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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Hatty
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But when 'England' became a political unit, and therefore requiring a name, isn't very clear. Certainly before King John lost (most of) France, it wasn't.

It may be that England is the Anglicised form of Angleterre, in other words it didn't exist as a separate political entity before the fourteenth century territorial wars with France. As far as I can tell there are no written references to 'Angle-land'.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Ortho myth is that the many tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc that migrated to Britain had a common ancestor, Woden, legendary king of Angeln.

Caser (sic), one of the sons of Woden, migrated to Britain in the late fifth and early sixth centuries and founded the Anglian kingdom of the East Angles.

The twelfth century Textus Roffensis lists the kings of the East Angles right back to Woden, as does the Historia Brittonum by Nennius. Mick has had a go at the weird Textus Roffensis.
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Mick Harper
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I did, in Forgeries, though at the time I had no reason to suppose it was other than a twelfth century forgery. My position has become more radical since then.
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Hatty
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Wiki has an article on Cistercian numerals which I haven't come across before. Not sure if this is the right place as the system isn't a forgery though it is invented.

It sounds like a sort of shorthand for numbers rather than characters. The Wiki article says the Cistercians developed their numerals

in the early thirteenth century at about the time that Arabic numerals were introduced to northwestern Europe. They are more compact than Arabic or Roman numerals, with a single character able to indicate any integer from 1 to 9999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercian_numerals

There is something odd though because the invention of the numeral system is attributed to John Basing/Basingstoke, Archdeacon of Leicester (died 1252)

The numeral system was invented in the 1300s by French Cistercian monks, based on symbols introduced by John of Basingstoke.

Basingstoke is better known for collaborating with Robert Grosseteste on a dodgy manuscript than for inventing numerals

Basingstoke was an advocate of Greek literacy and seems to have been instrumental in introducing the apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs to Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. What is known of Basingstoke derives primarily from the writings of Grosseteste and another contemporary, Matthew Paris.

Is it normal for a rather important figure in the church hierarchy to be relatively unknown? The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs appears to be a forgery produced by Robert Grosseteste who 'rediscovered' the hitherto lost text and translated it into Latin in 1242. John Basingstoke was the person who first identified the manuscript according to Matthew Paris.

The chronicler, Matthew Paris, tells how in the late 1230s, one of Grosseteste’s assistants, John of Basingstoke, recalled seeing a Greek manuscript containing a text called the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs in the library of the metropolitan Michael Choniates when he was in Athens some 40 years earlier. The bishop sent envoys to Athens and MS Ff.1.24, almost certainly Choniates’ copy, was brought to England for him. There are notes in Grosseteste’s hand throughout, demonstrating that he read the whole codex.

Of the apparently original Greek manuscript no more is heard except the place of origin is 'Constantinople'. The ownership record is surprisingly familiar

Former Owner(s): Choniates, Michael, 1138-approximately 1222; Grosseteste, Robert, 1175?-1253; Parker, Matthew, 1504-1575
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Hatty
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The Guardian wrote:
More than 10,000 people have signed a petition calling on the management of London’s historic Wallace Collection to reject proposals to close its library and archive to the public. The petition claims that management wants to focus on “income generation”, and they do not “view the library and archive as part of this”.... If the library is closed to the public, two staff members would be made redundant.

Closing the library and archives would only save two salaries but clearly the Wallace Collection is experiencing financial problems. Last October, in an effort to boost visitor numbers, they put "rare medieval equestrian armour" on display

It is one of only three complete medieval equestrian armour displays in the world. Now, the 15th-century masterpiece can be viewed by the public for the first time in over 100 years.

The unveiling took place at the Wallace Collection in London in late October as part of a campaign by the museum to boost visitor numbers.

https://www.military-history.org/articles/rare-medieval-equestrian-armour-goes-on-display-for-first-time-in-a-century.htm

Presumably it boosted visitor numbers, never having been seen by anyone before. Just one problem, the provenance of the armour is not fifteenth century.

Until the 19th century, the armour was preserved at Schloss Hohenaschau in Bavaria, the ancestral home of the Freyberg nobility. Sold at auction around 1850, it was in 1867 acquired by French sculptor Comte de Nieuwerkerke, who displayed it in his apartment at the Louvre in Paris. There it was studied by many artists, serving as a standard for illustrations in encyclopaedias and history books for decades. In 1871, it was sold, along with the rest of the Nieuwerkerke collection, to Sir Richard Wallace, an English art collector. Following his death in 1890, his wife Lady Wallace donated his collection to the nation.

