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Vetusta Monumenta: Ancient Monuments, a Digital Edition

Plate 1.8: Engraving of a Plan of Ancient Verulamium

Plate 1.8 of Vetusta Monumenta features an extensively labeled map of the Roman remains of Verulamium with inset images of two ancient British coins and a section of Roman wall. Engraving by George Vertue after William Stukeley. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1721. Current location: Stukeley’s original map is preserved at the Society of Antiquaries of London; the Roman ruins today are encompassed by the modern city of St. Alban’s in Hertfordshire, UK.

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2. Plate 1.1: Engraving of a Bronze Lamp found at St. Leonard's Hill, Windsor Plate 1.1 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts a medieval bronze lamp, likely dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, with circular base added in the eighteenth century. The lamp was originally thought to be Roman when it was discovered c. 1705. Engraving by George Vertue after John Talman. 236 x 184 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1718. Current location: Society of Antiquaries of London (LDSAL 59), London, UK.
3. Plate 1.2: Engraving of The Horn of Ulf Plate 1.2 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts an early eleventh-century Viking charter horn made from elephant tusk (possibly by Islamic craftsmen) in Salerno, Italy, with new silver mounts added in 1675. The horn was given to York Minster c. 1036 to symbolize a gift of land from Ulphus or Ulf Toraldsson. Engraving by George Vertue after B. M. 281 x 389 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1718. Current location: York Minster, York, UK.
4. Plate 1.3: Engraving of the Baptismal Font at St. James's, Piccadilly
5. Plate 1.4: Engraving of a Portrait of Richard II in Westminster Abbey Plate 1.4 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces a portrait (c. 1395) of Richard II in Westminster Abbey, the earliest known portrait of an English monarch. The engraving preserves design elements lost when the painting was restored in 1866, but also gives a more idealized representation of the monarch’s features than does the portrait itself. Engraving by George Vertue after Giuseppe Grisoni. 537 x 265 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1718. Current location: Westminster Abbey, London, UK.
6. Plate 1.5: Engravings of Three Medieval Seals Plate 1.5 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts three medieval seals: the Seal of Clare College, Cambridge (1359), the seal of the Cathedral Priory of St. Etheldreda, Ely (c. 1280), and seal of the Priory of Cottingham (1322). Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. 173 x 233 mm [upper portion] and 172 x 228 mm [lower portion]. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1720. Current locations: The top seal is in Clare College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; an impression of the center seal is in Westminster Abbey (WAM 7933), London, UK; the bottom seal is in the British Museum (1913,1105.2), London, UK.
7. Plate 1.6: Engraving of the Ruins of Walsingham Abbey Plate 1.6 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the ruins of Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk, including some remains which are no longer standing. This topographical print is the earliest example of a more popular approach in Vetusta Monumenta, reflecting a taste for landscapes with ruins. Engraving by Gerard Vandergucht after J. Badslade. 135 x 257 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1720. Current location: Little Walsingham, Norfolk, UK.
8. Plate 1.7: Engraving of Waltham Cross Plate 1.7 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the Waltham Cross, one of the twelve monuments that Edward I ordered to be built between 1291 and 1294 to commemorate the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor. The print documents the early preservation efforts of the Society of Antiquaries of London. The cross was re-engraved by James Basire Sr. after Jacob Schnebbelie for the third volume of Vetusta Monumenta (Plate 3.16), where it appears with two more of the Eleanor Crosses. Engraving by George Vertue after William Stukeley. 490 x 301 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1721. Current location: Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, UK.
9. Plate 1.8: Engraving of a Plan of Ancient Verulamium Plate 1.8 of Vetusta Monumenta features an extensively labeled map of the Roman remains of Verulamium with inset images of two ancient British coins and a section of Roman wall. Engraving by George Vertue after William Stukeley. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1721. Current location: Stukeley’s original map is preserved at the Society of Antiquaries of London; the Roman ruins today are encompassed by the modern city of St. Alban’s in Hertfordshire, UK.
10. Plate 1.9: Engravings of the Ruins of Fountains Abbey (1 of 4) Plates 1.9-1.12 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the ruins of the twelfth-century abbey church of Fountains, Yorkshire, with extant monastic structures. The images offer significant visual evidence of the site as it stood in 1722, recording subsequently lost fabric, including the late twelfth-century cloister arcades, the tracery of the main windows of the abbey, the presbytery arcades and high altar enclosure. Engravings by George Vertue after Samuel Buck. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1723. 190 x 367 mm, 189 x 364 mm, 192 x 370 mm, and 194 x 371 mm. Current location: Fountains, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
11. Plate 1.10: Engravings of the Ruins of Fountains Abbey (2 of 4) Plates 1.9-1.12 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the ruins of the twelfth-century abbey church of Fountains, Yorkshire, with extant monastic structures. The images offer significant visual evidence of the site as it stood in 1722, recording subsequently lost fabric, including the late twelfth-century cloister arcades, the tracery of the main windows of the abbey, the presbytery arcades and high altar enclosure. Engravings by George Vertue after Samuel Buck. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1723. 190 x 367 mm, 189 x 364 mm, 192 x 370 mm, and 194 x 371 mm. Current location: Fountains, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
12. Plate 1.11: Engravings of the Ruins of Fountains Abbey (3 of 4) Plates 1.9-1.12 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the ruins of the twelfth-century abbey church of Fountains, Yorkshire, with extant monastic structures. The images offer significant visual evidence of the site as it stood in 1722, recording subsequently lost fabric, including the late twelfth-century cloister arcades, the tracery of the main windows of the abbey, the presbytery arcades and high altar enclosure. Engravings by George Vertue after Samuel Buck. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1723. 190 x 367 mm, 189 x 364 mm, 192 x 370 mm, and 194 x 371 mm. Current location: Fountains, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
13. Plate 1.12: Engravings of the Ruins of Fountains Abbey (4 of 4) Plates 1.9-1.12 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the ruins of the twelfth-century abbey church of Fountains, Yorkshire, with extant monastic structures. The images offer significant visual evidence of the site as it stood in 1722, recording subsequently lost fabric, including the late twelfth-century cloister arcades, the tracery of the main windows of the abbey, the presbytery arcades and high altar enclosure. Engravings by George Vertue after Samuel Buck. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1723. 190 x 367 mm, 189 x 364 mm, 192 x 370 mm, and 194 x 371 mm. Current location: Fountains, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
14. Plate 1.13: Engravings of St. Benet’s Abbey Gatehouse (1 of 2) Plates 1.13-1.14 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the fourteenth-century monastic gatehouse of St Benet’s at Holme, cumulatively creating a panoramic survey of the gatehouse as it stood in the early 1720s. The gatehouse was already ruinous when these plates were published and was substantially dismantled by about 1730. Engravings by George Vertue after John Kirkpatrick and Edmund Prideaux. 205 x 389 mm and 206 x 318 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1724. Current location: Horning, Norfolk, UK.
15. Plate 1.14: Engravings of St. Benet’s Abbey Gatehouse (2 of 2) Plates 1.13-1.14 of Vetusta Monumenta depict the fourteenth-century monastic gatehouse of St Benet’s at Holme, cumulatively creating a panoramic survey of the gatehouse as it stood in the early 1720s. The gatehouse was already ruinous when these plates were published and was substantially dismantled by about 1730. Engravings by George Vertue after John Kirkpatrick and Edmund Prideaux. 205 x 389 mm and 206 x 318 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1724. Current location: Horning, Norfolk, UK.
16. Plate 1.15: Engraving of the Tomb of Robart Colles Plate 1.15 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century chest tomb of Robart Colles with paneled sides around which runs the inscription “Robart Colles Cecili his vif.” The drawing imaginatively transposes the crowned letters of the inscription into an enlarged framework that surrounds the image of the tomb. Engraving by George Vertue after Edmund Prideaux. 204 x 328 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1724. Current location: Holy Innocents Church, Foulsham, Norfolk, UK.
17. Plate 1.16: Engraving of the Shrine of Edward the Confessor Plate 1.16 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the thirteenth-century shrine base and feretory canopy of St Edward at Westminster Abbey. It is the first two-page image in Vetusta Monumenta. The larger format reflects the elaborate artistry of the monument itself and the importance of Edward the Confessor in the historiographical imagination of eighteenth-century English antiquaries. Engraving by George Vertue after John Talman. 445 x 336 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1724. Current location: Westminster Abbey, London, UK.
18. Plate 1.17: Engravings of Whitehall and King Street Gates (1 of 3) Plates 1.17-1.19 of Vetusta Monumenta depict two gatehouses built for Henry VIII along the road through Whitehall Palace: the so-called “Holbein Gate” (completed in 1532), and the King Street Gate (completed c. 1548). Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 421 x 268 mm, 387 x 260 mm, and 373 x 192 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1725. Current location: Both gatehouses were demolished, the Whitehall or “Holbein” Gate in 1723 and the King Street Gate in 1759.
19. Plate 1.18: Engravings of Whitehall and King Street Gates (2 of 3) Plates 1.17-1.19 of Vetusta Monumenta depict two gatehouses built for Henry VIII along the road through Whitehall Palace: the so-called “Holbein Gate” (completed in 1532), and the King Street Gate (completed c. 1548). Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 421 x 268 mm, 387 x 260 mm, and 373 x 192 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1725. Current location: Both gatehouses were demolished, the Whitehall or “Holbein” Gate in 1723 and the King Street Gate in 1759.
20. Plate 1.19: Engravings of Whitehall and King Street Gates (3 of 3) Plates 1.17-1.19 of Vetusta Monumenta depict two gatehouses built for Henry VIII along the road through Whitehall Palace: the so-called “Holbein Gate” (completed in 1532), and the King Street Gate (completed c. 1548). Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 421 x 268 mm, 387 x 260 mm, and 373 x 192 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1725. Current location: Both gatehouses were demolished, the Whitehall or “Holbein” Gate in 1723 and the King Street Gate in 1759.
21. Plate 1.20: Engravings of the Medals of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and James I Plate 1.20 from Vetusta Monumenta depicts one coin and five medals: a silver crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545), a Coronation Medal of Edward VI (1547), a unique copy of the "Dangers Averted" or "Armada Medal" of Elizabeth I (1589), the Phoenix Jewel (c. 1570-1580) of Elizabeth I along with the motto from a silver medal of the same (1574), and a struck gold medal of James I commemorating the Peace with Spain (1604). Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings, completed in at least three states between 1723 and 1731. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1731. Current locations: the coin of Henry VIII is currently in the collections of the University of Oxford. The Phoenix Jewel (SLMisc.1778), an example of the 1574 silver medal of Elizabeth I (M.6902), and an example of the 1604 gold medal of James I (1844,0425.24) are in the British Museum. The originals of the Coronation Medal of Edward IV and the 1588 medal of Elizabeth I here engraved are now lost.
22. Plate 1.21: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (1 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.
23. Plate 1.22: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (2 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.
24. Plate 1.23: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (3 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.
25. Plate 1.24: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (4 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.
26. Plate 1.25: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (5 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.
27. Plate 1.26: Engravings of the Westminster Tournament Roll (6 of 6) Plates 1.21-1.26 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce the Westminster Tournament Roll, a nearly sixty-foot vellum roll that illustrates the jousting tournament held by Henry VIII on 12 and 13 February 1510/11, along with the “articles of the tilt”: a document that appears to be either an emended or grossly imperfect copy of the “Westminster Tournament Challenge” (Harley 83 H 1, now in the British Library), or a copy of a different document altogether, the location of which today remains untraced. Engravings by George Vertue after the original manuscript. 245 x 492 mm, 242 x 488 mm, 243 x 490 mm, 245 x494 mm, 253 x 503 mm, and 251 x 501mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1726. Current location: The Westminster Tournament Roll remains in the College of Arms, London, UK.

