Update — Spring 2025

I. Electronic Enlightenment Edition of Correspondence

This spring, Electronic Enlightenment is proud to be publishing the work of three student collaborators, who worked with us through the second half of last year on two exciting and original projects. Their work has enriched and extended the scope of our collections and built on our existing partnerships within the Bodleian and beyond. In the summer of 2024, two interns came to us through the UNIQ+ scheme. Sophie Dickson and Olivia Flynn were with us between July and August last year, working on the letters written from Charles Julius Betram to the eminent antiquarian William Stukeley between 1747 and 1764. These letters, which are held in Special Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, attest to one of the greatest frauds in English antiquarian history. Bertram, a Copenhagen-based British expatriate, created a false map of Roman Britain, erroneously attributed to a medieval scribe called Richard of Westminster, which completely redrew the borders between ancient Scotland and the Roman provinces in England. Stukeley, seduced by the subtlety of Bertram’s deceit, believed him wholeheartedly, and shared Betram’s falsehoods with the antiquarian world, creating a deep-seated misconception at the heart of English conceptions of Roman Britain long into the 19th century. The set of 32 letters which Bertram wrote to Stukeley to accompany his forged maps and false itineraries were absolutely central to the perpetuation of his plan, and represent a fascinating insight into the ways in which social standing and cultural cache could interweave with very real financial and professional questions in the close knit world of mid-eighteenth century antiquarianism. Sophie and Olivia took the letters through the whole process of turning manuscript letters into a digital resource, creating a full catalogue of the letter collection, seeing it through the imaging studio and the creation of basic image metadata, transcribing a selection of 10 letters for Electronic Enlightenment, and finally them into standardised XML and adding scholarly commentary. This process puts the Betram-Stukeley affair into the context of our wider collection and brings this unbelievable story to a whole new audience. Sophie and Olivia also wrote 2 blog posts for us, focusing on different aspects of the collection which they focused on on their work:

Sophie Dickson — Colonial Myth-making and Anti-Scottish Sentiment in Charles Bertram’s Letters to William Stukeley - Dickson’s piece explores Charles Bertram’s letters and false map in the context of anti-Scottish sentiment in England following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, arguing that Bertram’s imagined Scottish border offered English nationalists a historical ‘precedent’ for the encroachments onto Scots land which would cascade into the Highland clearances of the later 18th and 19th centuries.
Olivia Flynn — Epistolary Form in the Letters from Charles Bertram to William Stukeley — Taking the form of Bertram’s letters to Stukeley as its central focus, Flynn’s article addresses the techniques of ingratiation and building of intimacy which Bertram deployed throughout his correspondence with the noted antiquarian. Bertram appeals to Stukeley’s professional and academic pride, manipulating the power imbalances inherent in their collaboration to build rapport.

Our second student collaborator was Tessa van Wijk, from Radboud University in the Netherlands, who joined us for four months at the end of last year for an entirely self-directed project on slavery and enslavement as they are evidenced in Electronic Enlightenment and across the Bodleian Library collections as a whole. This project evolved into two interwoven outputs. Firstly, working with Technical Editor Mark Rogerson, she conducted a survey of all the uses of key terms relating to slavery across the entire Electronic Enlightenment corpus, working in our two dominant languages, French and English. Secondly, with the help of Bodleian Curator of Early Modern Manuscripts Mike Webb and director of the Bodleian Libraries’ ‘We Are Our History’ initiative, Alex Franklin, Tessa identified, catalogued, and transcribed a selection of letters from the Jamaica Correspondence of the Barham family. The patriarch of the Barham family, Joseph Foster Barham I, and later his son Joseph Foster Barham II, owned the Mesopotamia plantation in Jamaica through the second half of the eighteenth-century into the early nineteenth, and the Jamaica papers here at the Bodleian include the correspondence between the Barhams and the various managers and overseers they employed to manage the enslaved peoples at Mesopotamia. Following the template of our UNIQ+ collaboration, Tessa catalogued and transcribed a selection of 16 of these letters, and has produced 2 blog posts for us on the two sides of her work at Electronic Enlightenment:

Tessa van Wijk — ‘Slavery in the Electronic Enlightenment Collection’ — Tessa shares the results of her research into the presence of languages of slavery and enslavement across the English and French letters in Electronic Enlightenment. After taking us through her research process, use of the KWIC (Keyword in Context) concordance AntConc, and separation of figurative languages of enslavement from discussions of literal chattel slavery, Tessa discusses how working with sensitive topics like enslavement transform the role of the researcher, and how she addressed these issues in her work.
Tessa van Wijk — ‘The Plantation Papers of the Barham Family’ — Focusing on the 16 letters she transcribed, and her catalogue of the Barham Jamaica papers as a whole, Tessa explores the ways in which these letters reflect the interplay of economic realities with the language of ‘benevolent’ ownership when it comes to the Barham’s human property and the ways in which historians can read against the dehumanising agenda of slaveholder’s own rhetoric, and find evidence of the lived experience of enslaved peoples in their own documents.

