Sociable Knowledge. Elizabeth Yale

dominions as “colonies” implied that the Celtic peoples—Welsh, Scottish, and Irish—had a natural role to play in the eighteenth-century expansion of the British Empire. Statements such as this were historically used to promote the contribution of the Celts, specifically the Welsh, to the expansion of the “British” Empire; in the sixteenth century, for example, John Dee argued for the legitimacy of Elizabeth I’s claims to possessions in the Americas by tying them to the lands supposedly discovered by the twelfth-century Prince Madoc, who, according to legend, crossed the Atlantic.⁸⁴ In this reading, the English owed the Welsh thanks for the “British Empire.” Lhuyd went even further, raising up not only the Welsh but also the Celts of Ireland and Scotland (as well as Cornwall and Brittany, though to a lesser degree). Yet this position was one that Lhuyd arrived at only after direct study of the remains of the past, as he prepared his contributions to the revised Britannia. He initially found it difficult to overcome the notion that any antiquities that appeared to reflect a sophisticated culture could be attributed to the ancient Britons, and not, say, the Romans.⁸⁵ This is not surprising, given Lhuyd’s immersion in English antiquarian and natural historical culture, and the widespread English image of the Celts, especially the Catholic Irish, as barbaric and uncivilized. But awareness of the climate in which he worked renders Lhuyd’s reference to the ancient Britons as “planters” all the more striking as a statement of fellowship.

      Lhuyd’s Archaeologia Britannica was not universally well received when it was finally published in 1707. The critiques spoke to divisions between England and the rest of Britain and, possibly, to divisions between the Celtic regions. Wits laughed that the fruit of so many years of study, and so much expense by Lhuyd’s subscribers, should be an etymological dictionary of Celtic languages. The sniping, which echoed traditional English attacks on the Celtic languages, particularly Welsh, started before the book was officially published. Lhuyd, though he acknowledged that few agreed with him, argued that Welsh was a comparatively ancient language and that certain words in ancient Latin and even Greek could be traced back to the original British (John Aubrey, had he still been alive, would have been sympathetic to this claim).⁸⁶ Lhuyd addressed the critiques defensively in his introduction, claiming that his detractors’ invidious partiality clouded their judgment. They claimed that only “half a dozen” or “half a score” individuals in the nation could possibly be interested in the subject of Celtic antiquities and languages. Lhuyd observed that if their critique were serious and impartial, they would have to admit that there were closer to “Three or Four Hundred” such individuals: still a small number, but enough to support the production of a book such as Lhuyd’s Glossography.⁸⁷ Lhuyd was silent as to broader motives fueling his unnamed critics’ censures, but a defense orchestrated by the Royal Society revealed that questions of national partisanship were an issue. In a letter published by Hans Sloane in the Philosophical Transactions shortly after the book’s publication, the antiquary William Baxter gave an account of the book and then turned to a defense of Lhuyd as a scholar: “I cannot conclude without taking notice of one Calumny that has been whisper’d about by Men of Passion or Intreague, viz. That this Book is design’d to serve a certain Interest. I therefore think my self oblig’d in Justice, to certifie to the Publick, that after a careful perusal of all the Parts of this Work, I cannot discern a Syllable any where that in the least tends to favour any Party, or is any way concern’d in any National Distinction.”⁸⁸ Baxter, who corresponded with Lhuyd on antiquarian matters, defended his impartiality and attempted to distance his work from the political context of the early eighteenth century, in which questions of “national distinction” and the relationships among England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were very much at issue. In his correspondence Lhuyd carefully tracked the publication of Baxter’s review, hoping that, by providing a good character for his book, Baxter would help him move more copies of it.⁸⁹

      However, devoting serious attention to the “British” languages and antiquities was a political act, and it was interpreted as such by Lhuyd’s critics as well as his admirers. Whether they offered praise or critique, correspondents, some of whom had been contributing to the project since Lhuyd first canvassed for subscription over ten years prior, spoke to the questions of what bound and what divided the Celtic regions of Britain. The Irish antiquary Roderic O’Flaherty questioned whether Lhuyd was right to include separate prefaces in Welsh, Irish, and Cornish: “whereas one in a hundred can reade one of the 3 & one in a 1000 (if any) expert in all 3,” would it not have been better to present the material in these prefaces in English, a language “common to the 3 nations”?⁹⁰ A Welsh correspondent wrote in enthusiastic praise, using the revised Welsh orthography Lhuyd had invented for the Archaeologia. He suggested that consistent use of Lhuyd’s orthography, which, among other things, eliminated “double consonants at the beginning of words,” would garner the Welsh more respect from the English, who were liable to “disrespect and pour scorn on our language and its writing.”⁹¹ Yet another Welsh correspondent gently mocked Lhuyd’s innovate orthography, poking fun in particular at the ways in which over the years Lhuyd had altered his own name as he developed his spelling conventions: “Lluyd, alias Lhuyd, alias Lhwyd, alias Llwyd, cum multis aliis aliarum. for all this, I am well assur’d, that my Friend is the same, and that whatever diminuations he may make of his Name, his Reputation is still entire, & still a growing.”⁹²

      On the one hand, Lhuyd’s line of inquiry, which traced the histories of the Celtic peoples through their languages and treated those people (and their histories) with dignity, was deeply important to many of his Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Scottish correspondents (nitpicky criticisms as well as praise testified to this). Yet, on the other hand, the only shared language among readers scattered across the Celtic nations was English. Only in English could Lhuyd and his correspondents speak across regional and linguistic boundaries. Neither was the “national distinction” conferred by Lhuyd’s project clear: there were some who believed that his reform of Welsh orthography granted new dignity to the language, while others believed it misguided, if not silly. As we will see more closely in Chapter 5, which explores how Lhuyd built up the correspondence through which he gathered information and financing, and received these responses to his book, the project was conditioned from the very start by questions of “national distinctions” between the Celtic regions.

      England’s Britain

      In defining “Britain” through the histories and languages shared by the Celtic peoples, Lhuyd swam against the tide of studies working from an English perspective. Not surprisingly, these other natural histories and antiquarian studies were largely written by Englishmen. Unlike Lhuyd’s Britain, England’s Britain was defined not by shared ethnicity but by the exercise of power. Britain was those territories that the English government—either king, Parliament, or some combination of the two—controlled or sought to control. The Britain thus produced was shot through with conflict and compromise. It heavily emphasized a Protestant vision, which meant that Ireland’s status within the topographical Britain was particularly problematic. Yet by no means was England’s Britain constructed solely by the English: in various ways and under various terms, Welsh, Scottish, and Anglo-Irish scholars contributed to the construction of England’s Britain. When these works ventured onto Irish territory, though, the native Catholic Irish figured largely as objects of study and scorn, rather than as participants in the topographical project.⁹³

      Given his genre-defining power, Camden is a fit starting point for an exploration of the topographical Britain as it developed from an English perspective.⁹⁴ The title page of Philemon Holland’s 1610 English translation of Britannia indicated that it was a “chorographicall description of the most flourishing Kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland.”⁹⁵ However, “England” appeared in larger type than “Scotland” and “Ireland,” and Wales (not to mention Cornwall) was subsumed into England, appearing nowhere on the title page. This structure aligned with the era’s political reality, in which the English monarch was king of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland but Wales was a dominion, for political purposes, considered part of England. In certain respects Camden’s Britannia emphasized the geographical unity of Britain, particularly the three nations of the main island. In part because Camden treated Wales almost