This page is referenced by:

Plate 1.8: Plan of Ancient Verulamium Plate: Engraved by George Vertue (1684-1756) after William Stukeley (1687-1765) in 1721-22. The Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) decided to engrave this map of ancient Verulamium as well as another drawing by Stukeley on 8 February 1721 (SAL Minutes I.41). However, Stukeley’s drawings of Waltham Cross (Plate 1.7) and “the Ground Plot of Verulam he lately took” both needed improvement, according to David Alexander (2008, 283), and Stukeley did not deliver his “last drawing” of Verulamium until 4 April 1722 (SAL Minutes I.60), probably after revisiting the site (Robson and Bower 2016, 136). Vertue worked speedily after this and delivered the first 100 impressions of the plate on 18 June (Alexander 2008, 295). A detailed pen-and ink “draft” of this map in Stukeley’s hand is preserved at the Bodleian Library (Nurse 2020, 67; Gough Maps 11, fol. 20B). A greatly simplified version of the map was engraved by James Parker for Stukeley’s Itinerarium Curiosum, first published in 1724. The Roman site is labeled in large capitals on the right side of the plate and a Latin legend above this briefly states its importance: “A British-Roman City, Verolanium, which was destroyed by Boudica, Queen of the Iceni during Nero’s reign.” The medieval town (and modern city), on the left, is labeled “City of St Alban’s, where there was once a Forest, Holmhurst, famous for the death of the first Martyr of the English under Diocletian.” North is indicated by the fleur-de-lis at the bottom of the compass rose, which means that St. Albans, though shown on the left, is east (NE) of Verulamium. The scale (bottom right) is calibrated to 1500 pedum, which may refer to paces rather than twelve-inch feet.

