cipal work. Druidism was to him ‘the aboriginal patriarchal religion,’ and his intimates called him ‘Chyndonax’ and ‘the arch-druid of this age.’
In 1726 Stukeley went to live at Grantham, Lincolnshire, where he had a good practice. Here he laid out a garden and a sylvan ‘temple of the Druids,’ with an old apple-tree, overgrown with mistletoe, in the centre. Being encouraged by Archbishop Wake to enter the church, he was ordained at Croydon on 20 July 1729, and was presented in October to the living of All Saints at Stamford, a town to which he removed in February 1730. At Stamford, where he chiefly lived till 1748, he frequented the music clubs and had a beautiful garden, wherein he set up (circa 1746) a gate with ‘an inscription in vast capitals’ commemorating Culloden and ‘a delicate marble statue of Flora as white as milk, large as life [and] well cut.’ In 1736 he published his ‘Palæographia Sacra’ (pt. i.) to show ‘how heathen mythology is derived from sacred history, and that the Bacchus of the poets is no other than Jehovah in Scripture.’
In 1739 he was given the living of Somerby-by-Grantham. He resigned this living and that of All Saints, Stamford, in 1747, when he accepted from the Duke of Montagu the rectory of St. George-the-Martyr in Queen Square, London. From 1748 he lived in Queen Square and at his house at Kentish Town. He was an unconventional clergyman, and once (April 1764) postponed the service for an hour in order that his congregation might witness an eclipse of the sun. When he was nearly seventy-six he preached for the first time in spectacles, from the text ‘Now we see through a glass darkly,’ the sermon being on the evils of too much study. On 27 Feb. 1765 he was seized with paralysis, and died in Queen Square on 3 March 1765 in his seventy-eighth year. He was buried in the churchyard of East Ham, Essex, and, according to his desire, without any monument.
Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, one of Stukeley’s oldest acquaintances, describes him as a learned and honest man, but a strange compound of ‘simplicity, drollery, absurdity, ingenuity, superstition, and antiquarianism’ (Nicols. Lit. Anecd. ii. 60, cf. ib. pp. 1 ff.) Thomas Hearne says he was ‘very fanciful’ and ‘a mighty conceited man.’ Stukeley, in an autobiography written (in the third person) for Masters’s ‘History of Bennet College,’ says of himself: ‘He has traced the origin of Astronomy from the first ages of the world. He has traced the origin of Architecture, with many designs of the Mosaic Tabernacle . . . and an infinity of sacred antiquities . . . but the artifice of booksellers discorages authors from reaping the fruit of their labors.’ Stukeley’s plan of ‘Caesar’s Camp,’ at the Brill (Somers Town), seems to be purely imaginary; and Evans (Ancient British Coins, p. 7) pronounces his drawings and attributions of British coins untrustworthy. Gibbon says concerning his ‘History of Carausius,’ ‘I have used his materials and rejected most of his fanciful conjectures.’ Stukeley’s favourite discovery of Oriuna, the wife of Carausius, was due to his misreading the word ‘Fortuna’ on a coin of this emperor. A more serious error was his publication in 1757, as a genuine work of Richard of Cirencester, of the ‘De Situ Britanniæ,’ forged by Charles Bertram [q. v.] (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 1895, p. 250).
Stukeley married first, in 1728, Frances (d. 1737), daughter of Robert Williamson, of Allington, Lincolnshire; secondly, in 1739, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Gale, dean of York and father of Roger and Samuel Gale. By his first wife he had three daughters: one of them, Elizabeth, married Richard Fleming, a solicitor, and Stukeley’s executor; another married Thomas Fairchild, rector of Pitsea, Essex (Nichols, Lit. Illustr. ii. 47 n.)
Some volumes of Stukeley’s manuscripts and letters came into the possession of John Britton, but afterwards passed to a descendant of Stukeley’s, the Rev. H. Fleming St. John, of Dinmore House, near Leominster, who lent them to Mr. W. C. Lukis for his careful edition of the ‘Family Memoirs of Stukeley.’ These memoirs consist of diaries and autobiographical notices, written somewhat in the style of Pepys, and of commonplace books and of a mass of correspondence touching on antiquities, numismatics, and astronomy. Other manuscripts are in the possession of Mr. R. F. St. Andrew St. John of Ealing.
Stukeley’s coins (chiefly Roman), fossils, pictures, and antiquities were sold at Essex House, Essex Street, London, on 15 and 16 May 1766. ‘An antediluvian hammer, sundry Druids’ beads, &c.,’ and a model of Stonehenge, carved in wood by Stukeley, were among the objects sold (Sale Catalogue in Department of Coins, Brit. Mus.)
There is a mezzotint half-length portrait of Stukeley, by J. Smith, 1721, after a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1721 (reproduced, ‘Family Memoirs of Stukeley,’ frontispiece). A portrait, by Wills, of Stukeley in his robes, a miniature, and a bust are also mentioned. In the British Museum is a
