One of the more remarkable survivals from sociable eighteenth-century England is the Spalding Gentlemen's Society. Founded in 1710 in Spalding in the south Lincolnshire Fens by the local barrister Maurice Johnson, to encourage the growth of -friendship and knowledge-, it received hundreds of letters from correspondents across Britain and overseas. Concerned with such matters as antiquities, natural philosophy, numismatics, mathematics, literature and the arts, they were collated by Johnson to provide material for the Society's weekly Thursday meetings. This detailed calendar brings together...

Both sides of a correspondence, stretching over forty years, between two remarkable Lincolnshire friends, the antiquaries William Stukeley (1687-1765) and Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), are brought together in this volume. Beginning when the writers were in their twenties, the letters cover Johnson's work as a lawyer and the development of his cherished Spalding Gentlemen's Society, and Stukeley's career as a physician, his ordination in 1729, and eventual return to London in 1747. The two friends wrote on a wide range of topics, including current affairs, political scandals, financial...