Object: An extensively labeled map of the Roman remains of Verulamium with inset images of a section of Roman wall (upper right) and the arms of St. Alban’s Abbey along with two ancient British coins (left margin, top to bottom). The Roman ruins today are encompassed by the modern city of St. Albans in Hertfordshire. A tablet with two broken columns and a Latin inscription addressing the purpose of the map are added on the lower left, creating the somewhat incongruous impression of a hill from which the viewer looks down on the map. The inscription refers to the map as a “cenotaph of the [Roman] city,” but the map also identifies a large number of medieval features in addition to Roman roads, mosaics, and remains of the ancient wall and other defenses. The medieval ecclesiastical history is especially well documented, with locations being given for the abbey church (St. Alban’s Cathedral), the Eleanor Cross, St. Stephen’s Church, the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, St. Julian’s Almshouse, Sopwell Priory, St. Michael’s Church, St. Peter’s Church, St. Mary’s Priory, and the Chapel of St. Germanus, structures dating from the eighth through the thirteen centuries, only some of which survive. Many structures, both medieval and Roman, were actively being dismantled at the time of Stukeley’s visit, as he noted in his Itinerarium Curiosum (1776, 1.116).

Transcription:

Click here to access an interactive map providing full transcription and translation details for Plate 1.8.

Upper Left Quadrant:

Sti Iuliani Ptochotrophium fundatum a Galfrido Abbate circa 1120

Ecclesia Stephani ab Ulsino Abbate aedificata circa 950

Via Romana Watlin Street vocata

Insignia Monasterii

Fossa nunc Tonman ditch

Porta Urbis Antiquae

Fossa profunda

Sopwell Domus Monialium fundata 1140 a Galfrido Abbate

Fons Sacer

Holy Well

Canalis Subteraneus

Ecclesia Caenobij ab Offa Rege fundata fuit cicra 793 e ruinis Verolanij

Agger Fishpoolhead ex ruinis Urbis confectus

Capella Stae. Mariae Magdalenae aedificata ab Ulsino Abbate hodie omnino Sublata.

Murus hic Aratro complanatus.

Pars muri adhuc residua

Vestigia

Agger Altissimus cuius summitatem adhuc aequat murus circa 9 ped. latus.

Via Londinum Versus

Rudera Caenobij

Caenobij Molendinum

Burgus Sti Albani ubi olim Sylva Holmshurst Anglorum Proto-martyris (sub Dioclesiano) morte clara

Upper Right Quadrant:

Verolanium Urbs Britannico-Romana a Voadicia Icenorum Regina Sub Nerone excisa fuit.

Via Hemstediam ducens

Constructionis Mur[or]um Antiquoru[m] Specimen ex Silicis et Laterum Ordinibus alternis.

Southgate

Fossa duplex

Muri Antiqui Reliquiae

Cavitas

Trames pedestris

Heic porta olim fuisse videtur

Murus hic Sepibus coronatur Sat tamen conspicuus

Scala Pedum

Trames ducens ad Gorhambury Villam olim Vicecomitis Verolanij

Vestigia

Umbra Strati

Vestigia

Pavimentum tesselatum

Sti Germani Capella ubi Synodus olim celebrata ab Ulso Priore fundata circa 945 nunc penitus versa.

VEROLANIVM ANTIQVUM

Left Banner: Nummi Antiqui Brittannici / Verolamium Civitas / Boadicia Regina

Bottom Left Quadrant:

Claustrum

Porta Caenobiij

Stagnum olim desiccatum ab Alfirico Abbate circa 960 nunc prata

Ecclesia Caenobii

Rome Land

Campanile

Crux Memoriae Eleonorae Reginae Sacra, ab E.I exstructa

Vicus Vulgo Fishpool Street

Ecclesia Divi Petri aedificata Ulsino Abbate 950

Horti

Ne cineres etiam Verolanij penitus aboleantur: Vestigia Romanorum in Municipio olim celeberrimo quantum ex ruderibus fieri potest adumbrata, velut Tantae Vrbis Cenotaphium Societati Antiquariae Londinensi cujus impensis aeri incisum, vovet. W.^s Stukeley. Anno 1721

Bottom Right Quadrant:

Ecclesia Divi Michaelis ubi dormitat Magnus Verolanius; aedificata ab Ulsino Abb. 950.

Domus parochi

Pastura plana super Murum

nunc Arva & Pascua

Pars Muri adhuc restans Gorhamblock nuncupata.

Vallis appellata “The Hollowes”

Tonman Ditch

Molendinum de Kingsbury olim Manerium Regium & Castellum

Murus heic ad fundamentum erutus

Prata

Colne Fluvius

Via Regia ad Redburn Non longe hinc Prioratus S[anc]tae Mariae de pratis.

Oster Hill

Scala Pedum

Translation:

Click here to access an interactive map providing full transcription and translation details for Plate 1.8.

Upper Left Quadrant:

St. Julian’s Almshouse founded around 1120 by Abbot Geoffrey

St. Stephen’s Church, built by Abbot Wulsin around 950.

Roman road, called Watling Street

seal of the Monastery

a trench, now Tonman ditch

gate of the ancient city

a deep ditch

Sopwell Priory, founded in 1140 by Abbot Geoffrey [de Gorham]

Holy Well

underground canal

The Monastery Church was founded by King Offa around 793 from the ruins of Verolamium.

Fishpoolhead Causeway made from the ruins of the city

Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, built by Abbot Wulsin, today entirely destroyed.

This wall leveled by a plough.

A part of the wall still remaining.

remnants

A very high rampart, whose highest point is level with the wall, about 9 feet wide.

the road toward London

ruins of the abbey

monastery’s mill-house

City of St Albans where [there was] once a Forest, Holmhurst [Holywell Hill], famous for the death of the first Martyr of the English (under Diocletian).

Upper Right Quadrant:

A British-Roman City, Verulamium, was destroyed by Boudica, Queen of the Iceni during Nero’s reign.

A road leading to Hempstead.

Model of the construction of the ancient walls, made out of alternating layers of rubble [flint] and bricks.

Southgate

a double ditch

relics of the ancient wall

a hollow

footpath

A gate appears to have been here once.

This wall is surrounded by hedges and yet sufficiently visible.

scale of feet

A path leading to Old Gorhambury House, once belonging to the Earl of Verulam.

remnants

traces of a paved road

remnants

Mosaic pavement

Chapel of St. Germanus [of Auxerre] where a Synod was once held, founded by Ulf, Prior [of St. Albans] around 945. Now entirely destroyed.

Ancient Verulamium

Left Banner: Ancient British Coins / City of Verolamium / Queen Boudica

Bottom Left Quadrant:

cloister

abbey gate

Swamp, once drained by Abbot Aelfric around 960, now a meadow.

