Mommsen, Hübner, Haverfield, Watkin and Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum vol. viiP.W.M. Freeman
Nineteenth-century scholarship saw the rise of the systematic organizing of knowledge, one component of which was the handling of evidence from antiquity. The trend might be regarded as professionalization in introducing higher standards of recording and commentary, work which tended to be undertaken by ‘professionals’, but which risked exacerbating rivalries between academics. It also accentuated the boundaries between those who had traditionally contributed to the study of that evidence – the non-academic amateurs and antiquaries – and those who regarded themselves as best suited to do such work. In Britain such tensions were played out in the reaction of regional antiquaries and archaeologists to the increasing influence of academics in shaping the agenda for Romano-British studies. This paper reviews how the history of the study of Roman inscriptions in Britain has been written from the perspective of Oxford scholars. It focuses upon the relationship between Theodor Mommsen and Francis Haverfield, and the contribution of William Thompson Watkin.
By way of an introduction, when invited to contrib-ute to what has become this collection of essays my original intention was to explore the fractious rela-tionship between Theodor Mommsen, ‘father’ of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (cil) project, Emil Hübner, the editor of cil vii (the volume dedicated to the province of Britannia), and Francis Haverfield, latterly Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford and previously a correspondent and then an editor of two supplements to cil vii published as part of the Ephemeris Epigraphica (ee). Haverfield was later the instigator of what was to become the Roman Inscriptions of Britain (rib) which came to supersede its cil antecedent. At the time of the invitation I had completed a study of Haverfield and his legacy to Romano-British studies, which included a short sec-tion discussing cil vii and rib.1 In accepting the invi-tation it was my intention to shed more light on the circumstances by which Haverfield decided to break from the cil format and go for a new ‘British’ version. I have to admit that as of now there is not much pro-gress on this particular issue but as part of the search something perhaps more interesting has arisen and is the subject of what follows here.
The history of the study of the Roman inscriptions of Britain would seem to be straightforward, not least
because the editors of what remains the definitive corpus of that material, R. P. Wright, and later Roger Tomlin, wrote of it. In Wright’s version, the ‘. . . first comprehensive publication of the Roman inscrip-tions found in the British Isles, and of the handful of Greek inscriptions, was undertaken by Emil Huebner and formed volume vii of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, published in 1873 in Berlin. It contained 1,200 inscriptions of stone, about 100 on metal and 90 on pottery’.2 Because of its many omissions and the errors he made, Hübner was obliged to publish three supplements of additions and corrections in the Ephemeris Epigraphica.3 ‘But in 1887 Mommsen, with a discernment amply justified by the results, transferred the work on British epigraphy to Francis Haverfield, who thus came to edit the fourth and fifth fascicules of Additamenta in Ephemeris Epigraphica . . .’4 This invitation has over the subsequent decades been described as ‘sensational’ and a recognition of Haverfield’s brilliant abilities, where the Berlin pro-fessor plucked from relative obscurity an unknown Lancing schoolmaster, and put him on the interna-tional scene culminating in Haverfield’s ‘glittering’ Oxford career.
According to Wright, some time after 1913, with what became the termination of the Ephemeris,
Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access published June 5, 2014 by guest on A
Haverfield decided to create ‘. . . a fresh publication of the Roman inscriptions of Britain’ and evidently had plans that G. L. Cheesman ‘would inherit his epigraphic mantle’.5 Cheesman’s death at Gallipoli in 1915 is supposed to have led Haverfield, in collabo-ration with others at Oxford, to consider undertak-ing the task a though Haverfield’s contribution had been effectively completed by 1914.6 At the same time another Haverfield ‘student’, R. G. Collingwood, was made responsible for collecting the illustra-tions and copies of their texts for the editors. After Haverfield’s death in 1919 his successor to the Camden professorship, J.G.C. Anderson, along with Collingwood announced that the project remained on-going. Collingwood drove the collecting pro-cess throughout the period 1921 to 1929 and again in 1936, before demitting joint responsibility for the project to Richard Pearson Wright as a Junior Editor who was ‘to complete the study and the drawing of the inscriptions and to write the text to accompany.’ Collingwood passed sole responsibility on to Wright in 1941, whose work of collection was deemed com-pleted on 31 December 1956 with the writing of the text supposedly finished in November 1964. It was then passed to the Clarendon Press which had previ-ously committed to Haverfield to publish the volume. It was published in 1965.
The sequence of events and the detail contained in Wright’s version of the genesis of rib was subse-quently repeated by others and in turn has become the received ‘version.’ So for example Roger Tomlin wrote of how:
. . . the first British collections in Camden’s Britannia and Horsley’s Britannia Romana were superseded by the work of an imperial propraetorian legate sent out by Mommsen and the Berlin Academy. This was Emil Hübner, who edited cil vii (1873), but meanwhile J. Collingwood Bruce, m.a. (Glasgow) and a native of the province, was collecting the northern inscriptions in his Lapidarium Septentrionale (1870–75). Supplements to cil vii were published by F J Haverfield, Student of Christ Church and later Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford. He published the first annual survey of new inscriptions in 1914, and intended the task of preparing a new corpus for his favourite pupil, G L Cheesman of New College, who is rightly remem-bered for The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army (1914) . . . When Cheesman was killed at Gallipoli, the loss is said to have broken Haverfield’s heart. After his own death in 1919, the task devolved upon a famous Oxford philosopher and historian, R G Collingwood. In 1921 he announced that he was collecting ‘a new Corpus of Roman inscriptions in Britain’, and published the latest discoveries in that year’s
Journal of Roman Studies; it was the first of the annual surveys which have continued unbroken until the present day. Before his own premature death in 1943, Collingwood ‘made drawings of all the important Roman inscriptions in Britain’ his obituarist says with some exaggeration, but the first of a crippling series of strokes in 1938 forced him to choose a junior editor. This was a Cambridge classicist, R P Wright, the new Lecturer in Roman History at Durham. With proper pietas he put Collingwood’s name before his own on the title-page of rib, but his contribution was by far the greater. Without a motor car . . . he inspected almost every inscription. Every page of rib bears witness to his dogged energy, his obsessive accuracy and minute attention to detail, all the harmless drudgery required of a great epig-rapher. His work was finished in 1960, but the printing took another five years, prompting the Clarendon Press to alter the date of his Preface from 11 November 1960 to 1964, an object-lesson to us all of how far to trust the accuracy of transmitted dates in public documents.7
The same sentiments were repeated elsewhere slightly later:
In 1914 F. J. Haverfield begun [sic] publishing annual sur-veys of the Roman inscriptions of Britain, and this practice was continued by R. G. Collingwood who in 1921 began work on a new Corpus of Roman Inscriptions of Britain. He was joined in 1938 by a Junior Editor, R. P. Wright, who took over the project in 1943 after Collingwood’s death. Although rib i contained inscriptions recorded up until 31st December 1954, by the time of its publication in 1965 new inscriptions were already coming to light. R. P. Wright saw to the annual survey of inscriptions, first in jrs from 1956 to 1969, and then in Britannia from 1970 onwards.8
Last but not least, in part because it adds some of the detail that this paper explores, there is Tony Birley’s recent review of rib iii, ‘the latest instalment of a long and still ongoing saga’.9 Again the emphasis in this piece is the predominance of the Oxford contribution to rib, evidently starting with Haverfield.
