Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/81

54 THE Hi STORY, ' J&aokL year the whole was printed at Copenhagen from the original MS, and a few copies of the work were immediately fent as prefents into England . , The collector was'Richard, a native of Cirencefter but a monk of Weftminfter, and the author of many other hiftorical and the- ological pieces. That the work is genuine, needs no proof. All the embodied antiquarians of -the. fourteenth and tfyethfee fucceeding centuries could not have forged fo learned a detail of Roman antiquities. ' . > Whence Richard colle&ed it^ fce know jaot ; or whether fie found his authorities in England or at Rome, to which latter place he had a fpecial licence to travel V He has thought proper to fay nothing of either. He only refers, and he refers fre- quently, to his vouchers, to Ptolemy and his cotempor^ry wri- ters, the tradition of the druids* antientjiipnument*, documents, and hiftories And the Itinerary in particular, ho declares hiqa- felf to have collected from Home remains of records which had been drawn up by the authority of a certain Roman general* and had been left by. him fpr the ufc of fucceeding ages 7 . . The date of thefe records inuft be the date of Richard's Itine- rary. Dr. Stukeley carries the aera of both to the period of Agricol^s command in the ifland, whom he (uppoies to be the Roman officer here fpoken of, and to whofe time he thinks the general alpeft of the Itinerary to look*. But thefe are furejy reafons of too feeble a nature to fuppoxt fo weighty a conclufiop* And die many parts of the work, as many there afe, which are certainly later than the age of Agricola, dlredly refute the fup- pofition. • The eighteen Itinera which Richard has presented to us ajl obvioufly unite to form an entire Itinerary. No fingle part ftands forth of a different texture from the reft. One uniforjpti r * The title of the book it Srltaimicarum Gentium Hlftoriac Antique Scriptorei tret, Biwdof Corineafii, GtklatlMonicni, Meanta Bnochorenfis; airiatthe cfcrfe it it fiad to be pnated Haunitc, TVpfe Lwd<%bi Heroict idli* famo&him wjfi 9 Menfe Jaaniop* and Dr. Stukeley'* Tranflation and Comment wa» printed for (X Corbet in Fte-ftreet, 17 p. One copy ww fajt to Ae Bodldah Library « O^rd. colour