Alfred Émilien O'Hara, Count van Nieuwerkerke (16 April 1811 – 16 January 1892) was, according to Wiki, a French sculptor of Dutch descent who later became director-general of France's museums, perhaps helped by his cousin being the director of the Louvre or by his relationship with Napoleon's niece, Princess Mathilde. In view of the armour's importance to artists and historians, one might have expected a proper detailed provenance to have been available
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Hatty
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Whether the Count of Nieuwerkerke really was a sculptor is open to question. It is fairly unusual for large-scale sculptures to reportedly vanish but survive as copies

He took on official commissions and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1842. One of those commissions was a 4.65m high "Equestrian statue of Napoleon I", inaugurated in the sculptor's presence by the Prince-President on 20 September 1852 on the largest square on the Perrache peninsula in Lyon. This was destroyed between November 1870 and February 1871 and the only surviving copy of it is that inaugurated on 20 August 1854 at the centre of place Napoléon in La Roche-Sur-Yon, main town and prefecture of this Napoleon-founded department. However, in 1860 the Susse foundry did cast copies in five different metals (one such copy is now at the château de Compiègne, and another was sold at Compiègne on 17 March 2001 for 30,000 francs).

One of his best known other works is "The battle of the duke of Clarence", bronze copies of which were cast by the Susse foundry from 1839 to 1875 - one copy entered the English royal collection at Osborne House in 1901, and another was sold at public auction at Chartres on 23 March 2003.

Have museums and stately homes such as the Château de Blois been informed that their bronze sculptures of the battle of the Duke of Clarence are a copy? Of course for all Blois knows they could have the original as no authenticated original has been produced.

But whether Nieuwerkerke himself was or wasn't a sculptor, Sir Richard Wallace bought the count's entire collection hook, lie and sinker

Nieuwerkerke and his daughter Olga moved to London, where he tried to sell some of the smallest of his objets d'art to the South Kensington Museum. These came from Nieuwerkerke's extraordinary collection (for which no list or inventory survives) of more than 800 historic art objects, in metal and gold, sculptures, ceramics, painted enamel, glass and furniture. It also included Medieval and Renaissance arms and armour, including 100 swords, 60 daggers, 50 helmets, 15 sets of armour or demi-armour, and the only known complete example of Gothic armour for man and horse (now in the Wallace Collection).

Worth noting the most important aspect has been placed in brackets. (One wonders if the Wallace Collection library and archives are worth petitioning about.)
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Wile E. Coyote


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Maybe they are all "copies" of arms and armour perceived as worn by the so called heroes of classical antiquity. Certainly not practical for military use.
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Hatty
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Not only does medieval armour appear impractical. It's hard to imagine wearing some of the costumes apparently de rigueur in the High Middle Ages.

How can we know the costumes are authentic? It seems to be down to drawings of famous people as illustrated in the 'Recueil de Arras', a manuscript from the 'third quarter of the 16th century'

The manuscript 266 (ms.944.2) Public Library Arras is a paper manuscript 41 cm high and 28 cm wide, containing 293 sheets connected to the parchment. On 289 of these leaves are pasted portraits of famous people, done in red chalk, in graphite, in two pencils or in red chalk and ink. Nine of these portraits have disappeared, not without leaving an imprint (stamping), often quite legible, on the opposite page. This last detail also reveals that the order of certain pages has been changed.

The drawings, it turns out, are copies.

Copied from paintings (sometimes with indications of colors), drawings, engravings, funerary monuments or stained glass windows, these portraits are of great interest to historians and art historians. In most cases, they bear witness to lost works, with a few notable exceptions, such as the portrayal of Baudouin de Lannoy, a direct copy of Van Eyck's painting.

We know who the sitters were because their names were inscribed below the drawings but no-one knows who commissioned the portraits or the name of the artist. It was a French art print historian called Bouchot who first (in 1884) attributed the drawings to a somewhat elusive Flemish artist, Jacques le Boucq (1520-1573), aka Jacques Leboucq d'Artois, Jacques Le Boucq d'Artois, Jacques Le Bourcq de Valenciennes, Jacques Lebourcq de Valenciennes.

Whoever. The copies were much copied apparently. The British Museum has a Rubens sketch-book, the Rubens Costume Book, purchased in 1841 from Henry George Bohn, a dealer in rare books and founder of the mass market Bohn's Libraries.