In addition to her work on the Barham papers and the survey of enslavement in Electronic Enlightenment Tessa also assisted with the third phase of our update. Late last year we received permission from the Massachusetts Historical Society to incorporate their collection of 14 letters by, or relating to, Phillis Wheatley. Born in West Africa in the early 1750s, and enslaved from when she was seven or eight years old, Wheatley became a transatlantic sensation when her poetry, initially circulating in the New England Methodist community of Boston, Massachussetts, was collected and published as Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). The letters collected by the Massachusetts Historical Society document the subscription publication of Poems, Wheatley’s visit to London in 1774, her expanding Methodist and abolitionist network, and some early responses to the poems, all taking place against the historically rich backdrop of 1770s New England. To accompany this material, we were given to republish an introduction to the life and works of Phillis Wheatley by the designer and historian Kate Davies, which originally appeared in Bluestockings (2021), a collection of knitting patterns inspired by celebrated eighteenth-century intellectual women like Elizabeth Carter and Mary Delany, co-edited by Davies and Nicole Pohl, our Academic Editor:

Kate Davies - ‘Phillis Wheatley Peters’ — Through her letters and poetry, Davies explores Phillis Wheatley Peters through her role as a woman of letters of the late eighteenth-century, and the ways in which her gender, as well as her race, informed her sense of community and her role as a writer and compares her with other Bluestocking figures from the eponymous collection.

II. New Biographies

36 Biographies have been added to Electronic Enlightenment or substantially updated, including:

William Stukeley (1687—1765) English antiquarian, physician and clergyman — A physician, reverend, and notable antiquarian: William Stukeley was a significant figure in the study of ancient and Roman Britain. Born in 1687, Stukeley was the son of attorney John Stukeley (d. 1705) and his wife Frances Bullen (d. 1707). Stukeley married Frances Williamson (d. 1737), the daughter of Robert Williamson of Allington in 1728, and they had three daughters together. After her death, he married again in 1739. His second wife was Elizabeth Gale (1687–1757), the sister of Roger and Samuel Gale (1682–1754) and daughter of Thomas Gale, Dean of York (d. 1702).

Stukeley was educated at the age of five under Edward Kelsall at the Free School in Holbeach, and in 1700, proceeded to apprentice as a clerk under his father’s law firm in Holbeach. In 1703, Stukeley matriculated into Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge to study medicine under Dr Richard Mead. Stukeley’s medical career resulted in several publications. This included Of the Spleen, its Description and History, Uses and Diseases (1722) and Of the Gout (1735), describing and promoting a new remedy for the affliction. As a practising physician in Boston, Lincolnshire, he became a close friend of Maurice Johnson.

Stukeley’s work focused on numerous subjects such as astrology, Newtonian natural history, and theology. From Boston, Stukeley returned to London in 1717 where his interest in natural history prompted him to associate with many of the key figures in the Royal Society:
- Hans Sloane
- Edmond Halley
- William Whiston
- Martin Folkes
- Isaac Newton, the then president of the Society.
Consequently, Stukeley became a fellow of the Royal Society in March of 1718 and a member of its council. He presented several papers to the Royal Society, including The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious (1750) where he speculated the earthquake of 1750 that hit London could be explained by electricity; a paper defending religious orthodoxy in the new scientific discoveries; and a proposal that the ancient British peoples were familiar with heliocentrism and gravity.

The fundamental concern for Stukeley was the creation and expression of religious beliefs, prompting him to study ancient pre-historic monuments and their role in early worship. Believing that the original druid temples were natural woodlands, he appreciated their monuments as extensions of these religious environments and as theatrical spaces for divine engagement and interpretation. He produced formal observations of the prehistoric monuments, which resulted in one of his major publications, Itinerarium curiosum, or; An account of the antiquitys and remarkable curiositys in nature or art, observ’d in travels thro’ Great Brittan (1724). His other published work included the two monographs on the ancient stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury: Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids (1740) and Abury: A Temple of the British Druids (1743). His research was established by attentive fieldwork and notes taken on site between 1718 and 1724, where he was joined in 1719 by his close friends and fellow antiquarians Roger and Samuel Gale. His work on Stonehenge and Avebury was groundbreaking: Stukeley was the first to identify the astronomical alignment of the stones at Stonehenge, and the surveys he made at Avebury, coining the term ‘serpent-temple’ regarding the monument’s shape. Alongside William Borlase, Stukeley established that the ‘druidic’ monuments were places of worship, not Roman as previously thought.