St Alban’s Abbey Cathedral

Rome Land

bell tower

Cross Sacred to the Memory of Queen Eleanor, built by Edward I.

a street, commonly known as Fishpool Street

Church of St. Peter, established by Abbot Wulsin

gardens

Lest even the traces [lit. “ashes”] of Verolamium be entirely forgotten, W. Stukeley dedicates [this map of] the ruins of the Romans in this once very famous town, drawn as far as can be done from its remains, as a cenotaph for a city so great, to the Society of Antiquaries of London, at whose expense it was engraved in copper. In the year 1721.

Bottom Right Quadrant:

St. Michael’s Church, where Great Verulamius [Sir Francis Bacon] rests; built by Abbot Wulsin, 950.

Parish house

a flat pasturage beyond the wall

now fields and pastures

Part of the wall still standing, called Gorhamblock.

a valley called “The Hollows”

Tonman Ditch

the Kingsbury Watermill, formerly King’s manor and fortress

The wall here destroyed to the foundation.

meadows

River Colne (or Ver) [actually the River Ver runs through St Albans and joins the Colne 4 km downstream]

Royal Road to Redbourn. Not far from here the Priory of St. Mary of the Meadows [St. Mary de Pratis].

Oster Hill

scale of feet

Commentary by Noah Heringman and Katherine Hobbs: This plate shows a map of the ruined city of Verulamium in Hertfordshire, originally drafted and annotated by William Stukeley on a visit to the site in 1720 or 1721 and augmented during another visit in 1722 (Robson and Bower 2016, 136-37). The site of Verulamium, a municipium under Roman rule that had earlier been occupied by Britons, was subject to a series of wars and invasions and was eventually absorbed into the town of St. Albans after the construction of a Benedictine monastery nearby in the 790s CE. The abbey was built to honor the saint, who was England’s first martyr (Bohun 1710, 8; Heylyn 1709, 195). Verlamion was already well-known in the eighteenth century as a find spot for pre-Roman coins (two are included on this map) and was celebrated as a site of resistance to Roman colonization. As Verulamium, it is the only definite municipium among many Roman sites in Britain (Niblett and Thompson 2005, 41). The early medieval name of the modern city, St. Albans, captures its importance for the history of Christianity in Britain. St. Alban’s execution during Roman times makes him “the first Martyr of the English,” according to the text on the map, and the creation of St. Alban’s Abbey marked an important step in the establishment of Christianity in the Kingdom of Mercia. The project of making this map thus afforded an opportunity for Stukeley to display both classical erudition and zeal for British antiquities in the same compass.

Stukeley visited the site while compiling material for his Itinerarium Curiosum, first published in 1724, about two years after Vertue’s engraving of this map was published by the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL). He spent several years tracing major Roman roads in many parts of England, and the work is organized around routes recorded in the third-century (CE) Antonine Itinerary. The material on Verulamium/St. Albans, including a greatly simplified version of this map, appears in Stukeley’s fifth itinerary (Iter. V). Since Vetusta Monumenta included no explanatory text prior to 1744, Stukeley’s narrative in the Itinerarium provides the best guide to his reasons for making such a detailed map. The narrative also expands some of the bits of information included as annotations on the map.

In his narrative, Stukeley notes that he rejoined Watling Street at St. Albans; he followed this ancient route from there to London and into Kent. “I need say little here” about “the famous municipium of the Romans, destroyed by Boadicia,” Stukeley observes, deferring to earlier accounts by William Camden and other antiquaries (1776, 1.116). Stukeley goes on to address three significant topics, however: medieval ecclesiastical history, the subject of two more accompanying plates; the prevalence of Roman artifacts in local collections; and the ongoing destruction of both Roman and medieval remains. The last of these provides the most obvious occasion for the map: “three years ago [a] good part of the wall was standing; but ever since, out of wretched ignorance, even of their own interest, they have been pulling it up all around, to the very foundations, to mend the high-way” (116-17). He also comments on the destruction of medieval monuments, including St. Alban’s Abbey (excluding the church), leveled now whereas “three years ago one might make a tolerable guess at the ichnography of the place” (117). The careful recording of the “form of the city” along with the structure of the Roman wall (inset, upper right) appear in this context as a conscious act of preservation; the high altar of the abbey church warranted two more plates as “a curious piece of Gothic work,” though it was not in immediate danger. While he was making his “ichnography” or plan of the city, Stukeley also ran across “pecks of remainders of Mosaic pavements” and noted Roman bronze ornaments and ceramics in local collections.

Verlamion was a wealthy settlement, and was the site of a mint even before the Romans captured and renamed it Verulamium in the first century CE (“Some Account” 1783, 132). Eighteenth-century accounts such as John Collinson’s Beauties of British Antiquity noted the “several pieces of ancient money” found at Verulamium; these seem to match the coins illustrated on the map. The coins were observed to have the inscription “TASCIA” engraved on one side and “VER” on the other, signifying, according to this author, “the tribute of Verulam” since “Tasc, in the British tongue, signifies tribute” (Collinson 1779, 79). In fact, this inscription may refer to the Catuvellauni leader Tasciovanus. A silver coin attributed to this leader, matching the upper one on the plate and found at St. Albans, is preserved at the British Museum. In the sixteenth century, Camden also reproduced a version of the upper coin—Vertue may even have re-engraved this version—but Camden’s view that the “Britans” could not “have coined money before the Romans came among them” was (pace Collinson) no longer uniformly accepted in the eighteenth century (Camden 1789, 337). The name of the River Ver is certainly pre-Roman; confusingly, it is labeled “River Colne” on the map, but in fact the Ver merges into the Colne about 4 km downstream from St. Albans.

The town’s wealth made it appealing to invaders, one of whom was Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, who led a revolt in 60-61 CE. An eighteenth-century history of the abbey, drawing on Tacitus for its account of this revolt against Roman occupation, declares that Verulamium was “rich and opulent[,]… a greater temptation to a plundering foe than mere castles and military posts” (Newcome 1795, 3). Boudicca’s assault receives much attention in eighteenth-century accounts; the appearance of her name reinforces the importance of this episode for the study of British antiquities. John Gifford’s History of England details Boudicca’s ill-treatment by the Romans in quasi-patriotic terms to justify her violent destruction of the Roman city. This queen of “dignified deportment” and “magnanimous spirit” roused the “flame of indignant virtue” in the Iceni and other groups of Britons (Gifford 1790, 1.19). Although not all accounts are so sympathetic to Boudicca’s cause, the destruction of Verulamium as a symbol of Roman rule is presented here as important in regaining lost British dignity. The Saxon period is not discussed by Stukeley, but the map shows the site of Kingsbury Water Mill, near the Saxon settlement established inside the Roman walls and supplanted by the medieval town of St Albans (Nurse 2020, 67).