It contains drawings of figures in the late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Flemish and Burgundian court fashion, in early sixteenth-century German costume and in late sixteenth-century Turkish, Persian and Arabic dress. All of the drawings are copies after ealier works of art, an important aspect of Rubens´s oeuvre.

Seems there are only copies, never originals as the Rubens drawings are of the same people as in the Recueil de Arras.

Arras acquired the manuscript "between 1826 and 1839". They seem a bit vague about the acquisition date but no provenance has been given for the manuscript so it'll have to do.
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Wile E. Coyote


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French art historian Bouchot= le Boucq
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Wile E. Coyote


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they are all "copies" of arms and armour perceived as worn by the so called heroes of classical antiquity

That is why tunics, aprons were worn over the armour.
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Wile E. Coyote


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What about Ned Kelly's armour. Genuine or fiction?

In 1879, Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly devised a plan to create bulletproof armour and wear it during shootouts with the police. He and other members of the Kelly gang—Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, and brother Dan Kelly—had their own armour suits and helmets crafted from plough mouldboards, either donated by sympathisers or stolen from farms. The boards were heated and then beaten into shape over the course of several months, most likely in a crude bush forge and possibly with the assistance of blacksmiths. While the suits successfully repelled bullets, their heavy weight made them cumbersome to wear, and the gang debated their utility.

Donated by sympathisers.....

Possibly with the assistance of blacksmiths....

News reports of the armour caused a sensation throughout Australia and much of the world. It has become a widely recognisable image and icon, inspiring many cultural depictions and cementing Ned Kelly as one of Australia's most well-known historical figures. The suits of armour ended up in both private and public hands; Ned Kelly's, for instance, is held by the State Library of Victoria. However, within days of the Kelly gang's demise, the armour started to become mismatched, and there was confusion over which pieces belonged to which suit. It was not until the early 21st century, after extensive research, that owners reached an agreement to swap the necessary pieces in order to restore the original suits.

It had to be assembled as nobody had a genuine piece, because the so called "originals" did not match up. There is no provenance.

I tell you it shouts fake.

There are two main theories for the inspiration for the armour. One is that members of the gang had witnessed performers wearing Chinese armour during a carnival procession through the streets of Beechworth in 1873. The gang also had a network of Chinese sympathisers, and Byrne, who grew up near Chinese camps on the goldfields, was reported to have been fluent in Cantonese. The other theory is that Ned got the idea from his favourite book, R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone (1869). Set in 17th-century England, the novel is about a family of outlaws, and in one part describes them on horseback wearing "iron plates on breast and head".[1] Another story is that Ned saw and drew a suit of armour during a visit to the Melbourne Museum.[2] What is widely accepted is that the idea and decision to wear armour was Ned's.[3]


FAKE. FAKE. FAKE!!
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Hatty
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The one I like is the Mold Cape

The Mold cape is a solid sheet-gold object dating from about 1900–1600 BC in the European Bronze Age. It was found at Mold in Flintshire, Wales, in 1833.




The cape seems to represent a textile cape rendered in gold, a cloth of gold. The amount of gold used was about the size of a golf ball.

It was found by workmen in a Bronze Age burial mound and is thought to have 'accompanied the burial of a woman'. When it was first reconstructed (incorrectly), it was thought to have been made for a horse.

The pieces were originally thought to be an chest ornament for a horse, but eventually it was reassembled into a strange collar that would have restricted the wearer's arms.

In the 1830s the name of the hill, Bryn-yr-Ellyllon or Hill of the Elves/ Faeries/ Goblins, was linked with a ghost story about a huge figure wearing gold armour, first published in 1861 by Rev. Charles Butler Clough in 'Scenes and Stories Little Known.'

The cape is considered to be one of the most spectacular examples of prehistoric sheet-gold working yet discovered. It is of particular interest as both its form and its design are unparalleled.

The Bronze Age barrows have been destroyed after various excavations, the last one in 1953, but remnants of goods and skeletons were still being dug up in 2013. Museums have to put their priorities in the right order.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Yes, I liked the bit about the horse, but now it's considered to be "very high status" as it is impractical to wear for a person....
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Mick Harper
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Temperature’s Rising, Jukebox Blowing a Fuse!



A 10th century cross just a few metres away from Maen Cadoar standing stone/cross in the grounds of the St Martin & St Meriadoc Church in Camborne. Megalithic Portal

Anyone over the age of three (five outside London) can see it's an unremarkable bit of Victorian Gothery. Even Hatty could see it

Thank you, Angie, for the Historic England link.

