William Stukeley
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The Rev. Dr. William Stukeley F.R.S., F.R.C.P., F.S.A. (November 7, 1687–March 3, 1765) was an English antiquary who pioneered the archaeological investigation of Stonehenge and Avebury and was one of the founders of field archaeology.
He was born at Holbeach in Lincolnshire (where a Primary School now takes his name - on the site of Stukeley Hall), the son of a lawyer. After taking his M.B. degree at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, he went to London and studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital. In 1710 he started in practice in Boston, Lincolnshire, removing in 1717 to London. In the same year he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and, in 1718, joined in the establishment of the Society of Antiquaries, acting for nine years as its secretary. In 1719 he took his M.D. degree and in 1720 became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, publishing in the same year his first contribution to antiquarian literature.
Stukeley was one of the first learned gentlemen to be attracted to speculative freemasonry, newly fashionable after the appointment of the first noble Grand Master. His Diary and Commonplace Book of June 6, 1721 says "I was made a Freemason at the Salutation Tav., Tavistock Street, with Mr. Collins, Capt. Rowe, who made the famous diving Engine." The same entry says he was the first person for many years who had been so made in London; there was great difficulty in finding sufficient members to perform the Ceremony; and immediately thereafter "Freemasonry took a run and ran itself out of breath through the folly of its members."[1]
His diary and papers are among the earliest sources on the subject of the new Grand Lodge.
His principal works, elaborate accounts of Stonehenge and Avebury, appeared in 1740 and 1743, and he wrote copiously on other supposed Druid remains, becoming familiarly known as the "Arch-Druid." In 1729 he took holy orders, and, went on to hold two livings in Lincolnshire, including that of the parish of All Saints, Stamford, Lincolnshire, where he did a considerable amount of further research, not least on the town's lost Eleanor Cross. He was subsequently appointed rector of a parish in Bloomsbury, London. He died in London on the 3rd of March 1765.
In 1742 he visited the cave at Royston and a year later he published his Palaeographia Britannica or discourses on Antiquities in Britain no.I, Origines Roystonianae, or an account of the Oratory of lady Roisia, Foundress of Royston discovered in Royston in August 1742. Following a response by the Reverend Charles Parkin he penned the sequel: Palaeographia Britannica or discourses on Antiquities in Britain no.II, or defense of Lady de Vere, Foundress of Roiston, against the Calumny of Mr. Parkin, rector of Oxburgh wherein his pretended answer is fully refuted: the former opinion further confirm'd and illustrated. To which are occasionally added, many curios matters in antiquity.
Stukeley was a friend of Isaac Newton and wrote a memoir of his life (1752).
[edit] Further reading
Stuart Piggott William Stukeley: An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary (1985) ISBN 0-500-01360-8
David Boyd Haycock William Stukeley : science, religion and archaeology in eighteenth-century England (2002) ISBN 0-85115-864-1
Aubrey Burl and Neil Mortimer (eds) "Stukeley's Stonehenge: An Unpublished Manuscript 1721-1724" (2005) ISBN 0-300-09895-2
Neil Mortimer "Stukeley Illustrated: William Stukeley's Rediscovery of Britain's Ancient Sites" (2003) ISBN 0954296338
[edit] External links
- Text and engravings of Stukeley's Avebury survey online
- Bronze Medal of William Stukeley at the British Museum
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