We might call this account of the story of the gen-esis of the rib the ‘Oxford’ version in which Wright’s account of its evolution emphasizes the connection with the university. It is Oxford people (Haverfield, Collingwood, M. V. Taylor, Cheesman and Anderson and of course the Clarendon Press) who domi-nate the story, but for passing nods to Durham (for its support of Wright and to Eric Birley). There is however, a more curious facet to Wright’s account: the absence of an assessment of the contribution of others outside Oxford to rib. Hübner did in a sense provide an overview of the subject in the Praefatio ii. De Inscriptionum Britannicarum Auctoribus to cil vii.10 But this, it appears, is now forgotten if not ignored. In
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
an admittedly generalized assessment of the history of the pre-Haverfield study of the Roman epigraphy of Britain, certain names recur. Those most usually cited are Camden’s Britannia (1586) and Horsley and his Britannia Romana (1732).11 Curiously, Haverfield in his retrospective on the study of Roman Britain makes no mention of Horsley’s abilities as a recorder of inscriptions nor of his facility to interpret them although he did conclude that the Britannia Romana ‘. . . was till quite lately the best and most scholarly account of any Roman province that had been writ-ten anywhere in Europe’.12 Other corpora of inscrip-tions and their editors that are noted by others include Collingwood Bruce’s Lapidarium Septentrionale (1870–75) and MacDonald’s Tituli Hunteriani (1897). Less commonly referenced is Westwood’s Lapidarium Walliae (1876–97) while McCaul’s Britanno-Roman Inscriptions of 1863 has just about dropped off the epigraphical radar.13 One could therefore make the reasonable, if ultimately flawed, assumption that the systematic study of the island’s inscriptions did not start until Hübner, when ‘[t]he first comprehensive publication of the Roman inscriptions found in the British Isles . . . was undertaken by Emil Hübner’.14
Returning to the ‘Oxford’ version and the origins of Haverfield’s involvement in the cil, there has been the tendency to see it happening, as Wright reported it, in 1887. In fact Haverfield’s association with Mommsen goes back to at least 1884 when Ingram Bywater, the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and one of a small group of English scholars on friendly terms with Mommsen, encouraged Haverfield to write to Berlin about a Greek inscription recently found in Britain. Haverfield at this time and for a few more years thereafter regarded him-self as a philologist rather than as an historian, archae-ologist, or epigrapher. From their first contact the recently-graduated Lancing schoolmaster became a sort of research assistant for Mommsen, frequently running up to Oxford to deal with enquiries about manuscripts and the like and to make collations. In return, Haverfield would ask Mommsen for advice on textual issues – rang-ing from obscurities in Greek tragedies to later Roman writers – along with questions relating to technicalities in epigraphical issues. By the late 1880s Haverfield had become Mommsen’s principal contact in Britain and a warm friendship developed between the pair which lasted down to the German’s death. All of this is demonstrated by more than 250 letters between the two now archived in the old Prussian Academy in Berlin.15
The earliest extant allusion I have so far found to Haverfield undertaking anything related to Hübner and the epigraphy of Roman Britain is a letter of October 1888 in which he reported to Mommsen that he had started work on gathering material for the Ephemeris and that he had enough for a new supple-ment: ‘I am now starting up the process of gathering all the inscriptions for the Ephemeris. There is now a sufficient amount of material to fill a new supplement. Everything is very unreliable at this stage . . . It will be possible for me to visit the most important muse-ums during the Christmas Holidays. I have also been promised assistance of friends. I do as such hope to be able to send you the supplement in mid-February or – if possible – even sooner.’16 In time what exactly was Haverfield’s role in this collecting work became a matter of contention. In a letter written from Lancing College and published in the Archaeological Review for 1888 Haverfield announced ‘I have been asked to prepare a collection of Roman inscriptions found in Britain and either not published or incor-rectly published in the vii volume of the Corpus and in Dr. Hübner’s three supplements in the Ephemeris, the last of which goes down to 1878. I should be grate-ful for information as to any inscribed stones or pot-tery, which have either not been printed at all, or only in out of the way publications’.17 The advertisement must have caused problems, not least for Hübner who seems to have been working on a supplement to cil vii. But in another letter which Haverfield wrote to Mommsen in March 1890, he stated:
Mr. Hübner has returned the article about the Chester inscriptions I wrote for the [Chester] Archaeological Society. It only took him a few days to read so I went there. Can I ask for your opinion on one issue. H. claims that the new inscrip-tions partially are of a Claudian or Neronian date – for exam-ple the q. longinvs pomentina laetvs lvco ic. (a copy of it was sent to you). Is it actually possible to make such exact distinctions between 50 ad, 75 ad and 90 ad? . . . Mr Hübner also said that he thought about getting the Supplement to c. vii printed instantly. Would it not be better to wait till mate-rial is fuller? His article in the Ephemeris iii iv consists of approximately 70 pages: my collection consists of 80–150, but 150 octavo pages will hardly make a proper Supplement.18
It is a pity that we do not have at present Hübner’s version of things but in another letter between Haverfield and Mommsen less than a week after the previous one, Haverfield wrote:
I am very grateful for your letter. I hope to avoid further animosities with Mr. Hübner. I sent him 3 copies and
a few comments as an atonement. His reply was hostile. I hope you will not be offended by this. He has not been able to overcome my (so-called) kindness towards you; but when he addresses me with nothing but hostility, then he is to blame. One only has to quote his own words: irrita-bile esse a ntiquiorum genus (Eph. iv p. 194). That he in fact has discovered flaws in my work is unfortunately all too possible. But that is a different matter. Which collection of inscriptions he is going to publish is unknown to me. According to his own words, it will be a folio-supplement volume. I think that he – now that he has been excluded from the Supplement – turned to the Corpus in order to show the World that he has not been banned from service altogether.19
The implication of this particular letter is that Hübner was in some way being manipulated out of the scene. But it may also be that Haverfield was tak-ing too prominent a part in this process, for in the Berlin archives there is the draft of a letter, so it is not certain if it was ever sent, dictated by Mommsen and addressed to Haverfield:
You may be aware that the commission you kindly under-took to collect for my Ephemeris epigracal [sic] the Roman inscriptions discovered recently in Britain and not inserted in the former volumes of this periodical has given occasion to misunderstanding. Prof. Hübner, the editor of our Vol. vii, believes that we intend to deprive him of his right to publish the Supplementum in the same size which in due time may be required. No such intention subsists or has ever subscribed. We agreed, as you will remember, only about the article for the Ephemeris. As I cannot request any publi-cation in the said journal from Mr. Hübner, I have required your good services and I am happy to have obtained them. Please try to leave no doubt about it, that our intention is limited to the Ephemeris, and have [sic] nothing in common with the Corpus itself and its possible further continuation. This communication is private, if it is possible to keep out the public discussion [sic], in case of necessity you are free to use it as you think fit. Please send me a line, that you have got this letter and that you agree with its contents.20
Birley has pointed out that Hübner wrote as far back as 1881 that he had material for the fourth addimenta for cil vii, but that in the same year, Mommsen also had Hübner, as the first-ever editor of the journal Hermes (from 1866), removed from that office because of an argument between Hübner and Mommsen and his son-in-law, von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf.21 The reasons why Mommsen, after patronizing Hübner’s career, fell out with him are not clear but it has been said that by 1881 ‘. . . Mommsen began to consider his protégé Hübner lazy and inaccurate, largely based on Hübner’s sloppy collection of inscriptions in Spain and Portugal for vol. 2 of the cil, which Mommsen
edited’.22 One of the implications of this suggestion is that it makes it attractive to see Haverfield with his developing connections with Mommsen exploit-ing the situation. Whatever the sequence, it is clear that over 1888 and 1889 Hübner was being gently squeezed out of the future processing of the Roman inscriptions of Britain. The record of what happened to the Haverfield–Hübner relationship thereafter goes relatively quiet, although in the mid-1890s Haverfield was writing to him politely about various epigraphical and other matters without a sense of antagonism. That said, in the aftermath of the spat, Haverfield’s letters to Mommsen about Ephemeris Epigraphica document his progress in compiling material to be included in it. But still he could not resist continuing to comment on Hübner’s competence, something he continued to do in print as well.23
In the correspondence between Haverfield, Mommsen, and Hübner there occasionally appears the name of William Thompson Watkin. There is not that much detailed information currently to hand concerning Watkin. Born in Salford in 1836 of what appears to have been a relatively prosperous family and educated privately but locally, as ‘a youth and for many years Mr. Watkin was engaged in a commercial house’ (Manchester City News, 26 May 1888), mean-ing that he became a Liverpool-based merchant and latterly an antiquary who specialized almost exclu-sively in the Roman remains of north-west England. Never a member of the national archaeo-antiquarian bodies – for example the Society of Antiquaries of London (sal) and the Royal Archaeological Institute (rai) – he was in 1885 and 1886 librarian of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. What Watkin was, however, was a voracious author on Roman themes. Such was his reputation and output at the time of his death, that a list of those publica-tions was published in the Manchester City News on 26 May 1888, but the list was found to be deficient. This occasioned T. Formby and E. Axon to compile a fuller one for the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Archaeological Society.24 From the latter list we find that Watkin was the author of over 120 articles and two monographs, all written in the period 1871 to 1888. He published extensively in the national jour-nals (in the rai’s Archaeological Journal between 1871 and 1888, the Journal of the British Archaeological Association) as well as in the transactions of regional societies (e.g. those of the London and Middlesex
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
Archaeological Society, the Cumberland and Westmoreland Architectural and Archaeological Society, the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, the Powys Field Club and obviously the more localized ones – the Chester Archaeological Society and the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire) as well as in learned magazines, newslet-ters and newspapers, including The Academy, Notes and Queries, Palatine Notebooks, The Reliquary, and Local Gleanings.
