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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Mick Harper
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Where's the fake? She looked real enough to me.
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Hatty
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According to his contemporary, Richard Symonds, "this Belcamp was an under copier to another Dutchman, that did fondly keep the king's pictures and whenever any nobleman desired a copy, he directed them to Belcamp."

Richard Symonds seems to be the only person to have written about Jan van Belcamp's under copying role but then again Symonds was a great recorder

Richard Symonds (1617–1660) was an English royalist and antiquary, now remembered for an eye-witness diary he wrote of events of the First English Civil War

But it turns out Symonds' diary was valued for its antiquarian rather than military content by later historians

Much of the interest of the diary lies in its topographical content, including detailed notes of churches, church monuments, stained glass and heraldry that Symonds had viewed. Most of his entries about the war are accurate but terse. However, his description of the second battle of Newbury is very detailed.

Three volumes of genealogical collections for the county of Essex, compiled by Symonds, were preserved at the College of Arms, to which they were presented in 1710 by Gregory King, into whose possession they came in 1685. In the second volume Symonds gives the pedigree of his own family, and near his own name is an impression, in red wax, of an engraved head in profile, probably that of Symonds himself, by Thomas Simon, the medallist. These collections were used by Philip Morant in his History of Essex. Other notes were used by Horace Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting in England.

Symonds was a 'delinquent', someone who had to pay a fine to buy back his land, confiscated for having been on the losing side in the Civil War. So how did he get the funds together? A year after the war ended, he decamped to Paris, Rome and Venice though he remained, for a diarist, strangely silent about his time there. Coincidentally or not, the five years, 1648 to 1652, he spent in Europe was the period when Charles I's collection was being catalogued and dispersed. Jan van Belcamp, according to Symonds, died in 1653.

It can be assumed Richard Symonds and Jan van Belcamp were colleagues. Symonds was clearly knowledgeable about things like genealogy and heraldry, presumably useful knowledge to a Flemish painter of aristocratic portraits.
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Grant



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For me the interesting thing about the Bashir/Diana business is why Earl Spencer is making such a fuss. It’s not that she hadn’t already spilled the beans to the press about the marriage.

I think Spencer realises that the British public is losing its sympathy for the Queen of Hearts. He’s trying to sell this silly idea that the only reason she pressed the self-destruct button is because of a disreputable journo and not because she was a manipulative fruitcake.

Next, Bashir gets blamed for Michael Jackson being accused of being a kiddie-fiddler.
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Hatty
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Another type of collection is the 'natural history collection'. Rudolf II had one of the finest in Europe and his personal physician, a Dutch humanist called Anselmus de Boodt, is said to have illustrated it in his Historia naturalis

“12 imperial folio volumes, containing c. 750 highly finished watercolours….”

De Boodt is mostly remembered for his work on mineralogy and his extraordinary watercolours weren't known about for over two centuries. The Riksmuseum says the family held onto the albums until 1844

Emperor Rudolph II was forced to resign his crown in 1611 and died the following year, leaving many unpaid bills. De Boodt stayed in Prague for two years, desperately trying to collect money owed him. His efforts failed, so the frustrated artist took all 750 watercolours back to his native Bruges.

According to Wiki, De Boodt was rather well off having published a seminal work on gems and stones

The publication of the Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia ensured de Boodt's European reputation and he could afford to live in luxury. He still decided to leave the imperial court after the death of Rudolf II in 1612

How come the unpaid artist didn't sell some paintings before decamping back to Bruges? Ah yes, the old keep everything intact and in the family stipulation, even if it's the devil's own work to preserve delicate drawings from damp, mites, general fading and decay, not to mention storage space.

When he died, unmarried, in 1632, at the age of 82, he left everything to two nephews, with one important condition: they were allowed to sell everything except the three vellum portfolios of drawings of “dieren, vogels, en bloemen.” These, he instructed, were to remain together and pass to each generation’s male heir.

Why only male heirs isn't explained but was rather useful as it turned out

By the late 18th century, however, there was no male heir, and the albums came into the possession of Joseph Antoine van Huerne, Mayor of Bruges. When Van Huerne died childless in 1844, his library went under the hammer. The drawings were then bought by a Belgian nobleman, in whose family they remained for the next 150 years.

Why is the nobleman unnamed? Perhaps the collection, if it actually existed, wasn't so valuable after all. Some of the pictures are of mythical creatures, e.g. a 'Draak' and a 'basilisk'. It's not even clear the illustrations were of Rudolph II's collection.

There are probably only three studies in the albums that possibly record live animals, either first- or second-hand from creatures in the Emperor’s zoological park in Prague, for they wear collars or are in cages. Other watercolours may have been drawn from stuffed or dried specimens in Rudolph’s Wunderkammer. The majority of studies, however, are outright copies of printed models from various pioneering natural history publications from the Age of Discovery.

https://theartofinformationblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/the-wondrous-story-of-the-de-boodt-albums/

I suppose by 1844 there'd only be dried/stuffed specimens to copy, the rest would have to be made up/copied from other people's Wunderkammern.