The ancient site, labeled in large capitals, occupies a large proportion of the map, and it attracted the keen interest of many eighteenth-century observers. The wall is shown in outline winding around the ancient municipium, and Stukeley concludes that it was built after Boudicca’s sack of the town (1776, 1.116). A writer whose travel account is included in the Annual Register for 1782 notes that these Roman walls were added onto pre-existing defenses of ditches and ramparts, underscoring how British and Romano-British history are intertwined on the site. This writer also observes that the area (once) enclosed within the walls is peculiar for being oval-shaped and “depart[ing] from the Rectangular form of the Romans,” speculating that the slope of the land and the river might have contributed to this shape and to the town’s “security” (“Some Account” 1783, 131). The construction of the wall is illustrated in detail in the upper-right hand corner of the map, corresponding to the Annual Register's description of the twelve-foot-thick walls, arranged so that “By intervals of abo[ut] three feet distance, are three, and in some places four, rows of bro[ad] and thin bricks…which seem design[ed] as foundations to sustain the layers of flints and lime” (132). This 1782 account draws not only from the writer’s personal observation but from the present engraving of Stukeley’s map (not the simplified version that appears in the Itinerarium); the writer cites Stukeley’s measurement of Verulamium’s dimensions and in a note refers to his “admirable plan” of the city (132). A recent assessment, nearly as favorable, notes that Stukeley did not rely on earlier source material for this map, as he did for others, and that mapmakers continued to follow it in the nineteenth century; in spite of his lack of archaeological tools and methods, “Stukeley appears to have correctly outlined the approximate overall shape of the site, located most of the gates and begun to identify the grid-iron pattern of roads” (Robson and Brower 2016, 143).

In the eighteenth century, the area formerly within the Roman walls was “inclosed into fields” (“Some Account” 1783, 133), as portrayed on the plate. The same account notes that as the fields were being tilled, the ancient streets were revealed along with various artifacts under the hedges. The most notable was Watling-Street, the major road running all the way “from Dover into the north,” which was the source of the Saxon name for Verulamium, Watlingcester (Geography 1744, 80). Its position on this road was also a key source of Stukeley’s interest. By juxtaposing the modern hedges with the ancient grid of streets, Stukeley’s map hints at the complex relationship between the “improvement” of land and the conservation of antiquities that is given pictorial form in other engravings in Vetusta Monumenta, such as the views of Fountains Abbey (Plates 1.9-12) engraved by Samuel and Nathanael Buck, who accompanied Stukeley on some of his tours. Stukeley’s invective against the use of Roman brick to “mend the high-way” (1776, 1.117) gestures toward a larger debate about improvement that was also taken up by Daniel Defoe, whose Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain appeared, like Itinerarium Curiosum, in 1724. Defoe included an essay “Of the High-ways” in his earlier Essays upon Several Projects, in which he extolled the portion of Watling Street between London and St. Albans as a model of improvement. Calling it “the exactest Road . . . in the Kingdom” even at that day, Defoe claims that the Romans “were the Pattern of the whole World for Improvement” (Defoe 1702, 71-72). He then proposes an Act of Parliament to establish road maintenance as a national priority, but the landscape he envisions is so completely transformed in the service of commerce that the preservation of historic features is necessarily excluded. Stukeley’s interest in preservation dictated a more conservative interpretation of the Roman legacy.

Verulamium/St. Albans also marks the site of intersecting religious traditions, residing at a symbolic juncture between the pagan past and the rise of Christianity. The label on the site of the execution of the first English martyr, Saint Alban, associates his death with the reign of Diocletian, though the date remains uncertain today. The Annual Register account describes St. Alban’s martyrdom at length, detailing some of the associated legends; according to this story, the executioner’s eyes fell out and a fountain sprang up, while a river that had been separating Holmhurst and Verulamium dried so that Alban’s followers could cross (“Some Account” 1783, 133). Offa, King of Mercia, founded a Benedictine monastery at the execution site in the 790s, though eighteenth-century accounts stating that Offa himself discovered relics there are probably incorrect, as there was a pre-existing shrine (“Some Account” 1783, 134; Bohun 1710, 8). Other sources indicate that the site of the monastery held an earlier church destroyed in wars between the Britons and the Saxons (Heylyn 1709, 195). The new abbey church was built partially from old Roman materials found around the area; Stukeley notes that the “ancient part of the monastic church [St. Alban’s] and the steeple are intirely built of Roman brick, fetched by the abbots from the old city” (1776, 1.117). He does not make the connection to the “hundreds of cart-loads of Roman brick” that he saw being carried to mend the roads during his short visit—perhaps due to the more mundane character of modern improvement, or due to its larger scale. The eighth-century monastery became the basis for the town of St. Albans, and the abbot of St. Alban’s was, according to Peter Heylyn, given “precedency of all English abbots” by virtue of Alban’s position as the first English martyr (Heylyn 1709, 195). The church was made a cathedral, and the town a cathedral city, in 1877.

The abbey was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1539 during the Dissolution of the monasteries, but the abbey church survived and was converted to a parish church (the present cathedral, extensively restored in the late nineteenth century). Verulamium was singled out as a site of conflicting identities by the Protestant poet Edmund Spenser in his poem The Ruines of Time (1591). Spenser’s personification, Verlame, is depicted as “sorrowfullie [be]wailing” the unstoppable effects of time, lamenting that she once “the garland wore / Of Britaines pride” but now must “lye in [her] owne ashes” (Spenser 1989, 233-34). Having seen so much change and destruction over time, Verulamium aptly illustrates Spenser’s thesis that built monuments all eventually fall to ruin, and true longevity only comes from the written word. Scholars have noted that this poem is “informed by the Tudor destruction of the medieval Catholic past” and reflects the struggle to reconcile English Protestantism with the pagan and Catholic past (Prendergast 2008, 178; cf. Melehy 2005). The more recent dissolution is implicit in the poem’s allegory, but Spenser does not address the city’s Christian history explicitly. Verlame’s lament on the vanity of worldly pursuits is instead placed at the service of a eulogy on Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and other recently deceased contemporaries. The last third of this long poem celebrates poetry’s power to rescue the reputations of the truly deserving from oblivion. Verlame anticipates this argument when she concludes her own story by addressing Camden as the one author who has preserved her “true” history: “Cambden, though time all moniments obscure, / Yet thy just labours ever shall endure” (Spenser 1989, 240). Camden ventures only a brief comment on the dissolution of St. Alban’s Abbey, but as an antiquarian he is drawn to the rich Christian records of late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

