years of labour he saw the first link forged in the chain, in the | opening in 1902 of the Pacific Cable between Canada and Australia. Though not a party man he strongly advocated Federation in 1864-1867, and in 1891 vehemently attacked the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. He took the deepest interest in education, and in 1880 became chancellor of Queen's University, Kingston.

He published The Intercolonial: a History (Montreal and London, 1876); England and Canada (London, 1884); and numerous brochures and magazine articles on scientific, social and political subjects. FLEMING, SIR THOMAS (1544-1613), English judge, was born at Newport, Isle of Wight, in April 1544, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1574. He represented Winchester in parliament from 1584 to 1601, when he was returned for Southampton. In 1594 he was appointed recorder of London, and in 1595 was chosen solicitor-general in preference to Bacon. This office he retained under James I. and was knighted in 1603. In 1604 he was created chief baron of the exchequer and presided over many important state trials. In 1607 he was promoted to the chief justiceship of the king's bench, and was one of the judges at the trial of the post-nati in 1608, siding with the majority of the judges in declaring that persons born in Scotland after the accession of James I. were entitled to the privileges of natural-born subjects in England. He was praised by his contemporaries, more particularly Coke, for his "great judgments, integrity and discretion." He died on the 7th of August 1613 at his seat, Stoneham Park, Hampshire.

See Foss, Lives of the Judges.

FLEMISH LITERATURE. The older Flemish writers are dealt with in the article on DUTCH LITERATURE; after the separation of Belgium, however, from the Netherlands in 1830 there was a great revival of Flemish literature. The immediate result of the revolution was a reaction against everything associated with Dutch, and a disposition to regard the French language as the speech of liberty and independence. The provisional government of 1830 suppressed the official use of the Flemish language, which was relegated to the rank of a patois. For some years before 1830 Jan Frans Willems1 (1793-1846) had been advocating the claims of the Flemish language. He had done his best to allay the irritation between Holland and Belgium and to prevent a separation. As archivist of Antwerp he made use of his opportunities by writing a history of Flemish letters. After the revolution his Dutch sympathies had made it necessary for him to live in seclusion, but in 1835 he settled at Ghent, and devoted himself to the cultivation of Flemish. He edited old Flemish classics, Reinaert de Vos (1836), the rhyming Chronicles of Jan van Heelu and Jan le Clerc, &c., and gathered round him a band of Flemish enthusiasts, the chevalier Philipp Blommaert (1809-1871), Karel Lodewijk Ledeganck (1805-1847), Fr. Rens (1805-1874), F. A. Snellaert (1809-1872), Prudens van Duyse (1804-1859), and others. Blommaert, who was born at Ghent on the 27th of August 1809, founded in 1834 in his native town the Nederduitsche letteroefeningen, a review for the new writers, and it was speedily followed by other Flemish organs, and by literary societies for the promotion of Flemish. In 1851 a central organization for the Flemish propaganda was provided by a society, named after the father of the movement, the "Willemsfonds." The Catholic Flemings founded in 1874 a rival “ Davidsfonds," called after the energetic J. B. David (1801-1866), professor at the university of Louvain, and the author of a Flemish history of Belgium (Vaderlandsche historie, Louvain, 1842–1866). As a result of this propaganda the Flemish language was placed on an equality with French in law, and in administration, in 1873 and 1878, and in the schools in 1883. Finally in 1886 a Flemish Academy was established by royal authority at Ghent, where a course in Flemish literature had been established as early as 1854.

The claims put forward by the Flemish school were justified by the appearance (1837) of In' t Wonderjaar 1566 (In the Wonder

1 See Max Rooses, Keus van Dicht- en Prozawerken van J. F. Willems, and his Brieven in the publications of the Willemsfonds (Ghent, 1872-1874).

ful year) of Hendrik Conscience (q.v.), who roused national enthusiasm by describing the heroic struggles of the Flemings against the Spaniards. Conscience was eventually to make his greatest successes in the description of contemporary Flemish life, but his historical romances and his popular history of Flanders helped to give a popular basis to a movement which had been started by professors and scholars.

The first poet of the new school was Ledeganck, the best known of whose poems are those on the "three sister cities" of Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp (Die drie zustersteden, vaderlandsche trilogie, Ghent, 1846), in which he makes an impassioned protest against the adoption of French ideas, manners and language, and the neglect of Flemish tradition. The book speedily took its place as a Flemish classic. Ledeganck, who was a magistrate, also translated the French code into Flemish. Jan Theodoor van Rijswijck (1811-1849), after serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1830, settled down as a clerk in Antwerp, and became one of the hottest champions of the Flemish movement. He wrote a series of political and satirical songs, admirably suited to his public. The romantic and sentimental poet, Jan van Beers (q.v.), was typically Flemish in his sincere and moral outlook on life. Prudens van Duyse, whose most ambitious work was the epic Artavelde (1859), is perhaps best remembered by a collection (1844) of poems for children. Peter Frans Van Kerckhoven (1818-1857), a native of Antwerp, wrote novels, poems, dramas, and a work on the Flemish revival (De Vlaemsche Beweging, 1847).