Despite his ordination into the Church of England (1729–1765), Stukeley’s religious identity has been questioned thoroughly by scholars. It was his friendship with William Wake, the Archbishop of Canterbury who encouraged Stukeley to become ordained. However, his approach to practising Christianity was self-proclaimed as loose in private correspondence, implying his desire for ordination as a sudden and divinely gifted idea. Despite this, he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in his memoirs of 1747 that he had always been of a religious mind, and it was simply the commitment to his profession which obscured his religious devotion. Regardless, his interest in prehistoric forms of worship was inspired by his religiosity, acting as a catalyst for an increased creative approach to its study.

Stukeley founded a literary and antiquary society in the summer of 1736, based in Stamford. Despite also being active for only a short period, he was able to find friendship and patronage in John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu. In November 1747, Stukeley was offered a residency in St George the Martyr in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, serving as rector. It is here that he received letters from Charles Bertram, a young English expatriate working at the University of Copenhagen. Through their correspondence, Bertram introduced Stukeley to the supposed fourteenth-century manuscript written by Richard of Cirencester which he had acquired. Stukeley continued to offer support and advice to Bertram, later publishing An Account of Richard of Cirencester, Monk of Westminster, and of his Works (1757). Stukeley’s defence of Bertram’s manuscript and later support of James MacPherson’s Ossian in 1763 weighed heavy on his reputation in the following century, once both had been discredited to be forgeries. Stukeley would never see the critical consensus on these documents shift however, as their reappraisal did not take place until after his death in 1765.
Charles Bertram (1723—1765) English forger and antiquarian — Son of a Danish silk dyer resident in London. Little is known about Bertram’s education or life beyond literature on the Stukeley/Bertram forgery scandal and the correspondence with the antiquarian William Stukeley (1687–1765). Bertram seemed to have studied history, antiquities, philosophy, and mathematics at the University of Copenhagen, and from 1748 onwards, he taught English in the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen–a position he held successfully for 15 years, possibly promoted to Professor. In 1749 he published An Essay on the Excellency and Style of the English Tongue, in 1750, the Rudimenta Anglicanæ, or Beginnings of the Art of the English Language for the Benefit of Danish Readers, which he then re-published and edited into The Royal English-Danish Grammar. Bertram was very much part of the intellectual and artistic high society in Copenhagen. He became a protegé of Hans Gram (1685–1748), a Danish philologist and historian who suggested that Bertram introduced himself to William Stukeley.

Accordingly, in 1746, Bertram intended to write to Stukeley, but it was only in 1747 when he sent the first letter, and their correspondence continued until 1763. Bertram sent Stukeley a transcript and maps of Ricardi Monachi Westmonasteriensis comentariolum Geographicum de situ Britanniae & Stationum quas Romani ipsi in ea Insula aedificauerunt [An Account of Richard of Cirencester, Monk of Westminster, and of his Works: With his Antient Map of Roman Brittain; and the Itinerary thereof], published in 1757. Bertram claimed this manuscript was written by Richard of Westminster, and that it had come to him with ‘many other curiosities’. Stukeley vetted the account and suggested that Richard of Westminster was indeed Richard of Cirencester, a Benedict monk and chronicler, and shared the documents with Society of Antiquaries in 1756. Consequently, Bertram was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Society on 29 April 1756. In his letters, Bertram refused to divulge the owner of the manuscript, claiming he was sworn to secrecy by the owner who stole it in his youth.

