192 RIOAEDUS CORINENSIS. 



defaced or wholly destroyed ; and by associating the name of Richard 

 with the accurate and trustworthy record of his own surveys and men- 

 surations, the supposed monkish antiquary was presented anew to the 

 learned world with credentials scarcely admitting of challenge by any 

 ordinary critic. 



Gibbon discriminated between the "fanciful conjectures" of Stukeley 

 and the numismatic materials accumulated by him in his "JMedallic 

 History ;" but of Richard and his " De Situ Britannice, he says : " he 

 shows a genuine knowledge of antiquity very extraordinary for a monk 

 of the fourteenth century." No wonder, therefore, that such historians 

 as Lingard and Lappenberg ; and a whole century of Roman antiqua^ 

 ries : have appealed undoubtingly to the monkish chronicler. Whitaker 

 in his "History of Manchester," and Stuart in his " Caledonia Romana," 

 deal with him as an undoubted and valuable authority. Ritson, the 

 keenest of literary censorS; accepts his treatise unchallenged. Roy 

 says of him, " it is evident that Richard had borrowed very consider- 

 ably from the Alexandrian geographer; yet there is one part of his 

 work, namely, that including the DiapTiragmata {%. e., the Itinerary], 

 which is quite new and curious, and carries along with it the appearance 

 of being truly genuine." Nearly every English writer on Roman 

 history or antiquities in the latter half of the eighteenth century 

 refers to it in like fashion, as a valuable addition to the materials at his 

 command. Stuart makes no distinction between the provinces of 

 Roman Britain recorded in the "Notitia Imperii" and that of Vespa- 

 siana, which rests on the sole authority of Richard, and spread, accord- 

 ing to the author of the " Caledonia Romana," " from the barrier of 

 Antoninus northward, and was bounded, as is supposed, by the great 

 valley through which now passes the Caledonian Canal;" so also Mr. 

 Charles Roach Smith, one of the most zealous among the Roman 

 antiquaries of our own day, uses Richard's Itinerary as a safe guide 

 to Roman Britain ; and in his excellent work devoted to " the Antiqui- 

 ties of Richborough, Reculver, and Lyme, in Kent," unhesitatingly 

 employs him to correct, or supplement the geography of Ptolemy, and 

 the Itinerary of Antoninus. The latter, according to his received text, 

 makes Dimrohrivas, or Rochester, thirty-seven miles distant from 

 Londinium ; whilst Richard assigns only twenty-seven miles. But 

 Mr. C. R. Smith accounts for it by assuming for the former an indi- 

 rect route ; and finds in " the apparent discrepancy one of the internal 

 evidences of the authenticity of this writer." 



