De Situ Britanniae De Situ Britanniae ( The Description of Britain ) is a fictional description of the peoples and places of ancient Britain . Purported to contain the account of a Roman general preserved in the manuscript of a fourteenth - century English monk , it was considered the premier source of information on Roman Britain for more than a century after it was made available in 1749 . The forgery was created by Charles Bertram , an eighteenth - century Englishman then living in Copenhagen . He first disclosed the existence of " De Situ Britanniae " in 1747 and made his copy of it available in London in 1749 , where it was kept in the Arundel Library of the Royal Society . The work was published by Bertram in 1757 . " De Situ Britanniae " was not debunked as a forgery until the middle of the nineteenth century , by which time its misinformation had been incorporated into many respected publications of ancient British history . The forgery . Once it had been accepted as genuine , " De Situ Britanniae " exerted a profound effect upon subsequent theories , suppositions , and publications of history . It was the premier source of information ( and sometimes the only source ) for well over 100 years . It contained 18 " iters " ( of the type found in the legitimate Antonine Itinerary ) , compiled from fragmentary accounts of a Roman general , adding over 60 new and previously unknown stations to those mentioned in the legitimate account . Best of all , it filled up the entire map of Scotland with descriptions and the names of peoples , the part of Britain about which the least was known with any certainty . It would later be determined that it was actually a clever mosaic of information gleaned from the works of Caesar , Tacitus , William Camden , John Horsley , and others , enhanced with Bertram ' s own fictions . The debunking . The end did not come until 1845 . In that year the German writer Karl Wex effectively challenged the authority of " De Situ Britanniae " in the " Rheinisches Museum " . He simply noted that " De Situ Britanniae " contained impossible and improbable technical errors , such as its inclusion of transcription error s that had been introduced in the fifteenth century , and so could not be the work of a fourteenth - century monk . His work was translated into English and printed by the " Gentleman ' s Magazine " in October 1846 . Acceptance of the debunking . Further evidence of the falsity of " De Situ Britanniae " came out in the following years , until no serious effort could be made in defense of the document . However , British scholars were slow to accept the truth both out of embarrassment ( the same information that Wex used had been available to them all along ) , and because they now knew that their accounts of history had been based on a fiction rather than legitimate information . The final confirmation that " De Situ Britanniae " was spurious came in 1869 , a quarter century after Wex ' s publication . The " Speculum " written by the real Richard of Cirencester was examined between 1863 and 1869 by J . E . B . Mayor , the librarian of the University of Cambridge , and Mayor included a 90 - page detailed condemnation of " De Situ Britanniæ " . Other accounts of the debunking . Accounts of the debunking claiming that there were serious doubts about " De Situ Britanniae " prior to Wex are somewhat less than accurate . Similarly , accounts that date the debunking to efforts subsequent to Wex are less than completely forthcoming . For example , the 1911 " Encyclopædia Britannica " account which asserts that Thomas Reynolds ( in his 1799 " Iter Britanniarum " ) was " skeptical as to the value of Bertram ' s manuscript " is false or badly worded . Reynolds was skeptical of the quality of Richard of Cirencester ' s information , but did not express doubts about the validity of the manuscript . In 1866 and 1867 , Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward , the librarian of Windsor Castle , wrote a series of articles in the " Gentleman ' s Magazine " that challenged the validity of " De Situ Britanniae " . However , his characterisation of " De Situ Britanniae " as " plainly a clumsy forgery by an unpractised hand , not a tracing or copy from a genuine original " is curious , to say the least . This same document had been examined back in 1749 by Caseley , the keeper of the Cotton Library , and as late as 1840 Sir F . Madden of the manuscript department of the British Museum had not only expressed his belief in its validity , but had also criticised the English Historical Society for its 1838 omission of " De Situ Britanniae " in its list of important works . Credit and blame . Blame for the acceptance of the forgery fell hardest on the reputation of William Stukeley , and he was ( and often still is ) held to be most responsible . However , Stukeley relied on the opinions of others more capable than himself to judge document validity . The messenger was assailed because the message that he carried was later found to be false . The works of those who accepted and used the Bertram ' s fictions were disparaged , accompanied by charges of " antiquarianism " and sloppy scholarship . Edward Gibbon is among the most notable to be so criticised , but he was never more than one person out of the entirety of the academic world that had accepted the forgery without criticism . Modern impact . There has not been a focused effort to root out Bertram ' s fictions from actual history , even to the modern day . Disagreements over history are often contentious , particularly when professional , ethnic , or national pride are involved . Modern historians are likely to ignore the impact of " De Situ Britanniae " on their own work ( assuming that they are even aware of it ) , and just as likely to ignore its impact on their competitors ' works , lest claims and counter - claims lead to the disrepute of everyone ' s work . However , for the sake of illustrating that " De Situ Britanniae " remains as an influence to the modern day , a rather trivial example is provided : The first use of the name Pennines to describe the English mountain range is from " De Situ Britanniae " . Quoting : In 1853 , Arthur Hussey listed several names in " De Situ Britanniae " that he could not trace to another source , and the Pennine Alps was one of them . In his 2004 book " Names and History : People , Places and Things " , George Redmonds provided a modern assessment . He comments at length on the strange omission of the etymology of the Pennines in the serious literature regarding that area of England , including publications on place - name origins of Derbyshire and Lancashire by respected authors . He finally learns that the origin of the name is from " De Situ Britanniae " and that " nor do we know any name for the whole range before the eighteenth century . " There follows a discussion of the forgery and the fact that a number of its inventions had found their way into the Ordnance Survey maps ; and that the true origin of the name was known by serious authors , most of whom simply chose not to speak of it . He also notes that the mountains had been called by various names in the past , and that there were allusional references to the mountains as " our Apennines " as early as the 1630s ( and perhaps before that ) , so likely Bertram simply invented a name that was easy for people to accept as fact . Another example is the supposed Roman naval base of Theodosia at Dumbarton , taken from Bertram ' s work , which is now rejected by historians , but could still be found in some reference works some years after Bertram was exposed ( e . g . the 1911 Britannica ) .