Bertram’s ‘discovery’ was significant, and influenced antiquarian histories of Scotland well into the 19^thcentury, when the fraud was finally discovered. Examples include John Pinkerton’s An enquiry into the history of Scotland (1789), George Chalmers’s Caledonia (1807) and Robert Stuart’s (1812–1848) Caledonia Romana (1845). Bertram’s motivations for forging the manuscript are unclear, it may have been to gain fame or notoriety as an aspiring Antiquarian. After his initial successes in in Denmark, another scandal impeded on his reputation; in 1758, Bertram was appointed to translate the charter of Det Kongelig Danske Skildre- Bildhugger- Og Bygnings-Academie i Kiøbenhavn [The Royal Danish Academy Of Painting, Sculpture And Architecture In Copenhagen] into English. The work was seen as inadequate, though Bertram received his salary. In 1761 he was dismissed from the Royal Marine Academy.
Joseph Foster Barham I (1729—1789) English slaveholder and plantation-owner — Son of Colonel John Foster (1681–1731) and Elizabeth Smith, stepson of Dr Henry Barham (1692–1746). Foster Barham had 6 siblings:
- Thomas Foster (1720–1765)
- John Foster (d. 1743)
- William Foster (d. 1768)
- Samuel Foster (d. 1770)
- Margaret Campbell [née Foster]
- Sarah Burt [née Foster]
Barham married (1754) Dorothy Foster Barham [née Vaughan] (d. 1781); with issue six children:
- Mary Livius [née Foster Barham] (1757–1837)
- Joseph Foster Barham (1759–1832)
- John Foster Barham (1763–1789)
- Thomas Foster Barham (1766–1844)
- Elizabeth Rose [née Foster Barham]
- Anna Joanna Grinfield [née Foster Barham] (1756–1833)
Educated at Eton College and then Trinity College, Oxford. Joined the Moravian Church after his first marriage. Took the last name of his stepfather, Henry Barham, in order to inherit his Jamaican sugar plantation (Mesopotamia Estate, Westmoreland, Jamaica), together with its enslaved workers. Also came into possession of the Island Estate (St Elizabeth, Jamaica), another sugar plantation, together with its enslaved population, after the death of his father. Foster Barham visited his estates in 1750–1751 and had Moravian missionaries sent over to Jamaica to evangelize the enslaved population (1760). Foster Barham sponsored the mission together with his brother William Foster.

After the death of his first wife in 1781, Joseph Foster Barham married (1785) Lady Mary Hill [née Pole] (1730–1789), widow of Sir Roland Hill, 1^st Baronet (1705–1783), in an Anglican ceremony. Though Foster Barham drifted from the Moravian Church after his first wife’s death, the Moravian mission in Jamaica continued under his support.

Foster Barham passed away of a stroke on 21 July 1789, after which his son Joseph Foster Barham II inherited his estates.
Joseph Foster Barham II (1759–1832) English slaveholder, plantation-owner and politician — Eldest son of Joseph Foster Barham I and Dorothy Foster Barham [née Vaughan] (d. 1781). Foster Barham had 5 siblings:
- Mary Livius [née Foster Barham] (1757–1837)
- John Foster Barham (1763–1789)
- Thomas Foster Barham (1766–1844)
- Elizabeth Rose [née Foster Barham]
- Anna Joanna Grinfield [née Foster Barham] (1756–1833)
He married (1792) Lady Caroline Tufton (c. 1770–1832), daughter of Sackville Tufton, Earl of Thanet; with issue five children:
- John Foster Barham (1799–1838)
- Charles Henry Foster Barham (1808–1878)
- William Joseph Foster Barham
- Caroline Gertrude Robins [née Barham]
- Mary Foster Barham
Raised within the Moravian Church, Foster Barham was educated at the Moravian school in Barby, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, seat of the Moravian Unity between 1749–1809. Then studied at Göttingen University (1775). Travelled to Jamaica (1779) where he stayed for two years to manage his father’s plantations. Upon his return to England, his ship was captured by American privateers and Foster Barham was held prisoner for some months. After his release, he returned home to England via Boston. Inherited his father’s estates in Jamaica (the Mesopotamia Estate, Westmoreland & the Island Estate, St Elizabeth), together with their enslaved workers. Later also owned the Springfield Estate (Hanover, Jamaica) and the Windsor Estate (St Elizabeth, Jamaica). Continued his father’s support for the Moravian mission on the Jamaican estates. In 1793, Foster Barham decided to no longer purchase enslaved people from slave ships but rather chose to purchase them from other people and estates in Jamaica. Also tried to increase birth rates among his enslaved populations, which he failed in doing and living conditions for the enslaved workers remained dire.

Aspiring to a political career in England, Foster Barham converted to the Church of England and became a member of the Whig Club and Brooks’s Club (1788). Inherited and moved to his mother’s family estate at Trecŵn, Pembrokeshire (1803). Was elected MP for Stockbridge, Hampshire, a rotten borough (1793), and was an active member of the House of Commons. Was also member of the West Indian Committee and had seemingly contradictory views on slavery and the slave trade. Foster Barham expressed support for Wilberforce’s bill (1794) but quickly (1795) changed his mind and was convinced that abolition would be hard to accomplish and endanger planters’ situation. From 1796–1798, Foster Barham argued for gradual abolition and improving enslaved people’s situation. Several years later (1804), in view of the war with France and the Haitian Revolution, Foster Barham supported the abolition of the slave trade and consequently voted for abolition, while also arguing for compensation for planters and maintaining that they treated their enslaved workers well and humanely.