Watkin’s earliest known publication is ‘On the site of Mediolanum and the portion of the Tenth Iter of Antoninus, south of Manchester’.25 But for our pur-poses, his first significant contribution to the study of the inscriptions of Roman period Britain came in 1874 when Watkin delivered a memorial to the rai, ‘On some forgotten or neglected Roman inscriptions found in Britain’. The occasion for this paper was simple enough:The recent publication by Professor Hübner of the Roman Inscriptions of Great Britain . . . has awakened a considerable amount of interest among antiquaries. The work is a most valuable and elaborate one, but, as might be expected, from its size and the amount of research required for its completion, omissions occasionally occur in it. It is with the view of supplying these omitted inscriptions, which for the most part lie hidden in works either almost forgotten or little read, that I have compiled the following paper . . .26
Watkin went on to list and describe more than fifty such inscriptions (while omitting potters’ stamps), concluding that he was making ‘an important addi-tion to Dr Hübner’s valuable list’.27 Two years later, in 1876, Watkin followed up his 1874 statement with another article of a similar format – ‘On a “Tabula Honestae Missionis” found at Bath, and some other neglected Britanno Roman inscriptions’ – in which he stated:I published what I then considered to be the whole of the Roman inscriptions found in this island, which had been omitted by Professor Hübner from the seventh volume of the ‘Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum’, with the excep-tion of some found on the line of the Roman Wall, which I knew would soon be published . . . by Dr. Bruce, in the ‘Lapidarium Septentrionale, Part iv’. I find that in the idea I have, however, been mistaken. Several other omissions have come under my notice, by recent research into mss. and other works, and as it has been suggested to me by some of our leading antiquaries, that a supplement to Dr. Hübner’s work would not be complete without them, and also those omitted from the neighbourhood of the Wall, I propose in this paper to embody both series.28
Again Watkin highlighted more errors by Hübner in copying and reading texts, along with more omissions. He concluded this latest survey with the observation:
Such, so far as it is in my power to ascertain, are the Britanno-Roman inscriptions omitted by Dr. Hübner. There may possibly be still a few to be obtained from mss. in large collections, and in very scarce works. Should any come under my notice I shall endeavour at a future time to make them public. In the meantime I hope to publish at the close of the current year the inscriptions found since Dr. Hübner published his volume. I do this at the request of many of the most eminent Anglo-Roman antiquaries, who have also requested me to publish an annual list of fresh discoveries. I may add that the recent discoveries are nearly fifty in num-ber, and some of them very important.29
Watkin’s promise was delivered later that year in his ‘On some recently discovered Britanno Roman inscriptions’.30 Hübner’s original cil list had included inscriptions known up to June 1873:
With Dr. Hübner’s great work, with the two papers which I have previously published containing his omissions, and with this present list of additional inscriptions, the student of Roman epigraphy will have in his hands every inscrip-tion known to have been discovered in Britain to the close of the year 1875 unless copies of some others may lie hid-den in private (and public) collections of mss. But as fresh discoveries are almost daily occurring, I hope that with the promised assistance of English antiquaries I may be able to publish an annual list of additional inscriptions found.31
In this article Watkin described those found since that date to the end of June 1875. But there was a twist to the tale. Added as a footnote at the end of the piece was inserted a ‘Note’ which read how this paper ‘was read on the 3rd June 1876 but . . . [Watkin] delayed the publication. In the meantime (at the very close of 1876) a portion of these inscriptions were published by Professor Hübner, in a paper forming an “Additamenta” in his large work in the Ephemeris Epigraphica Volume iii pp.113–155.’ And indeed Hübner incorporated the data Watkin had published in the Archaeological Journal (vol. 31) and from the first of the two articles in the same Journal (vol. 33) in his Additamenta.
In these early articles Watkin’s handling of Hübner was generally respectful, if not deferential. Matters changed thereafter. In ‘Britanno-Roman inscrip-tions discovered in 1876’ Watkin announced that in ‘[c]arrying out the plan which I first proposed to the late Mr. Albert Way, who strongly advised its being put into practice, I now publish the first of an annual series of papers on the discoveries of Britanno
Roman inscriptions during each year . . . The late year (1876) has not, with the exception of the great “find” at Procolita, been very prolific of discoveries of this nature’.32 We see in this report evidence that Watkin was in direct communication with Hübner.33 But yet again something of Watkin’s thunder was stolen for this time in it was added ‘ps. Since the above paper was written, Prof Hübner has published in the third volume of the Ephemeris Epigraphica a second supple-ment to his large work. In this supplement, which is entitled Additamenta Altera . . .’34
For the next decade, in a stream of statements, Watkin provided the members of the rai with annual updates (viz – ‘Roman inscriptions found in Britain in . . .’) on what had been found, rediscovered, or reinterpreted, along with assessments of the range and quality. So for example in ‘On Britanno Roman inscriptions, found in 1877’ he observed how ‘[i]n laying before the Institute, this, my second annual list, I would observe that the number of Britanno Roman inscriptions found in 1877 represents a fair average of the yearly discoveries’,35 and finished with the belief that this ‘. . . closes the list of additions to Dr. Hübner’s work, of which at the present time I am cognisant. No doubt further information as to miss-ing inscriptions will from time to time come to hand, whilst new discoveries cannot fail to be made, but until the end of the present year I shall be unable to compile any further list . . .’36
The format established in the original report was followed in the subsequent statements, in which Watkin would pass comment on the number and sig-nificance of that year’s discoveries. So for example in ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1878’ some twenty new inscriptions were described.37 In the report for 1879 ‘[d]uring the year a fair average num-ber of inscriptions have been found in various parts of the kingdom, a few of them being of great inter-est’,38 while in 1880 ‘[t]he past year (1880) has been fully an average one’.39 In ‘Roman inscriptions dis-covered in Britain in 1881, with notes on another find at Binchester’ it was said the ‘present paper has been much delayed owing to the long illness of the writer. But the delay has nevertheless been advantageous, for it has enabled him to obtain several additional items of information regarding the inscriptions named in it, and another fairly productive year has to be added to those previously given.’40 Occasionally there were disappointing years (e.g. 1882: ‘The past year has
not yielded up by any means so large a number of inscriptions as its immediate predecessors’;41 1885: ‘The past year has not been so productive as some of its predecessors in epigraphic “finds” of the Roman period . . .’;42 1886: the finds for the year were ‘about average’43 (but this allowed Watkin to include some inscriptions omitted by Hübner). But these tended to be the exception: in 1883 the number of inscriptions found over the past year was ‘. . . considerable, and in interest they exceed the average’.44 In what turned out to be his last such annual report, in ‘Roman inscrip-tions found in Britain in 1887’, Watkin wrote that ‘[o]wing to the exceptionally large number of inscrip-tions discovered at Chester, the year 1887 exceeds the average. Otherwise it would have been a poor one’.45 The report was accompanied by a sad postscript. In a footnote inserted by the journal’s editor it was announced: ‘A melancholy interest attaches to the fol-lowing paper, inasmuch as it was one of the last works which the author put his hand, before his lamented death on March 23rd’.
