Charles Julius Bertram (1723–1765) was an
English expatriate in
Denmark who "discovered"—and presumably wrote—The Description of Britain (
Latin: De Situ Britanniae), 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
London[3] in 1723.[4] He was the son of an English
silkdyer 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 PrinceFrederick of
Denmark in 1743.[5][6][3] (The prince became King Frederick V three years later.) Other sources suggest the father immigrated earlier, in 1738.[4] The father established himself as a
hosier in 1744,[5] 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 admission[5] to study history, antiquities, philosophy, and mathematics.[4] This seems to have been granted, although students were generally required to adhere to the
Danish Church and Bertram remained
Anglican.[7] 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 language[8] and became a teacher of English in the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen.[3] (Some accounts[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
chrestomathyAn Essay on the Excellency and Style of the English Tongue has been called the initiation of English-language printing in Denmark.[9] A brother apparently died at sea in 1752,[10] and at some point he married Cathrine Marie Gold.[11]
In 1746, Bertram composed a letter to the English
antiquarianWilliam Stukeley on
Gram's recommendation.[12] He hesitated sending it and Stukeley did not receive it until 11 June 1747.[13] 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.[13] 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."[14] 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.[15] 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.[16][17] 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."[16] Bertram refused his attempts to purchase the original manuscript for the
British Museum,[18] but Stukeley had received copies of the text piecemeal over a series of letters and had a version of the map by early 1750.[19]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.[20] There had been a monk named Richard at
Westminster Abbey in the mid-15th century and Bertram suggested this date to Stukeley.[21] 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.[22] Stukeley made the text and map available at the Arundel Library of the
Royal Society.[23]
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.[24] 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".[25] His account of the itineraries included a new engraving, reorienting Bertram's map to place north at the top. Later in 1757,[a] at Stukeley's urging,[16][26] Bertram published the full text in a volume alongside
Gildas's Ruin of Britain and the History of the Britons traditionally ascribed to
Nennius.[1] Bertram's preface noted that the work "contains many fragments of a better time, which would now in vain be sought for elsewhere".[b][27] 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".[c][27] This volume's map was the earlier one and Stukeley later employed it for his own Itinerarium Curiosum published posthumously in 1776.[3]
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"[28] and
Pinkerton tersely noted that, where the two differ, "Ptolemy must be right and Richard must be wrong."[29] Nonetheless, the legitimacy of the text itself was unquestioned for decades despite no actual manuscript ever being seen by another person.[15] 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.[30] Bertram was succeeded as the naval academy's English teacher by the Swedish Carl Mannercrantz.[9] The terminology and accent system he employed in his works, despite claims to originality, seem to broadly mimic
Høysgaard's[31] and Bertram passed unmentioned by the Danish Biographical Dictionary.[32] His Royal English–Danish Grammar was undeserving of its appellation and was published, like all his books, at his own expense;[33] nonetheless, it has been noted as "far and away the longest, the most ambitious, and the best" such work in its time.[33] The end of its third volume consisted of
blurbs and
testimonials, including praise from the German
AnglicistTheodor Arnold.[34] Bertram died a respected scholar at Copenhagen[32] on 8 January 1765.[4]
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.[1] 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 Hatcher[35] in 1809.[2] 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.[36] Bertram's letters to Stukeley were acquired by
John Britton and studied by
Joseph Hunter.[15]
