In the last part of his life, he became instrumental in British scholarship's acceptance of Charles Bertram's forged Description of Britain [1] and wrote one of the earliest biographies of Sir Isaac Newton.

Stukeley was the subject of multiple biographies and academic studies by scholars like Stuart Piggott, David Boyd Haycock and Ronald Hutton.

[4] His paternal grandfather, John Stukeley (1623–1675), was a country gentleman who possessed a small estate at Uffington, Lincolnshire and who accrued a large number of debts by the time of his death.

[28] In 1712, Stukeley embarked on an extensive tour of western Britain, taking in Wales before returning to England to visit Grantham, Derby, Buxton, Chatsworth and Manchester.

[29] Stukeley's later biographer Stuart Piggott related that this book was "not yet the characteristic product of a field archaeologist" but rather "differs little from that which could be written by any intelligent gentleman of the period".

[42] Following Edmond Halley's resignation as society secretary, in November 1721, Stukeley put himself forward as a potential replacement; he unsuccessfully ran against Newton's favoured candidate, James Jurin.

[50] From his father, the former Dean of York Thomas Gale, Roger had inherited a copy of the Monumenta Britannica, a work produced by seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey.

[60] Through the society he also became close friends with Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford and Heneage Finch, 5th Earl of Winchilsea; he encouraged the latter to carry out archaeological fieldwork, as at Julliberrie's Grave in Kent.

[63] In August 1721, Stukeley and Roger Gale set forth on another tour, visiting Avebury and Stonehenge before going to Gloucester, Hereford, Ludlow, Wolverhampton, Derby, and finally reaching Grantham in October.

[64] He returned to Avebury in the summer of 1722 — this time with the artists Gerard Vandergucht and John Pine, who had both become Roman Knights that year — before proceeding to Stonehenge and Silchester.

[65] In September and October he embarked on another tour, this time taking in Cambridge, Boston, Lincoln, Dunstable, Leminster and Rochester, largely following Roman roads.

[66] In 1723, he travelled from London to Newbury and Marlborough before visiting Stanton Drew stone circles, and then heading back east to Bath, Exeter and Dorchester.

[53] This work drew upon his fieldwork at both Avebury and Stonehenge as well as his field-notes from other prehistoric sites and information obtained from the 'Templa Druidum' section of Aubrey's Monumenta Britannica.

[87] In October 1729, the Lord Chancellor Peter King granted Stukeley the living of All Saints in Stamford, Lincolnshire, taking up residence in the town in early 1730.

[94] Stukeley would write that his purpose in becoming a cleric was "to combat the deists from an unexpected quarter", describing his "resentment of that deluge of profaneness and infidelity that prevails so much at present, and threatens an utter subversion of religion in general".

[96] He also remained interested in the local discovery of antiquities; he became aware of a large, silver Romano-British dish uncovered at Risley Park, Derbyshire in 1729 and read an account of it to the Society of Antiquaries in 1736.

[114] In 1753, a Late Bronze Age tool hoard was uncovered during landscaping at Kew Gardens; Stukeley was invited to come and inspect the discovery the following year, at which point he met with the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, who had an interest in antiquarian matters.

In their ensuing correspondence, Bertram claimed to possess a copy of a manuscript allegedly produced by a 14th-century monk from Winchester known as Richard of Cirencester, which in turn contained an account and map of Roman Britain.

[122] He published these in 1757 as An Account of Richard of Cirencester, Monk of Westminster, and of his Works, which reproduced the map but not the text of the original manuscript, instead consisting of Stukeley's own commentary.

[123] At the time, many antiquarians regarded it as a genuine text, although a few had suspicions;[124] in 1795, Thomas Reynolds declared that Bertram's document was a forgery, although this would be widely recognised only in the 19th century.

[99] He retained his concern with the destruction of ancient monuments, in particular the pillaging of Hadrian's Wall for stone, imploring Princess Augusta to intervene and raising the issue in a November 1757 report for the Society of Antiquaries.

[133] Hutton noted that Stukeley "always had a strong streak of mysticism and interpreted ancient remains in accordance with set notions concerning the nature of primeval religion.

[136] His general framework for understanding Britain's prehistoric past derived from his belief in the literal truth of Biblical mythology, including the Creation of the world in 4004 BC and events like the Genesis flood narrative.

[148] He criticised Britons who favoured archaeological remains encountered abroad during the Grand Tour, claiming that they were neglecting their own national heritage and adopting continental habits and vices such as effeminacy.

[152] By 1724, he was arguing that the snake was a symbol of Christ, with its shedding of skin echoing the resurrection and the circle or head representing the unity and wholeness of God.

[165] By the early 1720s, Stukeley had a growing reputation as the country's main authority on druids and ancient monuments, having no obvious competitor given the comparative novelty of studying stone circles.

[169] According to Haycock, he "most famous propagator of Stukelian ideas in the early nineteenth century" was the artist and poet William Blake, who had read both Abury and Stonehenge and been influenced by them.

[170] In the nineteenth century, many of Stukeley's interpretations were being adopted and expanded by several antiquarian clergymen, including William Lisle Bowles, D. James and John Bathurst Deane.

[185] In 2005, Hutton noted that there had been "a considerable change of attitude" to Stukeley among scholars over the previous few years, as they had rejected the division into two halves of his life which Piggott had constructed.

[188] Haycock noted that, along with Macpherson and Thomas Gray, Stukeley "helped create the principal historical and literary foundations for the 'Druidical revival' that flourished in the last decades of the eighteenth century".