In the main, the bulk of Watkin’s work on the inscriptions of Roman Britain was published in the rai’s Archaeological Journal. But in addition to the updates and annual reports of the discoveries com-bined with his interest in Roman roads, he continued to publish on inscriptions from specific locations; e.g., ‘On the Roman stations “Burrium”, “Gobannium” and “Blestium” of the twelfth and thirteenth Iters of Antoninus’.46 In ‘Recent Roman discoveries at Maryport, Beckfoot and Cirencester’, he reported the rediscovery of lost inscriptions as well as reporting and correcting inscriptions overlooked or misread by Hübner.47
His familiarity with inscriptions led in turn to Watkin writing works of synthesis on particular regions or sites of Roman Britain, some of them in anticipation of where the rai’s annual visits and/or its Annual General Meetings might be held (e.g. Roman Herefordshire;48 Roman Northamptonshire;49 Roman Colchester;50 Roman Bedfordshire;51 Roman Nottinghamshire).52 As a consequence of his familiar-ity with the epigraphy of the island, he also started to publish pieces of a more synthetic nature. Over the years 1872–3 Watkins wrote, delivered and updated a lecture on ‘The Roman forces in Britain’ and which, as a summary mainly of the epigraphic evidence, cata-logued the garrison of the province, went through a number of updated versions into the mid-1880s.53
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
At the same time (1887) and in the same journal he reprised another earlier piece, ‘Was Ireland ever invaded by the Romans?’54
The shift from the description of itineraries to those of specific sites and then to more regionally based descriptions culminated in the publication of Watkin’s two monographs and with the inference that another was just about ready at the time of his death. The two were privately published and therefore required the promises of advances, and so advertising to drum up support in order to cover the cost of printing.55 The first of them, Roman Lancashire or a Description of Roman Remains in the County Palatine of Lancaster (1883), was enthusiastically reviewed.56 So for example:
The appearance of this book is welcome to all students of Romano-British antiquities, not alone for its own sake, but because it marks the recovery from serious and prolonged illness of one of the most accurate, patient, and persevering of archaeologists. Mr. Watkin follows up the trail of a Roman find with the nose of a sleath-hound [sic]; picks it up here and there and carries it through a maze of indices, newspa-per files and local archaeological journals, which would baf-fle any one less keen. In this way Mr. Watkin has frequently succeeded in re-discovering and identifying the Roman finds of past centuries, but we fancy he has, as frequently, had the mortification to discover at the end of a long chase that the relics sought have hopelessly disappeared.
Whatever quibbles of detail the reviewer might have had, still ‘[w]e would fain see similar volumes pro-duced for other counties, but the undertakers should approach the subject, intending to work it out (to use the language of Mr Watkin) “as if it were a geometri-cal problem, or an algebraical equation”. This is what Mr. Watkin set himself to do in the case of Lancashire, and he has done it well’.57
Watkin followed the Lancashire volume with one which brought together his previous work on Cheshire, Roman Cheshire, or a Description of Roman Remains in the County of Cheshire (1886).58 Reviewed again in the Archaeological Journal, it was said that ‘his Roman Cheshire is a decided improvement on his Roman Lancashire’. Furthermore, the reviewer wrote ‘[w]e have assumed that Mr. Watkin will write of other counties. He must. His Roman Lancashire and Roman Cheshire should be in the collection of every epigraphist, and every student of Roman antiquities, and it would be a great advantage to have all England done by him on the same plan’.59
Watkin died aged fity on 23 March 1888. His death was noted both locally, nationally and by the likes
of the rai60 and by the sal, which commented that ‘[a]s one of our most active local archaeologists and as the author of two important works on Roman Lancashire and on Roman Cheshire, he had accom-plished much useful work, and all must regret that he has not been spared to carry on the researches in which he took so enthusiastic a part’.61 That said, if George Shrubsole is to be believed, he had ready a volume on Roman North Wales. If so, this would have meant that the Roman remains of a continuous swathe of countryside stretching from Anglesey up to the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland would have received its first systematic treatment since the late-medieval antiquarian writers. Even more intrigu-ing is Shrubsole’s claim that Watkin intended his researches to culminate in a comparable survey of all of England in one consolidated work with the work-ing title Britannia Romana. Unfortunately, as we have seen, Watkin’s death ended that idea. It is pity that no one was able to take on the task envisaged, especially as it would seem, to judge from the contents of the vari-ous Watkin boxes in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, that the initial background work to such a study was well under way.
Watkin’s death left a family in straitened circum-stances. In an attempt to help his widow an appeal was launched for funds so that his papers, manuscripts, and research collection could be purchased and saved for future use. Preserved in the collection is a copy of the printed appeal for funds, which confirms the depth and range of Watkin’s antiquarian activities
Private. The late Mr W. Thompson Watkin, of Liverpool. An appeal. A few days ago I was summoned by telegram to the death-bed of my valued friend, the eminent Antiquary, author of Roman Lancashire, Roman Cheshire; and also of upwards of a hundred papers of more or less value to his fellow-work-ers. Probably he had no equal, and certainly no superior in Roman epigraphy in this country. In addition to his published books, he had by dint of hard, long-sustained work, and much expense accumulated a most valuable collection of facts and details of the Roman occupation of Great Britain. Roman North Wales was to have appeared shortly, and certain English Counties were to have been dealt with at short intervals. If his life had been spared he intended ultimately to have published the whole under the title of ‘Britannia Romana.’ His com-paratively premature death at the age of 51 frustrated those arrangements. With almost his last breath he committed his mss, and general literary effects to my care. For the present my appeal is to his co-workers and friends. He devoted his time and spent his patrimony in the ardent pursuit of his favourite branch of Archaeology, but was cut down before he could realize the fruits of his labour of love. He has left a
widow and two little children, aged respectively four and nine years, to mourn his loss, and with the exception of the value of his books and papers, entirely unprovided for. It was a great comfort to him just before he passed away . . . when I readily undertook at his request to do my best for them. Mr Watkin was his own publisher, and unfortunately there is still due a balance for printing and publishing his last book on Roman Cheshire. To hasten the sale of his books, and to realize his literary effects at once, would entail a considerable sacrifice at the expense of the widow and children. To obviate this, I have after consultation with certain friends decided to appeal to the antiquarian world for (say) £200, which sum would justify his Executors in handing over the whole of Mr Watkin’s literary effects to the Chetham Library, Manchester. The collection will include . . . (annotated and interleaved copy of Roman Lancashire in readiness for a Second Edition etc, materials etc arranged under Counties for a Roman History of Britain and mss and papers intended for a work on Roman North Wales) . . . I feel confident that this appeal on behalf of one so long the servant of the Archaeological world, will warmly commend itself to your liberality. A ‘Thompson Watkin’ Fund has been opened at the Chester, Liverpool and Manchester Branches of the National Provincial Bank, to whom all cheques should be sent, or to the undersigned. George W Shrubsole, Town Hall Square, Chester, May 1st 1888.
Over the page of the appeal is a list of twenty-seven subscriptions promised or received, some from the leading (Roman) antiquaries of the day including John Collingwood Bruce, Thomas Hodgkin, John Clayton and Prebendary Scarth and even Francis Haverfield then of Shoreham (Lancing College). Unfortunately, attached to the appeal is a subsequent letter from Shrubsole in which he reported that the Roman Wales ms was missing. It remains lost.62
It is a pity that there are no other substantial pub-lished obituaries of Watkin. We are reliant in the main on the opinions of reviewers and of those who fol-lowed up on some of his work. Of his work on roads and place names, in a reappraisal of the subject of Watkin’s first ever article, Shrubsole in ‘On the iden-tity of the “Mediolanum” of the second and tenth Iter of Antoninus’ observed:
Of late years very substantial work has been done in relation to the direction and assignment of stations along the rec-ognized Roman roads of Lancashire and Cheshire. Among the many workers, the late Mr Thompson Watkin stands out prominently as one of the latest and most successful. Bringing to its study an inborn love of the work, he speedily succeeded in unravelling the intricacies of the ways in his native county of Lancaster . . . Next, he grappled vigorously with the Cheshire roads . . .’63
What the preceding summary of Watkin’s career and output has tried to emphasize is that to his
contemporaries Watkin was an antiquary, archaeolo-gist, and epigrapher of no little skill and competence, one respected and admired. If further confirmation of his significance be required, he has an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, where it is written that Watkin ‘. . . was a most careful observer, not given to speculation or assumption, and for this reason his notes and writings are regarded as more reliable and trustworthy than those of most of his contemporaries’.64
That said, the sense that Watkin’s contribution to progress in Romano-British epigraphy has been and indeed was being ignored is partially corroborated by a piece written in the mid-1880s. In an article already noted, entitled ‘The Roman forces in Britain’, Watkin wrote:
In the year 1872, the writer compiled the present paper . . . and after being read (April 21st 1873) at University College, it was published in the Transactions . . . of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. In 1880, a short supple-ment was published in the vol. v of the same Society’s ordi-nary Transactions, but so numerous have been the enquiries for the original paper, and so great has been the pressure put upon the writer to republish it, that he has at length consented to do so, with various additions and alterations . . . It has been necessary to give the above particulars and dates, for since the issue of the supplementary list, Professor Hübner has published . . . a similar paper in vol. xvi of the Hermes [‘Das Römische Heer in Britannien’, Hermes 16 (1881), pp. 513–84]. In this paper Professor Hübner, who appears to be unaware of the present writer’s former papers, omits [much] . . . whilst he adds (without evidence) a num-ber of other corps to the list. The aim of the present writer has been to provide a complete catalogue of such of the Roman forces as can be absolutely identified (and that only) as having served in Britain.65
As already noted, the list published here was updated in 1887.
