The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Bluetoes101]

I do think though that for people reading we should say, 

1. The paper is (as far as we know atm) the right age
2. The writing has been identified as 17C writing 

This is enough evidence for most documents to be deemed legitimate from the time stated in the document, at least from what I have seen while browsing museum and library items. 
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Different paper (watermark) to usual, and weird Latin can be explained for "team legitimate" much easier than explaining time correct paper and writing for "team forgery". So I don't think it really adds to evidence of forgery (inc VMS). 

If Wilfrid did sell old paper and knew the dates from which each come from, and knew of watermarks that would be interesting and make things a bit more suspicious. I'd be interested to see if he did (know dates and associated watermarks).


Here is one to ponder though.. why would anyone care what some guy in 17C heard from some other guy in regards to "Bacon"? It seems they didn't, as Wilfrid got stuck with his manuscript. Why not just take some of his (what he considered 13C) vellum and write some stuff on that? The provenance of "some guy 400 years after the fact heard from a guy that maybe..." is about as terrible a thing as you could think of doing given practically anything is available to you. Dee is said to have had around 50 Bacon pieces. Just write "heard from Dee" and not "Raphael".. or just anything more convincing that you can imagine.   

Also, if Wilfrid had all this material laying about and he, or someone he hired, had a very convincing 17C hand, why not "discover" more provenance once the first batch were a dud? It seems like a case of Wilfrid being very intelligent where needed and very silly where needed..