"The excavation in 1966 indicated that the chapel was initially a small square structure with a stone base, possibly topped by a timber superstructure (no evidence of this upper stage survives). There is little dateable evidence for this earliest phase, but it may be contemporary with a C10 standing cross which was recorded standing adjacent to the chapel in the C18 "

So they're saying there is no evidence of a 'possible' wooden structure and stone is of course undateable. There is, they claim, one piece of "dateable evidence" i.e. the standing cross, even though stone carvings are not dateable. 'C10', I think it is fair to say, is unsupported by the archaeology. Heritage England even admits the C10 dating is "local tradition"!

You’ll need some background. The Megalithic Portal is the biggest of its type, I would imagine, in the world. They always rubbish my books, they have banned Hatty from their Twitter page and get very cross (no pun intended) with her on their own site. But this from one of their Big Chiefs, Runemage, is really weird

"Heritage England even admits the C10 dating is "local tradition"!"

Think you need to read that again Hat, because HE said no such thing. Their words following your quote are "Local tradition attributes a carved C10 stone known as the Leuiut stone to being the chapel's original alter frontal." Presenting a structured and reasoned argument to promote your own theory is one thing, but entirely misrepresenting a written statement doesn't do much for your credibility.

Yer what? That’s what Hatty said! In effect, since it's only local tradition that's providing the date. The function is neither here nor there. But Runemage tells Hatty where she can go

As has been said before several times, exchanges of opinions and promotions of your theories are better carried out on our fora, so do feel free to start a discussion there. I'll transfer these comments and any subsequent ones when you start a thread.

Hatty keeps her temper, mostly

Excuse any misunderstanding, Runemage, but the previous comment is not promoting a theory, neither mine nor anyone else's. I prefer to stick to the facts such as we are given. It is quite clear from HE's article that no record exists for this rare type of cross before the 19th century when it was 'rediscovered'

"In 1869 the historian Langdon recorded that this cross was found buried in the churchyard in 1832. It is considered that this cross is probably the original churchyard cross that was thrown down and buried at the Reformation, and is possibly contemporary with the church which was completed in 1434. The cross was re-erected in 1852."

It is assumed by archaeologists, in acccordance with common sense, the cross is contemporary with the church, i.e. mid-15th century. Or later. It's hard to say in the absence of any written record prior to the C19 but either way it's generally best to assume the cross should match the evidence found in the church itself.

The original poster, Angie Lake speaks up for herself

Hatty, your comment made me look up the St Ia's chapel at Troon, and it seems that chapel originated in the 10th Century: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1441204 (See the second sentence in the site page description above).

So does Hatty

What evidence do you have to corroborate your statement that this is a tenth century cross? It is highly unlikely that an item of church furniture would predate the church itself which is late medieval, according to archaeologists: "Mostly late C15 in one build, but incorporating some fabric of smaller earlier C15 church" with the proviso that "It was restored in 1861-62" and again in 1878-9.

We are used to our opponents defending the indefensible to the last ditch, we are used to vulgar abuse, we are used to being sent away with fleas in our ears, but now they are starting to lose it big style. It's most promising.
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Mick Harper
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I may have been a little unjust to Runemage since I was working from the wrong picture posted up by our picture editor (wild horses would not drag her name out of me). So let's turn our fire instead on Angie Lake and/or Historic England

The remains of the Chapel of St Ia and adjacent cell are scheduled for the following principal reasons: (1) the site retains significant standing and buried archaeological remains that represent the chapel’s three principal phases;

They and we are only interested in the first phase. The St Ia bit

(2) the chapel has pre-conquest origins, a period that is less well understood than later phases of church construction

'Not understood at all on account of not having anything whatsoever from the period' is, I suppose, included under the more general heading of 'less well understood'

the documentary evidence has been enhanced by the 1960s archaeological excavation which provides evidence of the evolution and changing function of this site

No documentary evidence whatsoever would, I suppose, be enhanced by pretty much anything. Them finding no archaeological evidence (of the St Ia period) would though not count because, as we all know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Rather the reverse in my experience of Dark Age archaeology since it is evidence of just how dark it was.

(3) the site has the potential to further contribute to our understanding of the development of pre- and post-conquest chapel building, as well as the practice of Christianity in rural Cornwall during the medieval period.

Can we start with the pre-conquest bit? No.
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