So what was the nature of the relationship between Haverfield, apparently the leader of Roman period epigraphy in Britain, to Watkin, where the latter had already started to publish material from 1874 down to 1888 that anticipated Haverfield’s contribution to the ee and cil? Haverfield was certainly aware of and was corresponding with Watkin (and others) as far back as March 1884, as reported in a letter to Mommsen in which Haverfield still managed to mis-cite where Watkin was publishing his epigraphic material:
Due to the kindness of Thompson Watkin and Scarth, it is possible for me to send you a copy of the inscription . . . Mr. Watkin is going to publish it in the Archaeologica
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
[sic] Aeliana as well as in the Antiquary. Unfortunately, I do not know of any periodical or journal in which complete accounts of all new inscriptions found in Britain are given. Mr. Watkins [sic] does, however, frequently publish articles in The Journal of the Society of Antiquaries, which holds such annual accounts.66
These references relate to when Watkin was alive. After 1888 Haverfield’s comments became more trench-ant. As an example chosen at random, in Haverfield’s ‘Notes on Roman Britain’ he corrected what had been called a new discovery from Chichester.67 This inscrip-tion ‘. . . is not, as the archaeologists thought in 1885, a new find, but a stone published half a century ago.’ More negative comments are to be found in another letter to Mommsen in October 1888 when Haverfield was complaining: ‘I am now starting up the process of gathering all the inscriptions for the Ephemeris. There is now a sufficient amount of material to fill a new supplement. Everything is very unreliable at this stage – for instance will the things published by Watkin Thompson [sic] need new registers . . .’68
In the same way, in correspondence of June 1891, ironically with Hübner, in which he was correcting the recipient’s misuse, misreading, and general errors concerning inscriptions recently found at Chester, Haverfield spoke of ‘Watkinerei’. Likewise in the preface to his contribution to the fourth Additamenta to cil vii he summed up Watkin as:
Satius visum est unum testem fere semper laudare, W T Watkin dico civem Liverpooliensem nuper mortuum, quem honoris causa nomino. Fuit ille vir ad antiquam normam factus, impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, et ut erroribus admodum obnoxius, ita de re epigraphica optime meritus. Supplementa annua in ephemeride Archaeological Journal ita edidit, ut titulos ipse fere nunquam inspiceret, sed qui reperti essent diligenter colligeret, qui latuissent in lucem protraheret. Scripsit item opera maiora infra laudata, ver-bosa illa quidem, sed erudita, tabulis optimis ornata, singu-lari diligentia condita. Errores exagitare nolui hominis qui vitam et valetudinem rei epigraphicae dederit. Neque mihi obliviscendum est me quoque ansas ad reprehendendum in his meis daturum esse.
[It has seemed better almost always to cite a single wit-ness. I speak of W. T. Watkin, a citizen of Liverpool, who died recently, whom I name to do him honour. That man was made in the ancient mould; indefatigable, irascible, severe, and while he was rather prone to errors he rendered outstanding service to epigraphy. He published every year a supplement in the periodical Archaeological Journal in such a way that although he almost never examined the inscrip-tions themselves, he nevertheless did collate carefully those that had been found and made public those that had escaped attention. He likewise wrote the major works, cited below,
long-winded to be sure, but scholarly, illustrated with excel-lent plates and based on remarkable thoroughness. I do not wish to censure the mistakes of a man who has devoted his life and energy to epigraphy. Nor must I forget that I too will, with these words, expose myself to rebuke].69
In one sense these are fine, almost genuine words, but they are from someone who as far as can be ascertained never corresponded with – let alone met – Watkin. The charge that Watkin rarely perused inscriptions in person is not quite true, when the boxes of his papers at Chetham’s Library are full of sketches, copies, casts and squeezes. Likewise Haverfield rarely thereafter mentioned him in his publications. This may not be a major issue but still, the tone of his acknowledgement of Watkin has been overlooked by later writers on the historiography of Roman epigraphy in Britain.
In the immediate aftermath of Watkin’s demise Haverfield came to fill the void in updating a British readership with respect to inscriptions. Using the same vehicle, the Archaeological Journal, his first contribution appeared in 1890 as ‘Roman inscrip-tions in Britain 1888–1890’, in which he reported that his delay in updating Watkin was due to him being bogged down with the Ephemeris Epigraphica, which was to form a ‘. . . supplement to the Corpus and including all inscriptions found since 1879. In the execution of this I have been led to visit many museums and examine many inscriptions. I ven-ture to think that some good results of this labour will be found in the following pages.’ Now, ‘[a]t the suggestion of many friends and by request of the Editor, I have undertaken to continue for this Journal the series of articles in which, year by year, the late Mr W. T. Watkin collected new discover-ies of Roman inscriptions made in Britain. It would be out of place here to discuss either the merits or faults of Mr Watkin’s work, but I may say that his yearly collections were much prized by competent judges both in England and abroad, and I think that the discontinuance of his scheme would be gener-ally regretted’.70
In his next Archaeological Journal update – the sec-ond – Haverfield was again apologizing for the delay but ventured ‘. . . in partial mitigation of my short-comings, to plead the dislocation of arrangements inevitably consequent on a change of residence and occupation’ – he had returned to Christ Church, Oxford as Senior Student (i.e. Fellow). But still he was happy ‘to thank many friends for assistance in
procuring access to, in reading, or in understanding the inscriptions here edited, and to add that I shall, at all times be very grateful for any account of any new finds, I think it is not wholly unfair to expect such assistance from other English archaeologists’.71
In his third update Haverfield announced that: ‘I have found chances of beginning a revision of the readings in the seventh volume of the Corpus, and the following pages contain a part of the corrections which I have lately noted. Some of these may seem details, fitted only to amuse or to irritate, but all details matter in epigraphy, and I have omitted a good deal that might have been admitted by others.’ But still the ‘. . . task of revision is not altogether easy: we have few museums in England, and our inscriptions have been scattered broadcast up and down our coun-try houses. Till recently I had not the leisure even to think of going through them’.72
In this report Haverfield acknowledged his own group of informants and commentators – T. Hodgkin, Chancellor Ferguson and R. Blair for visits to the north, and Henry Pelham, David Hogarth, and A. H. Smith as well as William Ramsay for visits to look at inscriptions from between Hadrian’s and the Antonine Walls (‘Professor Ramsay, of Aberdeen, and myself, in going through the Hunterian (University) museum at Glasgow and the National museum at Edinburgh, noted various details, some of which may be given here’73 (on cil vii 1091, 1096, 1103, 1108, 1130, 1136 = rib 2142, 2149, 2166, 2164, 2193, 2204). This group, made up of academics and museum curators along with ‘full-time’ antiquaries and archaeological society men is in stark contrast to the type of landed or ecclesiastical types, in other words amateurs, who subscribed to his appeal fund, and with whom Watkin corresponded, cited and acknowledged.
