Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/522



Dr. Wm. Stukeley, 1687-1765, was a famous Lincolnshire antiquarian. He practised medicine, first at Boston and then at Grantham from 1710 to 1726. He was made an F.R.S. in 1717, and in that or the following year he helped to establish the Society of Antiquaries in London, and was for the first nine years secretary to that Society. In 1719 he became an M.D. of Cambridge and was made a member of the "Spalding Gentlemen's Society" in 1722. In 1727 he took Holy Orders and from 1730 to 1748 officiated as Vicar of All Saints at Stamford, where he founded the short-*lived "Brazenose Society." He was a great friend of Sir Isaac Newton and kept up his interest in scientific matters to the end, inasmuch as he put off his service on one occasion in order that his congregation might watch an eclipse of the sun. Whilst still Vicar of Stamford he was made Rector of Somerby near Grantham, 1739-1747, but he retired from both livings in 1748, and spent the rest of his life in London, where at the age of 75 he preached his first sermon in spectacles, taking as his text "Now we see through a glass darkly." He wrote five volumes of Notes of the proceedings of the "Royal Society," which are now in the library of the "Spalding Gentlemen's Society," and he dedicated his "Itinerarium curiosum" to Maurice Johnson, the founder of that society. He took, for many years, antiquarian tours all over England; writing at some length on Stonehenge and the Roman Wall, and often illustrating his articles, for he was a skilful draughtsman. He died in London in his seventy-ninth year.