The inability to find a manuscript in Copenhagen after Bertram's death provoked some questions as to its validity.[3] 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.[37] 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.[38] In 1846, the German scholar Karl Wex conclusively proved at least some passages of the Description were completely spurious.[39] He had been working on a new edition of
Tacitus's Agricola[40] 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.[39] His work was translated into English by
Beale Poste[41] and printed by the Gentleman's Magazine in October 1846.[42]
Many British scholars were slow to accept the truth.[43] Some of the routes mentioned by the work had seemed to have been subsequently borne out[44] 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.[45] The final confirmation that the Description was spurious came in the 1860s.[46] Over four articles in 1866 and 1867,
Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward thoroughly debunked the work[47][48][49][50] 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.[51] Blame fell hardest on the reputation of
William Stukeley, although it also impugned
Gibbon,
Roy, and other scholars who had accepted it.[46]
Bibliography
Charles Bertram is the author, editor, or translator of the following works:[3][52]
An Essay on the Excellency and Style of the English Tongue (1749)[53]
Rudiments of English Grammar (
Latin: Rudimenta Grammatica Anglicanæ,
Danish: Begyndelses Grunde til den Engliske Sprog-Kunst; 1750)[54](in Danish)
Ethics, from Several Authors, the Words Accented to Render the English Pronuntiation Easy to Foreigners (1751)[55](in Danish and English)
The Royal English–Danish Grammar (
Danish: Grundig Anvisning til det Engliske Sprogs Kundskab; 3 vols.; 1753, reprinted 1765)[56](in Danish and English)
Wohlunterrichterer Schilderer und Mahler (1755)[57](in German)
On the Great Advantages of a Godly Life (
Danish: Betragtning over et gudeligt Levnets store Fordele og allerstørste Vigtighed; 1760)[59](in Danish)
A Statistical Account of the Danish Army (1761)[60](in German) (1762)[61](in Danish)
Notes
^This is the usual dating, derived from the volume's title page. In fact, the
colophon shows the edition was actually printed in 1758.[1]
^Latin: Longe melioris ævi multos pannos purpuræ, & fragmenta egregia continet, quæ singula frustra albi quæsiveris...[26]
^Latin: Opusculum ipsum quod attinet, a Domino supra nominato, & singulis, quibus videre contigit, habitum estκειμήλιον, dignum, quod impressum ab interitu liberetur. Reverentiam erga ipsum quodammodo testandi gratia, imprimi illud curavi.[26]
Bertram, Charles (1762), Munderinger af den samtl. kgl. danske Armee, ethvert Regiments Chef, dets Styrke og dets udi Fredstid havende Guarnison [Presentation of the Complete Royal Danish Army, Each Regiment's Officer, its Strength, and its Peacetime Holding-Garrison] (in Danish), Illustrated by Charles Bertram, Copenhagen: Charles Bertram
Bertram, Charles (1749) [Also reprinted in 1750.], An Essay on the Excellency and Style of the English tongue: Wherein the several Calumnies raised against it are examined and answered, the particular Prerogatives and Beauties thereof displayed, and the whole inriched with choice Extracts from the most Eminent Performances, Copenhagen: A.H. Godiche for the author
Bradley, Henry (1885), "Charles Bertram" , in Stephen, Leslie (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, vol. IV, Smith, Elder & Co.
Bertram, Charles (1760), Betragtning over et gudeligt Levnets store Fordele og allerstørste Vigtighed: hvorhos er føyet nogle Morgen- og Aften-Bønner [An Account of a Godly Life's Great Advantages and Almighty Importance: Wherein Are Found Some Morning and Evening Prayers] (in Danish), Copenhagen: Svare
Linn, Andrew R. (1999),
"Charles Bertram's 'Royal Danish-English Grammar': The linguistic work of an eighteenth-century fraud", History of Linguistics 1996: Selected Papers from the 7th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, Oxford, 12–17 September 1996, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, vol. 2: From Classical to Contemporary Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 183–192
Poste, Beale (1853),
"Richard of Cirencester", Britannic Researches or New Facts and Rectifications of Ancient British History, vol. Book II, London: John Russel Smith, pp. 114–141
Stukeley, William (1757) [Read at the Antiquarian Society 18 March 1756], An Account of Richard of Cirencester, Monk of Westminster, and of his Works: with his Antient Map of Roman Brittain; and the Itinerary thereof, London: Richard Hett for Charles Corbet
Wex, Friedrich Karl (1846),
"Ueber Ricardus Corinensis", Rheinisches Museum für Philologie [Rhenish Museum of Philology] (in German), vol. 4, pp. 346–353