Other than allusions to his epigraphic updates, Haverfield rarely referred to Watkin’s other work. So, for example in ‘Re-excavated relics’ there was mild criticism.74 Still this did not mean that when necessary he (along with others) should not be put right. So for example, of an altar from Slack (ee vol. vii, no. 920 = rib 623) ‘. . . the text given by Mr. Watkin (Arch. Journ. xl, 139 and elsewhere) is incorrect. The expansion of the fifth line was suggested by Professor Mommsen. Mr. Watkin’s decreto decurionum is impossible . . .’75 Likewise, of parts of a dedication slab from Chesters (ee vol. vii, no. 1016 = rib 1452), it was recorded ‘Published (wrongly) by Mr. Watkin (Archaeological
Journal xlii, 143 and xlv, 118) and others; rightly . . .’76 The most significant example of Haverfield’s opinions on Watkin is the former’s review of W. von Pfitzner’s Ist Ireland jemals von einem römischen Heere betreten worden? (1893). As far back as 1881–2, Watkin and Pfitzner had entered into a dialogue carried out ‘in the columns of the Manchester Guardian’ as to whether or not Pfitzner on the basis of the Tacitus’ Agricola 24, was correct to argue that, contrary to the received view then prevailing, Agricola had invaded Ireland. Some five years later, Watkin reiterated the ‘received’ view, and argued that Agricola had not, and therefore continued to contradict Pfitzner.77 Pfitzner replied to Watkin in a monograph published in 1893 and which Haverfield reviewed. Haverfield observed that the author relies ‘. . . mainly on a passage in the Agricola which he misreads . . . [and] builds much on what he thinks probable and he has no archaeological evidence to produce which may justify his opinions . . . Dr. Pfitzner’s pamphlet is the outcome of a con-troversy with the late W. T. Watkin, who denied that the Roman troops ever entered Ireland. Mr. Watkin was not a scholar, but I must confess that his opinion (sic) to me in this case to be the true one.’78
Haverfield’s annual surveys of Roman inscriptions of Britain in the Archaeological Journal ceased with his third report. After it, his reports were transferred to a number of different formats and publications. They ultimately came to be delivered to and published by the British Academy in its Proceedings,79 thus, per-haps, Tomlin’s 1914 date for Haverfield completing his practical contribution to what was to become rib. But again, no mention of Watkin.
There is perhaps another factor which contrib-uted to if it did not condition Haverfield’s attitude to Watkin. As we have seen, Watkin was closely associ-ated with the Roman remains of Chester. He pub-lished on the region around the site, and he published over the years commentaries on its epigraphy. He also became embroiled in a heated debate concerning whether or not the extant ancient walls of the town were Roman or later.80 There would have been little of anything but local significance in this work were it not for the fact that Haverfield also came to be directly involved in the site in 1890.81 Through his association with it, Haverfield seems to have believed he had a monopoly on the site’s inscriptions, especially those more recently discovered, and he jealously guarded this fact, as reflected in his correspondence with
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
Mommsen and in his publication and in pronounce-ments and dismissals of those who either published or used that material, including the local antiquary J. P. Earwaker and even Hübner himself.82
To conclude, the following paragraphs are not con-cerned with passing judgement on Watkin’s compe-tence or otherwise as an epigrapher nor so for Hübner or Haverfield. What has been of concern is the why and way things developed, in this instance with cil/rib. In the first part of this paper I suggested that Haverfield’s recruitment and subsequent contri-bution to cil and the ee was as much driven by per-sonal circumstances as by Mommsen talent-spotting a likely candidate. The Berlin correspondence sug-gests a degree of self-promotion and back-biting on Haverfield’s part as he became motivated by the desire, even need, to cement his career.83 Thus not only was Haverfield’s involvement in cil/ee for the benefit of scholarship but also for his own prospects.
Moving to my second theme, given Watkin’s repu-tation among his contemporaries it is curious that he has been almost airbrushed out of the – admittedly poorly documented – one-eyed history of Romano-British epigraphy. Why this should have occurred is the question. An obvious explanation might lie with Haverfield. His monopolizing of the circumstances is not unusual in his career. By way of a generaliza-tion, he was critical to the point of being dismissive of the accomplishments of others in all the facets of the study of the Roman period in Britain. He wrote a number of assessments and retrospectives about the history of the study of the province. What is striking about them is the way he rarely ever gave credit to contemporary researchers. A difficult character, one who had his favourites – many if not most of them ‘Oxford men’ – whom he would praise, the majority of other researchers were labelled ‘antiquaries’ and ‘anti-quarians’ and therefore regarded in the Haverfield sense as not quite ‘proper’. Watkin came into such a group. Haverfield’s use of the word ‘archaeologist’ denoted something better but it was infrequently used. Likewise few could be regarded as ‘scholars’ in their subjects. In the same way he was almost as criti-cal of some of those regarded today as ‘greats’ or at least salient contributors to Romano-British archaeol-ogy – the likes of Camden, Horsley, and Stukeley.
There is, however, something more to this down-playing of the accomplishments of others. The range of the sort of national and regional antiquarian and
archaeological and kindred journals that Watkin used are full of the same sort of research-based interpre-tations and pronouncements on Romano-British his-tory and archaeology. Some names recur with greater frequencies than others (Prebendary H. M. Scarth, H. O. Coote, and L. Gomme – all Watkin intimates, usually dismissed by Haverfield), others in more regional contexts (e.g., J. P. Earwaker, G. Shrubsole from north-west England, likewise equally close to Watkin). What they all share is the way they were at best put down or dismissed by Haverfield, or at worst simply ignored. Watkin was not unique in the way Haverfield characterized his work. And indeed the principal subject of the latter half of this paper could have been any one of a number of other individu-als who researched other aspects of Romano-British studies. There is in fact a ‘lost generation’ of Romano-British antiquaries from around 1850 to 1900, who are absent from histories of archaeology in Britain and from Romano-British scholarship for that period. And of course, just as significant to the story is the fact that when Haverfield was beginning to dominate the subject there was the unfortunate coincidence that Watkin died.
So what was Watkin’s contribution to Romano-British epigraphy? It was at least two-fold. First there is the way, amply demonstrated by the contents of the Watkin archive, in which he sought out the obscure material published or hidden in out of the way places and which Haverfield, R. P. Wright, and others could later develop and expand upon. Or in other words ‘correct’. It was this facility in Watkin that most con-temporary writers recognized in him. Furthermore, contrary to what Haverfield might have implied, it was not just work conducted from the desk of Watkin’s study. He clearly toured and visited sites. So for exam-ple, preserved in the collection of Watkin papers in Chetham’s Library is a set of annotated Ordnance Survey maps which locate Roman sites, the existence of roads, and even locate with considerable precision the find-spots of groups and single artefacts, all of which in turn demonstrate a sympathy with landscape and space.84 The number of squeezes, rubbings, and tracings in the same collection show that if it was not he who took such recordings, then copies of the pri-mary material were made available to him. Second, there were his attempts to synthesize the material derived from inscriptions and sub-literary authorities to write ‘histories’ on aspects of the Roman province.
In this case not only were there the ‘regional’ summa-ries, but the evidence pushed him to looking at roads, place names, and military units.
One way of assessing Watkin’s archaeological work is to see how it has been regarded by others. The question of Watkin’s reputation in Romano-British archaeology in general is a subject for a further study but the indications are that he enjoyed the respect of contemporaries and others. So for example, Bruton in writing about Roman Manchester and providing a number of corrections to Watkin’s identification and description of objects found in that city said:
In 1886 W. Thompson Watkin published his Roman Lancashire. The chapter entitled Mancunium, written with Watkin’s usual care, brought the available information about the fort up to date. Watkin drew largely upon Baines [cf. E. Baines History of Lancashire (1836)], and the latest edi-tion of Baines’s History quotes freely from Watkin, but neither Watkin nor Baines added in any way to the material they found ready to hand.85
Over sixty years later Petch could justify in sum-marizing the innovative nature in Watkin’s writing archaeology based history why a reprint of his Roman Cheshire was necessary.86 Slightly later still Hind and Jones in a review of the history of research on Roman Lancaster noted how a
. . . great step forward was marked by the appearance of William Thompson Watkin’s book, Roman Lancashire, in 1883. A whole chapter was devoted to Lancaster, in which Watkin discussed the Roman name for the site, the topog-raphy, the inscriptions and the garrison stationed there, as well as casual finds of coins, sculpture and pottery. The treatment was as good as could be attempted before the employment of planned and scientific excavation. Watkin’s book still stands as an indispensable source book for any stu-dent of Roman Britain west of the Pennines, and contains all the known inscriptions from the site.87
Perhaps the most striking impression in looking at Watkin and his publications along with what is pre-served in Chetham’s Library is the sense that he seems to have anticipated much of Haverfield’s later work, and not just with regard to epigraphy. The range of Watkin’s papers retained at Chetham’s is strikingly similar to the Haverfield collection curated in the Sackler Library at Oxford. Watkin’s prob-lem, however, was that he died early, at a point when Haverfield’s career was just starting. As important, Watkin did not have a degree and so was not – in Haverfield’s eyes at least – a ‘scholar’. More impor-tantly this meant that that he did not enjoy the sort
of patronage and contacts that Haverfield came to acquire, itself a consequence of Watkin not being an ‘Oxford man’. With his direct link to Mommsen and so the cil, Haverfield enjoyed connections of which others could have only dreamed. In turn this access facilitated Haverfield’s usurpation of a position Hübner had once enjoyed. Out of this opportunity came the creation of Haverfield’s reputation, some of it justified but which was, as other aspects of his career, turned into something of a hagiography. It meant, of course, that it was in time the Oxford ‘vic-tors’ who came to write the ‘history’ of rib.