As Stukeley acknowledges in the Itinerarium, Camden’s Britannia, originally published in 1586, is the first important modern source on Verulamium. The revised English edition of Britannia published by Edmund Gibson in 1695, which included a new set of maps by Robert Morden, was very influential on Stukeley’s generation of antiquaries. In his survey of the county of Hertfordshire, Camden gives considerable space to both the Roman and the early Christian history of Verulamium/St. Albans. He draws extensively on early medieval source material, some of which was viewed with greater skepticism in the eighteenth century. Matthew of Paris, who was educated at St. Albans and became a monk there in 1217, provides a detailed if unreliable account of excavations and discoveries made by the abbots as early as the tenth century; Camden quotes this account extensively, along with earlier accounts by Gildas, Alexander Necham, and others. Camden calls on these accounts to corroborate his claims concerning the archaeological richness of the site: “If I should relate what common report says of the many Roman coins, statues of gold and silver, vessels, marble pillars, cornices, and wonderful monuments of ancient art dug up here I should scarce be believed” (Camden 1789, 1.338). Camden also quotes a twelfth-century Latin poem by Necham, which claims that Verulamium was controlled by Uther Pendragon after the Romans and celebrates its Christian history. The town now “boasts the Protomartyr’s sacred bones,” according to the English version of the poem added by Richard Gough, a later director of the SAL who published his own translation, with additions, of Britannia in 1789. Gough voices his regrets concerning the “rummage” to which the site was subjected by the “early abbots,” and adds numerous illustrations, including one of the urns mentioned by Stukeley (1.cxlix, fig. 12) and an iron cross from a medieval burial (1.Plate XVII, fig. 10), which he says “was in the hands of Dr. Stukeley, who supposed it a charm to preserve the deceased from the power of the devil” (1.347).

Camden’s words best capture the double aspect of the site that fascinated later inquirers: “As antiquity consecrated this spot to religious purposes, it seems also to have been made a scene of war” (1789, 1.338). Although Spenser’s Verlame admonishes her hearers that built works must, “as a vapour[,] vanish and decaie,” the city’s physical remains as of 1721 still bore abundant witness to many centuries of violence and transition. Many of the Roman remains did not “vanish,” but rather proved to have been repurposed, as noted by Stukeley, Gough and other eighteenth-century commentators who took an increasing interest in the use of Roman bricks to build a Catholic monastery and the subsequent conversion of this same abbey to a Protestant church. Each phase had built physically on the last, and this layering is evident in Stukeley’s rendering of the city, containing items ranging from pre-Roman earthworks to a cross built by Edward I in 1291 to the eighteenth-century town of St. Albans. Stukeley’s engraving celebrates the coexistence of the diverse historical layers that make up Verulamium. Clearly, even if Spenser’s Verlame insists that “vaine moniments of earthlie masse” are no match for the longevity of “wise wordes . . . / Recorded by the Muses” (1989, 249-50), the physical site itself and the material traces left behind in pieces of walls, evidence of roads, and excavated coins proved to be more and more intriguing for antiquaries in the centuries following Camden and Spenser; many of these remains, in fact, came to light only after their time. By the time Vertue engraved Stukeley’s map in 1721, Verulamium could be seen to display many more layers of archaeological resonance.

A later poet, William Blake (1757-1827), saw even greater potential in “Divine Verulam” as a geographic palimpsest of ancient and modern British history. “Great Verulamius” is the name given to Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626), in the label attached to Bacon’s burial place, St. Michael’s Church, on Stukeley’s map. As he puts it in his Itinerarium: “In St. Michael’s church sleeps the great naturalist Bacon, who first revived the experimental way of philosophy” (1776, 1.117). The road to Bacon’s mansion, Gorhambury, is also noted on the map (far right). Blake studied Stukeley’s works carefully when he was serving his apprenticeship to James Basire (1730-1802), the antiquarian engraver who took over Vetusta Monumenta after Vertue’s death. Blake was drawn to Stukeley’s romantic side rather than his Baconian one, and his use of material from Stukeley’s Stonehenge: A Temple Restored to the British Druids (1740) is widely noted by Blake scholars. In his poem Europe (1793), Blake created his first image of a “serpent temple” based on Stukeley’s description of Avebury. He located his Druid temple at “golden Verulam” instead of a known megalithic site in order to render it a symbolic locale for his critique of Baconian empiricism on the one hand and Anglican religion on the other. On the southern porch of the “serpent temple” at Verulam, with its “oak-surrounded pillars, form’d of massy stones” (Blake 1988, 63), Isaac Newton (Bacon’s co-conspirator) blows “the Trump of the last doom” at the close of this apocalyptic poem (65). Even though St. Alban’s did not become a cathedral church until 1877, Blake elevates Verulam to the status of one of England’s four chief cathedral cities (188) in his later work, Jerusalem (1804-1820). Here Verulam is also conflated with Canterbury as a primal seat of Christianity (180). In constellating “Druid” monuments, Roman Britain, and early Christianity around the site of Verulamium, Blake was following the lead of some of the more fanciful seventeenth-century antiquaries criticized by Inigo Jones (1972, 44-45). Stukeley’s map embodies the more empirical side of antiquarianism, but as a conspectus of many historical layers it warrants comparison with Blake’s imagined Verulam.

It might seem fanciful to position Stukeley’s map of Verulamium in such a broad intellectual field, but the historiography of the site demonstrates that it is particularly rich in both literary and historical resonances. If they had read their Camden more carefully (as Stukeley did), Spenser and Blake could both have avoided the error of situating Verulamium on the Thames. Camden, writing at the dawn of antiquarianism, wrote an account in which literary history and archaeology were very closely intertwined. Camden belonged to the first (Elizabethan) Society of Antiquaries, the society self-consciously revived by Stukeley and his colleagues in 1717. Three generations removed from the first revival of interest in ancient Britain, Stukeley and the SAL had the benefit of historical distance in grappling with the sequence of conflicts evoked by Verulamium, including the Reformation. Hence this map celebrates the rich historical texture created by religious and political conflicts while also promising an enlightened overcoming of these differences.

Works Cited:

Blake, William, 1988. Complete Poetry and Prose. Edited by David V. Erdman. New York: Anchor Books.

Bohun, Edmund. 1710. A Geographical Dictionary. London: R. Bonwicke, et al.

Camden, William. 1789. Britannia: or, A Chorographical Description of the Flourishing Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Enlarged by the latest discoveries, by Richard Gough. 3 vols. London.

Collinson, John. 1779. The Beauties of British Antiquity; Selected from the Writings of Esteemed Antiquaries. London: John Collinson.

Defoe, Daniel. 1702. Essays upon Several Projects. London.

The Geography of England. 1744. London: R. Dodsley.

Gifford, John. 1790. The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Peace of 1783. 2 vols. London: Harrison.

Heylyn, Peter. 1709. A Help to English History. London.

Jones, Inigo. (1655) 1972. The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stone-Heng. London: Scolar Press.

Melehy, Hassan. 2005. “Antiquities of Britain: Spenser’s Ruines of Time.” Studies in Philology 102, no. 2: 159-183.

Newcome, Peter. 1795. The History of the Ancient and Royal Foundation, Called the Abbey of St. Alban. London: J. Nichols.