De Boodt's Historia naturalis was 'partially published in 1989'. It was finally acquired by Heribert Tenschert, "one of the world's premier dealers of illuminated medieval manuscripts and rare books" in 1999.
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Mick Harper
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Rudolph II, the alchemist emperor, always adds a nought on the end. That's to the nought added by being from the seventeenth century. Maybe two -- how much was it worth in the end? I use the phrase 'in the end' to mean at the end of the alley where the garage is.
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Ishmael


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The name of this thread is, "Inventing History."

I think there's a better name. And maybe the perfect name for your book.



MAKING HISTORY




.
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Ishmael


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I'll give you time to forget I made this suggestion and then come up with the same title on your own. That's fine. So long as you go with it! :-)
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Mick Harper
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I've got a better idea: "Making History". What does everybody think?
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Ishmael


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Brilliant!
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Mick Harper
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Voynich Manuscript or Book of Dunstan coding and decoding method
Alexander G Ulyanenkov
https://www.academia.edu/27090395/Voynich_Manuscript_or_Book_of_Dunstan_coding_and_decoding_methods?email_work_card=abstract-read-more

First time I've ever seen this link made.

The Voynich manuscript is the book dated as fifteen century, written using specific and smart coding methods. This article describes the methods how it was analyzed and how coding keys were found. The last manuscript page decoding. Correlation of the last page content with John Dee notes. The proof that the Voynich manuscript and the "Book of Dunstan" - the same manuscripts. This article contains Engish (pages 1-81) and equal Russian (pages 82 - 170) versions.

Don't worry, I'm on it.
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Mick Harper
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It turns out (I am satisfied) that the Book of Voynich was a joint production of John Dee and Edward Kelley. How (or more pertinently why) they would use hundred year-old parchment is the chief objection but otherwise the case made by Ulyanenkov for its authorship is very persuasive.

The connection with the Book of Dunstan is not well made. We ourselves have had various things to say about this and Ulyanenkov seems to agree with us that it is a sixteenth century forgery, though he believes in the reality of St Dunstan himself. We don't. But his rationale for the connection -- Dee and Kelley were trying to pass off a forgery with a genuine (albeit anonymous and mysterious) manuscript of their own -- doesn't make much sense. But then nothing written thus far about the Book of Voynich has made much sense and this is the first I have come across that does.

My initial assumption, derived from the AE reason that if it still can't be decoded it probably wasn't meant to be, survives Ulyanenkov's analysis though he remains of the opinion that it can be.
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Hatty
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It's proved much harder to find out when and where the word 'England' was first used than one might expect. Historians tend to conflate Britain and England, using one name or the other in the same sentence.

Wiki says
The earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

which is quite late in the day as the earliest 'Bede' manuscripts are dated 12th century. I think the "late-ninth-century translation into Old English" is the British Library's manuscript Cotton Tiberius C II, of unknown though endlessly discussed provenance

Origin: ?Canterbury, Southern England. Provenance: ?Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury: although Plummer suggested that the manuscript was made for the community of St Cuthbert due to the interlineation of 'nostro' before 'et antistite cudberchto' (Plummer, Bedae (1896), I, p. xciii) because the decoration of the 'Tiberius Bede' is very similar to a group of Southumbrian manuscripts. The scholars have suggested that it was made in Canterbury (see Brown, 'Paris' (1986), p. 135). Brown has proposed a 'Tiberius Group' based on similarities to this manuscript. Within the 'Tiberius Group', the closest relations of Cotton MS Tiberius C II have been debated

Also, according to Wiki, England was referred to in the Domesday Book though a search for 'England' in the Domesday website brought up no results.

Nobody seems to know when England, the land of the Angles, was first recorded nor why the Angles rather than the Saxons should have given their name to the country. Wiki says the first written mention of the Angles ('Anglii') was in Tacitus' Germania, one of his minor works which was unknown before the Renaissance. The first written mention of East Anglia is in the twelfth century, there are no earlier charters/ documents because of those Viking raiders who destroyed every Anglo-Saxon monastery in the land.

What is agreed is England, as it's spelt today, was first used in 1538.
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Mick Harper
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So, America is earlier than England. Pushy bastards.
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Mick Harper
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However... 'England' being used in 1538 is significant because it is at about this time that Wales was, sort of, incorporated into 'England' for administrative purposes. 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. After that, calling yourself England would have been tacitly to accept that a) Scotland and b) Ireland were something else, and maybe c) France and d) Wales weren't either. Would this have been diplomatically wise?

Was the cry 'For Harry, England and St George' in the mouth of Henry V or William Shakespeare? The hunt is on!
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Wile E. Coyote


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The three Lions featured on the Royal coat of arms of England is believed to be a Plantagenet symbol.

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

The best way of making fake history is to also create visual emblems maps and mint coins.

Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, get an honourable mention for their services.
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