Address for correspondenceP.W.M. Freeman, Dept of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, 12–14 Abercromby Square, Liverpool l69 7wz. [email protected]
AcknowledgementsI am grateful to J. R. Trigg, Colin Wallace, and Professor Lawrence Keppie for their assistance and comments in the preparation of this piece, as well as to the members of the Warwick colloquium. Alison Cooley and Dan Orrells made numerous helpful suggestions on points of details. Permission to quote at length George Shrubsole’s appeal for funds to purchase Watkin’s papers was kindly granted by Chetham’s Library, Manchester. I am likewise indebted to Professor G. J. Oliver and especially to Professor Antony Birley for their help with the translation of Haverfield’s assessment of Watkin.
Notes and references 1 P.W.M. Freeman, The Best Training Ground for Archaeologists.
Francis Haverfield and the Invention of Romano-British Archaeology (Oxford, 2007), pp. 157–64.
2 R. P. Wright, ‘Preface. Development of The Roman Inscriptions of Britain’, in R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright (eds), The Roman Inscriptions of Britain (Oxford, 1965), p. v; E. Hübner, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum vol. vii: Inscriptiones Britanniae Latinae (Berlin, 1873).
3 E. Hübner ‘Additamenta ad corporis Vol. vii. & Additamenta altera ad corporis Vol. vii’, Ephemeris Epigraphica iii (1877), pp. 113–55, 311–18; ‘Additamenta ad corporis vii’, Ephemeris Epigraphica iv (1881), pp. 194–212.
4 I.e., F. J. Haverfield, ‘Additamenta quarta ad corporis vol. vii’, Ephemeris Epigraphica ix (1892), pp. 273–354 and F. J. Haverfield, ‘Additamenta quinta ad corporis vol. vii,’ Ephemeris Epigraphica ix (1913), pp.509–690. Quotation from Wright op. cit. (note 2) p.v.
5 Wright, op. cit. (note 2), p. v.
6 Ibid. p. vii.
7 R.S.O. Tomlin, ‘rib iii towards a new volume of The Roman Inscriptions of Britain’, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents Newsletter 8 (1999), pp.1–2.
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
8 ‘Roger Tomlin’, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents Newsletter 14 (2011), p. 2.
9 A. Birley, ‘rib iii in its historical context,’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 24 (2011), p. 681.
10 See pp. 5–12.
11 W. Camden, Britannia (London, 1586); J. Horsley, Britannia Romana; or The Roman Antiquities of Britain (London, 1732).
12 F. J. Haverfield, ‘A study of Roman Britain: a retrospect’ in The Roman Occupation of Britain (revised by G. Macdonald) (Oxford, 1924), p. 75.
13 J. MacDonald, Tituli Hunteriani. An Account of the Roman Stones in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1897); J. O. Westwood, Lapidarium Walliae (Oxford, 1876–97); J. McCaul, Britanno-Roman Inscriptions, with critical Notes (Toronto and London, 1863).
14 Wright op. cit. (note 2), p. v.
15 The Haverfield-Mommsen (fjh-tm) letters quoted here are now to be found in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (sB) and are indexed as Mommsen 46 and then by the contents of a number of boxes
16 fjh to tm, 18 October 1888 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 1–22).
17 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Roman inscriptions in Britain’, Archaeological Review 2 (1888), p. 267.
18 28 March: sB Mommsen 46 Bl 23–54.
19 3 April: sB Mommsen 46 Bl 23–54.
20 11 January 1889: sB Mommsen 46 Bl 1–22.
21 Birley, op. cit. (note 9), citing Hübner’s ‘Das römische Heer in Britannien’, Hermes 16 (1881), pp. 513–84, at p. 516.
22 W. W. Briggs (ed.), The Letters of Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (Baltimore, 1987), p. 157, n. 3 and pp. 370–71, where the fall-out made Hübner ‘an outcast from the German philological establishment’.
23 For the period 1890 to 1901, there are numerous examples of this in the Mommsen papers. As a selection: fjh to tm, 19 October 1891 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 23–54) – ‘I hereby send you the latest find from Chester, 17 inscriptions and fragments. The artifacts from the legio ii adiutrix are quite remarkable: they do as such make another of Hubner’s ideas evaporate in to thin air’; fjh to tm, 4 October 1895 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 23–54) – ‘I may perhaps trouble you later with some inscriptions, mostly revises of those already published. The new finds are not very impor-tant: interesting is a milestone of Carausius found at Carlisle Luguvallum’ (a copy of the same was sent to Hübner the same day); fjh to tm, 16 November 1895 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 55–86) – ‘I venture to ask your aid to interpret some inscriptions about ordinati. - c vii 422 contuli, c vii 421 & c vii 1078 contuli. The two other cases of ord. in Britain (c vii 365, 404) do not help: I have seen 404 - The view, however, given in Ephem. iv p.240 seems to me, after examining the stones, not to apply. It is a great pity that so many of the readings in c vii were accepted without re-examination of the stone when the volume was edited’; fjh to tm, 5 January 1899 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 55–86) - ‘I have mostly now got over my illness and hope to be able at last to make up the packet of Romano-British inscriptions for the Ephemeris’; tm to fjh, 2 December 1899 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 55–86) – ‘We are quite willing to print a new edition of your British additamenta. Please do send these as soon as possible, in order to close the crucial volume’; fjh to tm, 11 July 1901 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 5–86) – ‘I have many Romano-British inscrip-tions for the Ephemeris. Would any time in the rest of this year be suitable to send them you?’
24 T. Formby and E. Axon, ‘List of the writings of W. Thompson Watkin’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 6 (1888), pp. 173–8.
25 W. T. Watkin, ‘On the site of Mediolanum and the por-tion of the Tenth Iter of Antoninus, south of Manchester’, Archaeological Journal 30 (1873), pp. 152–73.
26 W. T. Watkin, ‘On some forgotten or neglected Roman inscrip-tions found in Britain’, Archaeological Journal 31 (1874), p. 344.
27 Ibid., p. 359. Watkin subsequently did produce what he regarded as a far from complete list of such stamps: ‘Some additions to Professor Hubner’s [sic] list of Roman potters’ marks discovered in Britain’, Archaeological Journal 35 (1878), pp. 289–394.
28 W. T. Watkin, ‘On a “Tabula Honestae Missionis” found at Bath, and some other neglected Britanno Roman inscriptions’, Archaeological Journal 33 (1876), p. 250.
29 Ibid., p. 270.
30 W. T. Watkin, ‘On some recently discovered Britanno Roman inscriptions’, Archaeological Journal 33 (1876), pp. 342–67.
31 Ibid., p. 367.
32 W. T. Watkin, ‘Britanno-Roman inscriptions discovered in 1876’, Archaeological Journal 34 (1877), p. 130.
33 Ibid., p. 139.
34 Ibid., p. 147.
35 W. T. Watkin, ‘On Britanno Roman inscriptions, found in 1877,’ Archaeological Journal 35 (1878), p. 63.
36 Ibid., p.79.
37 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1878’, Archaeological Journal 36 (1879), pp. 154–68.
38 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1879’, Archaeological Journal 37 (1880), p. 136.