Foster Barham considered the importation of indentured labourers from China and India to the West Indies as a way of effecting (gradual) abolition of slavery. First rejecting this proposal of Foster Barham, William Wilberforce finally supported it in 1811 while nonetheless specifying that he expected the plan to be unsuccessful.

In 1823, Foster Barham published the pamphlet Considerations on the Abolition of Negro Slavery and the Means of Practically Effecting It, in which he argues for the British government to purchase all the enslaved people and land in the West Indies and educate and prepare the enslaved people for emancipation, as he believed they were in need of “moral improvement” before being given freedom.

Joseph Foster Barham passed away in the house of his sister Mary Livius, near Bedford on 28 September 1832, leaving his Jamaican and British estates to his oldest son, John Foster Barham.
Daniel Barnjum (died 1778) English plantation manager and slaveholder — Probably born in England. Richard Dunn speculates that Daniel Barnjum was a poor relative of Joseph Foster Barham I with little prospects in England. In 1758 he was sent over to Jamaica by Foster Barham I. Between 1760 and 1778, He acted as overseer or manager (depending on the terminology used in the letters) of the Mesopotamia Estate. He was appointed by Foster Barham I’s attorney Pool after the death of the previous overseer Daniel Macfarlane. During his management of the estate, Barnjum had several children with an enslaved woman called Hannah. One of the children, a boy, passed away shortly after being born. According to Richard Dunn, Hannah was likely also the mother of two boys, named Tom (b.1762) and Jack (b.1764), manumitted by Barnjum (1774), and gave birth to a son named Matt (1778) who was never manumitted. Richard Dunn speculates that this last son was not manumitted because Barnjum died the same year shortly after his birth (1778). At the time of his death, Barnjum owned twenty enslaved people.
Phillis Wheatley Peters (circa 1753—1784) African poet and slave — Born in West-Africa, modern Gambia or Senegal. Married (26 November 1778) John Peters (1745–1801), a free African American and shopkeeper; with issue: Probably three children who passed away during early childhood.

Wheatley received an extensive education from the Boston Congregationalist Wheatley family including Latin and Greek. Proved to be a child prodigy and published her first poem during early adolescence. Yet she had to serve as an enslaved domestic servant (1761–1773), was freed in 1773 after the publication of her Poems on Various Subjects. She passed away in poverty on 5 December 1784.

The first African American and first person of sub-Saharan African descent to publish a book and a foundational figure of African American literature, Wheatley is known for her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: Archibald Bell, 1773). Wheatley’s poems are testimony to her profound classical knowledge and often have a religious, Christian, character. Political issues such as racism, slavery and sexism are also (indirectly) addressed in Wheatley’s works.
Obour Tanner Collins (circa 1750–1835) African slave — Married (4 November 1790) Barra Collins. Tanner Served as a slave to the Congregationalist silversmith James Tanner, acted as an agent for Phillis Wheatley in Newport, Rhode Island, and helped to found the African Female Benevolent Society (1809). Passed away in Newport on 21 June 1835. Known for her friendship and correspondence with Phillis Wheatley, Tanner was Wheatley’s only known correspondent of African descent. Scholars such as John C. Shields have speculated that Tanner and Wheatly were transported to the Americas on the same ship, the Phillis. Wheatley’s letters to Tanner were donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society after Tanner’s death. See John C. Shields, Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics, (University of Tennessee Press, 2010).
Selina Hastings (1707–1791) English Methodist and slave owner — The second of three daughters of Washington Shirley, second Earl Ferrers (1677–1729), and Mary Shirley (d. 1740). Married Theophilus Hastings, ninth earl of Huntingdon (1696–1746), with issue:
- Three children who passed away young.
- Francis, Lord Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon.
- Lady Elizabeth Hastings (1731–1808), Baroness Hastings, married John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira (1720–1793).
- Lady Selina Hastings (1737–1763)
As a benefactor. Hastings was instrumental in the foundation and running of the Foundling Hospital, London. In 1739, she joned the first Methodist Society in London and became an active Evangelical. She founded the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, A Calvinist branch within the Methodist Church, in both England and Sierra Leone, as well as of the ministers’ training college Trevecca College and 64 chapels. Passed away in Spa Fields (Clerkenwell/Finsbury) on 17 June 1791. The Countess of Huntingdon is known for her important role in the Methodist movement in England and Wales. She also supported the publications of (formerly) enslaved people with similar religious views such as Phillis Wheatley, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1705–1775) and Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797). Was also a slave owner after inheriting George Whitefield’s (1714–1770) estates in Georgia and South Carolina in 1770.