Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

inaccurate. 34 What they themselves came to believe about their inheritance it is not possible to
know, but they lived out their claims with complete integrity to the end of their lives and
expressed them chiefly through antiquarian activities. That they were serious antiquaries, much
of whose time was devoted to research is not in doubt. 35 In their writings, in their house and in
their persons, however, they adapted history to serve their own needs in the present, physically
inhabiting the identity that they claimed for themselves. Forgeries rather than fakes, no living
creatures can have come closer in their relationship to the material remains of the past to the
condition of Quasimodo.
In considering their career the uncontroversial part of the brothers’ pedigree, which has
attracted little previous attention, is not without interest. Their mother was Katherine Matilda
Manning, a daughter of the Rev Owen Manning (1721-1801), vicar of Godalming in Surrey. He
was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society, county historian of Surrey
and a distinguished scholar of Old English whose annotated translation of the will of King Alfred
was published in 1788. 36 Their father, Thomas Allen, remarried after his first wife’s death and
having lost all his money in speculation lived in hiding from his creditors in Boulogne-sur-mer
under his second wife’s name, Salmond. He apparently took no interest in his sons’ account of
their ancestry (and his), but claimed for himself the Earldom of Erroll. 37 Something clearly ran in
the family, even if it was not the blood of the Stuarts. The brothers grew up to combine their
Manning grandfather’s scholarly ability, learning Gaelic and making serious studies of Highland
traditions, with their father’s precarious chutzpah. They may best, I suggest, be understood as a
manifestation of the popular antiquarian imagination. Their life and work were dependent not
only on the artefacts they accumulated but on the context which had already been created for
such objects by late Georgian antiquarianism in general and by Walter Scott in particular.
34
K. D. Reynolds, ‘Stuart, John Sobieski Stolberg (1795?–1872)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/26723,
accessed 18 Jan 2011]
35
Extensive, unpublished, mss. survive in the National Library of Scotland for studies of subjects including firearms
(ms. 2193) and, interestingly, ‘Illustrations of Popular Delusion’, (ms 2173).
36
See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
37
See Robb, ‘The Sobieski Stuart Brothers’.
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