39 W. T. Watkin ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1880’, Archaeological Journal 38 (1881), p. 277.
40 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1881, with notes on another find at Binchester’, Archaeological Journal 39 (1882), p. 355.
41 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions found in Britain in 1882’, Archaeological Journal 40 (1883), p. 135.
42 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1885’, Archaeological Journal 43 (1886) p. 275.
43 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1886’, Archaeological Journal 44 (1887), p. 126.
44 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1883’, Archaeological Journal 41 (1884), p. 173.
45 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions found in Britain in 1887’, Archaeological Journal 45 (1888), p. 167.
46 W. T. Watkin, ‘On the Roman stations “Burrium”, “Gobannium” and “Blestium” of the twelfth and thirteenth Iters of Antoninus’, Archaeological Journal 35 (1878), pp. 19–43.
47 W. T. Watkin, ‘Recent Roman discoveries at Maryport, Beckfoot and Cirencester’, Archaeological Journal 37 (1880), pp. 320–22.
48 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman Herefordshire’, Archaeological Journal 34 (1877), pp. 349–72.
49 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman inscriptions in Northamptonshire’, Archaeological Journal 36 (1879), pp. 93–94.
50 W. T. Watkin, ‘On the Roman inscriptions at Colchester’, Archaeological Journal 34 (1877), pp. 76–82.
51 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman Bedfordshire’, Archaeological Journal 39 (1882), pp. 257–90.
52 W. T. Watkin, ‘Roman Nottinghamshire’, Archaeological Journal 43 (1886), pp. 11–44.
53 W. T. Watkin, ‘The Roman forces in Britain’, Archaeological Journal 41 (1884), pp. 244–71, developing his earlier contribu-tions to the Proceedings of the Evening Meetings of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society session 1872–73 and his ‘Supplementary notes on the Roman forces in Britain’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 5 (1881), pp. 527–32. In its final form it became ‘Supplementary notes on the Roman forces in Britain’, Archaeological Journal 44 (1887), pp. 375–9.
54 W. T. Watkin, ‘Was Ireland ever invaded by the Romans?’ Archaeological Journal 44 (1887), pp. 289–93.
55 ‘Mr W. Thompson Watkin . . . has undertaken to publish his work on Roman Lancashire by subscription, with the view of bringing together many scattered records of discoveries of Roman antiquities in that county’ (Journal of the British Archaeological Association 37 (1881), p. 319).
56 W. T. Watkin, Roman Lancashire or a Description of Roman remains in the County Palatine of Lancaster (Liverpool, printed privately, 1883).
57 Anon, Archaeological Journal 40 (1883), p. 113.
58 W. T. Watkin, Roman Cheshire, or a Description of Roman remains in the County of Cheshire. (Liverpool, printed pri-vately, 1886; published with a new introduction by D. F. Petch, Wakefield, 1974).
59 Anon, Archaeological Journal 43 (1886), pp. 456–9 at pp. 456 and 459.
60 Liverpool Courier (24 March 1888), The Academy (31 March 1888), pp. 227–8), The Times (26 March 1888), etc. and the Archaeological Journal 45 (1888), p. 462.
61 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 12 (1887–9), pp. 14–48.
62 Watkin’s papers ultimately ended up in Chetham’s Library. In that collection is Box e.6.9 (Parts i and ii) ‘Bundle of notes, extracts from printed and ms sources (contains some early 18th-century papers – notes of meetings of an archaeological society). Copy of the printed appeal for money to purchase the Watkin Collection for Chetham’s Library 1st May 1888. Signed George W Shrubsole. Holograph letter from George W. Shrubsole to J. E. Tinkler (sub-librarian, Chetham’s Library, [1888]).’ Box 1 contains mss sources. Among the con-tents of Box 2 is a copy of the original appeal. The sum eventu-ally raised was around £65.
63 G. Shrubsole, ‘On the identity of the “Mediolanum” of the second and tenth Iter of Antoninus’ Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 42 (1890), p. 81.
64 A. G. Crosby, ‘Watkin, William Thompson (1836–1888)’, In H.C.G. Matthews and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography vol. 57 (Oxford, 2004), p. 585; cf. F. Boase, ‘Watkin, William Thompson’, Modern English Biography vol. iii (Truro, 1901).
65 Watkin, op. cit. (note 53), p. 244.
66 fjh to tm, 7 March 1884 (sB Mommsen 46 Bl 1–22).
67 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Notes on Roman Britain’, Archaeological Journal 46 (1889), pp. 65–72, on Watkin, op. cit. (note 42), p. 286 = cil vii no. 14/ee vol. 7, no. 815 = rib 93, tombstone.
68 fjh to tm, 18 October 1888: sB Mommsen 46 Bl 1–22
69 Haverfield, op. cit. [1892] (note 4), pp. 273–4. I have tended here to follow Professor Birley’s suggested translation of Haverfield’s Latin and for which I offer thanks.
70 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Roman inscriptions in Britain 1888–1890’, Archaeological Journal 47 (1890), p. 229.
71 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Roman inscriptions in Britain 1890–1891’, Archaeological Journal 49 (1892), p. 176.
72 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Romano-British inscriptions, 1892–1893’, Archaeological Journal 50 (1893), p. 279. Dan Orrells suggests that Haverfield’s language here is carefully chosen, in that it empha-sized his professional status and commitments to scholarship, a theme highlighted in my abstract. I suppose it could be read as Haverfield suggesting that while the contribution of amateur lei-sured antiquarian epigraphers was important, something more rigorous, for which he had not yet found the time, was now required–yet another instance of Haverfield flagging his intention to monopolize the field by threatening to do something, a practice for which he became adept (Freeman, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 428–31)?
73 Haverfield, op. cit. (note 72), p.304.
74 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Re-excavated relics’, Classical Review 5 (1891), pp. 240–41.
75 Haverfield, op. cit. (note 70), p. 255.
76 Ibid., p. 260.
77 Watkin, op. cit. [1884] (note 53); W. von Pfitzner, Ist Ireland jemals von einem römischen Heere betreten worden?: eine his-torich-philogische Untersuchung über Tacitus Agr., Kap. 24 (Neustrelitz, 1893).
78 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Maps of Roman Britain etc.’, Classical Review 8 (1894), p. 325.
79 F. J. Haverfield, ‘Roman Britain in 1913’, British Academy Supplementary Papers 2 (1914); ‘Roman Britain in 1914’, British Academy Supplementary Papers 3 (1915).
80 Petch op. cit. (note 58) and D. F. Petch, ‘The Roman period’, in B.E. Harris (ed.) The History of the County of Chester, vol. i: Physique, Prehistory, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Domesday (Oxford, 1987), pp. 115–236; D.J.P. Mason, Roman Chester. City of the Eagles (Stroud, 2001).
81 Freeman, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 23–40.
82 F. J. Haverfield, The Academy 22 June 1889, cf. Archaeological Journal 48 (1891), p. 293; The Athenaeum 13 December 1890, 16 May 1891; 31 October, 16 April, 23 July 1892, 27 January 1894; F. J. Haverfield, ‘Provisional account of the Roman inscriptions found at Chester (North Wall)’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 13 (1889–91), pp. 205–7. J. P. Earwaker, Recent Discoveries of Roman Remains found in the Repaving the North Wall at Chester (Manchester, 1889) and ‘Roman inscriptions at Chester’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 8 (1891), pp. 77–8; E. Hübner, ‘Inscriptions from Chester’, Journal of the Architectural, Archaeological and Historical Society for the County and City of Chester and of North Wales 3 (1891), pp. 120–50.
M o M M s e n , H ü b n e r , H av e r f i e l d, Wat k i n a n d C I L v i i
84 Box e.6.7, entitled os Maps, contains a run of maps (111 sec-tions; dated 1858–78) on which Watkin inked the courses of rivers, railway lines and possible Roman roads as well as Roman sites.
85 F. A. Bruton (ed.), The Roman fort at Manchester (Manchester, 1909), p. 2.
86 Petch, op. cit. (note 58).
87 J.G.F. Hind and G.D.B. Jones, ‘Introduction’, In G.D.B. Jones and D.C.A. Shotter (eds), Roman Lancaster. Rescue Archaeology in an historic City 1970–75, Brigantia Monograph no. 1 (Gloucester, 1988), p. 15.
