RICARDUS GORINENSIS. 185 



created a correspondence between us. Among other matters, Mr. 

 Bertram mentioned a manuscript, in a friend's hands, of Richard of 

 Westminster, being a history of Roman Britain, which he thought a 

 great curiosity; and an ancient map of the island annexed/' 



Nothing could be better devised for securing a reception to the 

 deputed discovery. Every nook and cranny of Roman England had 

 already been ransacked with loving zeal by the Lincolnshire antiquary; 

 imagination had been called in where facts failed, to eke out a coherent 

 narrative; but still much remained obscure. But here was the politely 

 appreciative foreign savant, full of respect for the Doctor and praise of 

 his works; and, in the midst of all his pleasant " candour and respect," 

 dropping incidentally the hint of a recovered history of Roman Britain, 

 as it presented itself to the eyes of an antiquarian brother of the 

 Benedictine Monastery of St. Peter, in the year 1350, with all that the 

 waste of five centuries had since defaced and obliterated. 



Soon after the receipt of Bertram's first letter, Dr. Stukeley was 

 presented to the Rectory of St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, 

 London ; and so was permanently established within easy access to his 

 favourite literary associates, whose meetings were now held in the 

 Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street, until their removal, in 1753, to a house of 

 their own in Chancery Lane. The stimulus of such society speedily 

 manifested its influence. He had not, apparently, while resident at 

 Stamford, fully appreciated the advantages of a history of Roman Britain, 

 as studied by an observer of the fourteenth century; or been, as he says, 

 " solicitous about Richard of "Westminster." But, as he writes in 

 1747, "in November, that year, the Duke of Montagu, who was 

 pleas'd to have a favour for me, drew me from a beloved retirement, 

 where I proposed to spend the remainder of my life;'^ and so he goes 

 on to state : " when I became fix'd in London, I thought it proper to 

 cultivate my Copenhagen correspondence, and I received another Latin 

 letter from Mr. Gramm ; and soon after an account of his death, and a 

 print of him in profile." 



Of his Danish Majesty's privy-counsellor and chief librarian, a word 

 or two more may be needful before the close; but it was not till after 

 the news of his death that the correspondence with Bertram was renew- 

 ed, and his great literary discovery actually transcribed. The discus- 

 sions with the Gales, Talman, Vertue, and other antiquaries at the Mitre 

 meetings, soon fanned the old zeal into renewed fervour ; and, as Dr. 

 Stukeley tells us, he " began to think of the manuscript, and desired 