Niblett, Rosalind, and Isobel Thompson. 2005. Alban’s Buried Towns: An Assessment of St. Albans’ Archaeology up to 1600. Oxford: Oxbow.

Nurse, Bernard. 2020. Town: Prints & Drawings of Britain Before 1800. Oxford: Bodleian Library.

Prendergast, Thomas A. 2008. “Spenser’s Phantastic History, The Ruines of Time, and the Invention of Medievalism.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, no. 2: 175-196.

Robson, Brian, and David Bower. 2016. “The Town Plans and Sketches of William Stukeley.” The Cartographic Journal 53, no. 2: 133-48.

“Some Account of the Antient Verulamium, near St. Albans—of its Ruins, &c.” 1783. In The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1782, 131-35. London: J. Dodsley.

Spenser, Edmund. (1591) 1989. The Ruines of Time. In The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser, edited by William Oram, Einar Bjorvand, and Ronald Bond, 225-61. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Stukeley, William. 1776. Itinerarium Curiosum: or, an Account of the Antiquities, and Remarkable Curiosities in Nature or Art, Observed in Travels through Great Britain. London.

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Kinds of Monuments in Vetusta Monumenta By Noah Heringman

Vetusta Monumenta is a miscellaneous series by any standard, presenting monuments that range in date from the second to the seventeenth century CE and in size from a half-groat to a castle. Martin Myrone has noted the positive and negative aspects of this enormous range: “Viewed as a serial publication, the Vetusta Monumenta was, depending on one’s point of view, enormously flexible and responsive … or simply incoherent” (2007, 103). This heterogeneity can be vexing to modern readers trained in more specialized disciplines, but it also facilitates a new kind of engagement with the cultural past: the antiquarian idea of antiquity was a capacious one, in some ways more so than ideas that are current today.

The remit of the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) was originally defined as “Brittish Antiquitys” in the Articles of Incorporation drawn up by William Stukeley in 1717; to judge from Stukeley’s own contributions to Vetusta Monumenta, this field extended from the map of Roman Verulamium (Plate 1.7) to medieval built works such as the eleventh-century Bishop’s Chapel at Hereford (Plate 1.49) and Waltham Cross (Plate 1.8), erected in the late thirteenth century. When John Fenn classified the contents of the first two volumes of Vetusta Monumenta in 1784, he narrowed the field to pre-Conquest monuments, subdivided into British, Roman, Saxon, and Danish Antiquities, but then identified six additional categories of monuments, mainly medieval and post-medieval: II. Coins, Medals, and Seals; III. Castles, Palaces, Gates, Crosses; IV. Abbeys, Churches, [and related architectural features]; V. Portraits; VI. Historic Prints and Processions; VII. Plans, Maps, and Miscellaneous (Fenn 1784, 18).

I. Antiquities (British, Roman, Saxon, Danish):

All but two of the sixteen plates listed by Fenn in this category are dedicated to Roman Britain, though one of these has since been recognized as medieval (Plate 1.1). The only item under “British antiquities” is Plate 2.20, which features bronze instruments found in Ireland, along with an Iron Age shield from Shropshire. The item under Danish Antiquities is the “Horn of Ulf” engraved in 1718 (Plate 1.2). The first and only Saxon monument recorded in Vetusta Monumenta in the eighteenth century, Ruthwell Cross (Plates 2.54-2.55), was engraved in 1789, postdating Fenn’s index. The only other additions to the whole class of “antiquities” after Fenn are three more Roman mosaic pavements: Plates 2.43, 2.44, and 3.39. The overwhelming majority of the plates engraved after George Vertue’s death in 1756 (most of them by James Basire Sr) represent Gothic architecture, an emphasis which in turn demonstrates the influence of the medievalist Richard Gough, the director of the SAL during much of this time.

For more on engravings of Roman Britain, see “Vetusta Monumenta and Britain’s Classical Past,” written specially for this edition by Sarah Scott.

II. Coins, Medals, and Seals:

In the 1720s, members of the SAL began planning a history of British coinage, to be titled Metallographia Britannica, and subcommittees were appointed to supervise the recording of Roman, Saxon, Danish, and English coins. Like many early projects of the SAL, this one crumbled under the weight of its own ambition, but a number of side projects, including several plates in the first volume of Vetusta Monumenta, provide evidence of repeated attempts over about four decades. Crystal B. Lake and David Shields provide a detailed account of this attempted history of coinage in their commentaries on Plates 1.55, 1.56, and 1.69. Plate 1.56 concludes a four-part series of plates featuring coins (Plates 1.37-1.38, 1.43, and 1.56), and Plate 1.55 features a number of medals not otherwise accommodated by the series. Plate 1.20, engraved considerably earlier, was updated several times to reflect the progress of the Society’s efforts in this area. All these plates show medieval and early modern coins. Many Roman coins were exhibited at meetings of the SAL from the very beginning, but neither these nor the Saxon and Danish coins are visible in the print series.

Fenn’s index shows a more sustained engagement with seals, which are featured in each of the first three volumes. In addition to Plates 1.5, 1.28-1.33, 1.53-1.54, 1.58-60, 2.7, 2.19, and 2.36 (all listed by Fenn), seals are also featured on Plates 3.26-3.30. In addition, as noted by Fenn, facsimiles of certain documents are included at least in part because of the seals attached to them, including Plates 1.62, 2.4, and 2.6. George Vertue, who engraved all but two of the first 87 plates in the series, collected coins himself and used this subset of prints to make a study of arts historically related to his own art of copper engraving, including seal engraving and the even older art of creating the dies from which coins were struck.

For more on medieval seals and Vetusta Monumenta, see the “Introduction to Medieval Seals and the Growth of Sigillography,” written specially for this edition by Laura Whatley.

III. Castles, Palaces, Gates, and Crosses:
IV. Abbeys; Churches and Chapels; Tombs and Shrines; Fonts and Windows:

It is less than clear why Fenn subdivided the architectural plates in Vetusta Monumenta in this particular way, though the large total number of architectural subjects certainly helps to account for these numerous subdivisions. As these subcategories suggest, a large majority of the subjects are medieval, ranging in date from the eleventh through the early fifteenth century. Some Tudor and Stuart monuments are also included, and the only font in Volume I is actually the most recent antiquity in the whole set, Grinling Gibbons’s marble font in St. James’s, Piccadilly (Plate 1.3). Three medieval fonts were engraved for the series by Basire in 1785 and 1793 (Plates 2.39-2.40 and 3.25).

