Alchfrith) – about whom very little was known, providing, as the Honeybones note, the perfect opportunity for Stukeley to fill the gaps with his own inventions – the town became a centre of Christianity and of learning. For Stamford was, of course, the Tertia Anglicana, as described by his friend and colleague Francis Peck, and the elaborate historical fabrication of Stamford’s learned Saxon past was simply the foundation on which to erect the history of the town’s short-lived history as the outpost of Oxford University.

For historians of Stamford, it is the final sections of the manuscript that are of principal interest, documenting as they do many medieval buildings that have since disappeared. Such buildings, many of which were monastic in origin, in Stukeley’s eyes were centres of learning and evidence of the continuity of scholarship in the town. As a piece of historical writing, the manuscript is a fine example of both eighteenth-century empiricism, as Stukeley subjected chronicles to critical evaluation, but also of the prevailing trend towards conjecture, of which Stukeley was always such a notable exponent. One of Stukeley’s most forcefully made observations, however, sheds light on his motivations beyond ‘curiosity’ about the past: antiquarianism, more specifically the study of parochial antiquities, as he explained to Warburton his fellow clergyman, were ‘an admirable means of preserving the rights of a living’. The text is accompanied by reproductions of some of Stukeley’s sketches, but sadly these do not include the sketch of the cross section of the Roman road, which Stukeley, the former physician, described as an ‘anatomical dissection’.

The minutes of the Brazen Nose Society are less interesting for their content than for their evidence of Stukeley’s astonishing energy and ability to corral his friends into joining the enterprise. The range of papers bears close comparison with those of the sister society at Spalding: antiquities, including a detailed description of the Roman pavement at Cottestock, but also meteorology, astronomy, mathematics and natural history – hardly surprising, perhaps, given the overlap in membership. The question inevitably arises why it was that the Spalding Society flourished and continues to this day, whereas the Brazen Nose Society folded. On the face of it, Stamford, on the Great North Road, the polite and prosperous hub for the region might have been assumed to be a likelier prospect than Spalding in the midst of the Fens. Spalding, of course, was longer established, but it also had the more measured and equable Johnson as its guiding light. Stukeley’s attention, particularly after the death of his wife Frances in 1737, was more divided and his personality had sharper edges. Nor, we might note, could he boast a large brood of children to swell the meetings, communicate correspondence or provide drawings to illustrate the minutes.