Fully eight of the castles listed by Fenn were engraved by Vertue from Elizabethan drawings of castles from the office of the Duchy of Lancaster, all of which were in ruins or entirely destroyed before the eighteenth century. Only Colchester Castle (Plates 1.35-1.36) was depicted in its then-current state. Five plates of Hedingham Castle, Essex, were added in 1796 (Plates 3.40-3.44). The creators of the series turned more attention to palaces after 1750, including the Savoy (Plates 2.5, 2.12, and 2.14) and the royal palaces of Richmond (2.23-2.24), Placentia (2.25), and Hampton Court (2.27). Beaulieu or New Hall, Essex (2.41-2.42), was added in 1786. The subset of Gates and Crosses includes a mix of religious and secular built works, including the monumental St. Benet’s Abbey gate (1.13-1.14) and the Eleanor Cross at Waltham (1.7), on the one hand, and, on the other, two gates built by Henry VIII for Whitehall Palace (Plates 1.17-19), along with four market crosses (Plates 1.61, 1.64, 2.8, 2.10)—though of course the market cross presents a nexus of religious iconography and commercial space. Waltham Cross became the first and only monument to be engraved twice for Vetusta Monumenta, appearing for the second time in 1790 when Basire engraved it from a new drawing by Jacob Schnebbelie as part of a plate set comprising six of the Eleanor Crosses (Plates 3.12-3.17). Yet another cross engraved for the series was Ruthwell Cross (Plates 2.54-55), mentioned above as a “Saxon antiquity.”

For more on castles, palaces, gates, crosses and Vetusta Monumenta, see the essay “Castles, Palaces, Gates, Crosses,'” written specially for this edition by Katharina Boehm. The pairing of gates and crosses seems less intuitive than the pairing of castles and palaces, but since at least some monuments in each group are secular, the group as a whole may be distinguished from Fenn’s fourth class, which comprises only religious structures.

Fenn’s Class IV, with its seven subcategories, comprises the largest set of engravings on his list, including twenty-four plates dedicated to fourteen monuments. The largest plate set in the group and in the whole series (Plates 2.29-2.35) features seven plates of funerary monuments in Westminster Abbey, in which the interest in abbeys converges with the interest in tombs and shrines. The engravings by Basire are based on preparatory drawings traditionally attributed to his apprentice William Blake, though that attribution is now in doubt. Another monument in Westminster Abbey, the Shrine of Edward the Confessor, had been published quite early in the series (Plate 1.16). Sepulchral monuments, as Gough called them in the title of a large work he published under his own name (1786-96), became a special focus for the series in the 1780s, with engravings of three massive monuments in Winchester Cathedral, the monument of Edward IV at Windsor Castle, and others. Walsingham, Fountains, and Furness Abbeys, “majestic though in ruin,” were all featured in Volume I, along with the newly demolished chapel at the Bishop’s Palace in Hereford. The subcategories of fonts and windows are represented by only one monument each on Fenn’s list, though three more fonts were added later, as already mentioned; the east window of St. Margaret’s, Westminster remains the only window, though of course windows appear in many of the plates of churches in Volumes II-III—seven all told, ranging in size from Magdalen Chapel, Winchester to Lincoln Minster (other cathedrals were engraved for the separate cathedral series launched by the SAL in the 1790s). No other abbeys are featured in Volumes II-III, however.

Fenn’s admittedly capacious list of religious structures points toward a powerful interest in medieval ecclesiastical architecture that would only increase in the last two decades on the eighteenth century.

V. Portraits:

Fenn includes eight portraits in his list, but not all of these are ancient. In the commentaries in this edition there is a special focus on the portraits of modern antiquaries (Plates 1.45, 1.66, 2.3, and 2.28), which Fenn groups somewhat incongruously with historic portraits of Richard II (Plate 1.4) and the twelfth-century monk Eadwin of Canterbury (Plate 2.16). The portraits of antiquaries are of particular interest here because collectively they tell a story about the history of antiquarianism, linking the eighteenth-century SAL genealogically to the Elizabeth Society of Antiquaries by including Robert Cotton (1571-1631) along with the eighteenth-century antiquaries Thomas Tanner, George Holmes, and Charles Lyttelton (all of whom are honored by engraved portraits in the series shortly after their deaths). Intriguingly, Fenn also includes the two portrait medals of Queen Elizabeth (Plate 1.20) in this category, along with a whole series of portraits by Vertue that were reissued separately from Vetusta Monumenta. Lyttelton’s portrait in 1770 (Plate 2.28) was the last to appear in the series itself.

VI. Historic Prints and Processions:

Only one entry from Vetusta Monumenta appears under this heading in Fenn’s list, the plate set devoted to Henry VIII’s Westminster Tournament Roll of 1510 (Plates 1.21-1.26). As Crystal B. Lake shows in her commentary on that plate set, Vertue is equally concerned to document the medial form of these images, the spectacularly long vellum roll painted with colorful chivalric figures, a virtual procession to rival the tournament itself. Although it does not apply broadly to Vetusta Monumenta, Fenn’s classification remains useful because it places this series in the context of another important publication series of the SAL, the Historical Prints series that ran from 1774-1781, in which Basire’s engraving of the “Field of the Cloth of Gold” is perhaps the most famous entry.

VII. Plans, Maps, and Miscellaneous Prints:

It might be said that Fenn ran out of steam at this point in his classification project, or perhaps the final “Miscellaneous” grouping (VII.2) had to be created for those five plates that just wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Volume I, in fact, includes two maps of Roman Britain: both Stukeley’s map of Verulamium (Plate 1.8) and Francis Drake’s Plan of the Roman Roads in Yorkshire (Plate 1.47), which is (oddly) overlooked by Fenn. The two plan plates listed by Fenn—a plan of the Tower Liberties from 1597 (Plate 1.63) and three plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 (Plates 2.1-2.2)—are both quite modern and are quite similar in style and approach.

Fenn’s “miscellaneous” antiquities—an arbitrary and incomplete subset, but nonetheless indicative—comprise fragments of the Cotton Genesis MS after it was decimated by the Cotton Library fire of 1731 (1.67-1.68); the exechequer’s Standard of Weights and Measures, an exquisitely illuminated black-letter manuscript from the reign of Henry VII (Plate 1.69); two medieval bronze bells, which even to Fenn do not seem to fit with the Roman bronze objects with which Vertue grouped them (Plate 2.17); a medieval mantelpiece from Saffron Waldon (Plate 2.19); and curiously, the 1747 title page and catalogue from Volume I of Vetusta Monumenta itself.

Works Cited:

Fenn, John. 1784. “An Index to the Prints Published by the Society of Antiquaries.” In Three Chronological Tables, Exhibiting a State of the Society of Antiquaries, 17-30. London: J. Nichols.

Gough, Richard. 1786-1796. Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain. London: J. Nichols.

Myrone, Martin. “The Society of Antiquaries and the Graphic Arts.” In Visions of Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 1707-2007, edited by Susan Pearce, 98-121. London: The Society of Antiquaries.

Stukeley, William. 1717. “Articles of Incorporation.” Society of Antiquaries of London, Manuscripts MS 265. [SAL Minutes, Vol. 1].
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