Antwerp produced a realistic novelist in Jan Lambrecht Damien Sleeckx (1818-1901). An inspector of schools by profession, he was an indefatigable journalist and literary critic. He was one of the founders in 1844 of the Vlaemsch België, the first daily paper in the Flemish interest. His works include a long list of plays, among them Jan Steen (1852), a comedy; Grétry, which gained a national prize in 1861; De Visschers van Blankenberg (1863); and the patriotic drama of Zannekin (1865). His talent as a novelist was diametrically opposed to the idealism of Conscience. He was precise, sober and concrete in his methods, relying for his effect on the accumulation of carefully observed detail. He was particularly successful in describing the life of the shipping quarter of his native town. Among his novels are: In' t Schipperskwartier (1856), Dirk Meyer (1860), Tybaerts en Kie (1867), Kunst en Liefde (“ Art and Love," 1870), and Vesalius in Spanje (1895). His complete works were collected in 17 vols. (1877-1884).

Jan Renier Snieders (1812-1888) wrote novels dealing with North Brabant; his brother, August Snieders (b. 1825), began by writing historical novels in the manner of Conscience, but his later novels are satires on contemporary society. A more original talent was displayed by Anton Bergmann (1835-1874), who, under the pseudonym of " Tony," wrote Ernest Staas, Advocat, which gained the quinquennial prize of literature in 1874. In the same year appeared the Novellen of the sisters Rosalie (18341875) and Virginie Loveling (b. 1836). These simple and touching stories were followed by a second collection in 1876. The sisters had published a volume of poems in 1870. Virginie Loveling's gifts of fine and exact observation soon placed her in the front rank of Flemish novelists. Her political sketches, In onze Vlaamsche gewesten (1877), were published under the name of "W. G. E. Walter." Sophie (1885), Een dure Eed (1892), and Het Land der Verbeelding (1896) are among the more famous of her later works. Reimond Stýns (b. 1850) and Isidoor Teirlinck (b. 1851) produced in collaboration one very popular novel, Arm Vlaanderen (1884), and some others, and have since written separately. Cyril Buysse, a nephew of Mme Loveling, is a disciple of Zola. Het Recht van den Sterkste (" The Right of the Strongest," 1893) is a picture of vagabond life in Flanders; Schoppenboer ("The Knave of Spades," 1898) deals with brutalized peasant life; and Sursum corda (1895) describes the narrowness and religiosity of village life.

In poetry Julius de Geyter (b. 1830), author of a rhymed translation of Reinaert (1874), an epic poem on Charles V. (1888), &c., produced a social epic in three parts, Drie menschen van in

de wieg tot in het graf (" Three Men from the Cradle to the Grave," 1861), in which he propounded radical and humanitarian views. The songs of Julius Vuylsteke (1836–1903) are full of liberal and patriotic ardour; but his later life was devoted to politics rather than literature. He had been the leading spirit of a students' association at Ghent for the propagation of "flamingant" views, and the "Willemsfonds owed much of its success to his energetic co-operation. His Uit het studenten leven appeared in 1868, and his poems were collected in 1881. The poems of Mme van Ackere (1803-1884), née Maria Doolaeghe, were modelled on Dutch originals. Joanna Courtmans (1811-1890), née Berchmans, owed her fame rather to her tales than her poems; she was above all a moralist, and her fifty tales are sermons on economy and the practical virtues. Other poets were Emmanuel Hiel (q.v.), author of comedies, opera libretti and some admirable songs; the abbé Guido Gezelle (1830-1899), who wrote religious and patriotic poems in the dialect of West Flanders; Lodewijk de Koninck (b. 1838), who attempted a great epic subject in Menschdon Verlost (1872); J. M. Dautzenberg (1808-1869), author of a volume of charming Volksliederen. The best of Dautzenberg's work is contained in the posthumous volume of 1869, published by his son-in-law, Frans de Cort (1834-1878), who was himself a song-writer, and translated songs from Burns, from Jasmin and from the German. The Makamen en Ghazelen (1866), adapted from Rückert's version of Hariri, and other volumes by "Jan Ferguut (J. A. van Droogenbroeck, b. 1835) show a growing preoccupation with form, and with the work of Theodoor Antheunis (b. 1840), they prepare the way for the ingenious and careful workmanship of the younger school of poets, of whom Charles Polydore de Mont is the leader. He was born at Wambeke in Brabant in 1857, and became professor in the academy of the fine arts at Antwerp. He introduced something of the ideas and methods of contemporary French writers into Flemish verse; and explained his theories in 1898 in an Inleiding tot de Poëzie. Among Pol de Mont's numerous volumes of verse dating from 1877 onwards are Claribella (1893), and Iris (1894), which contains amongst other things a curious" Uit de Legende van Jeschoea-ben-Jossef," a version of the gospel story from a Jewish peasant.

Mention should also be made of the history of Ghent (Gent van den vroegsten Tijd tot heden, 1882-1889) of Frans de Potter (b. 1834), and of the art criticisms of Max Rooses (b. 1839), curator of the Plantin museum at Antwerp, and of Julius Sabbe (b. 1846).

See Ida van Düringsfeld, Von der Schelde bis zur Maas. Das geistige Leben der Vlamingen (Leipzig, 3 vols., 1861); J. Stecher, Histoire de la littérature néerlandaise en Belgique (1886); Geschiedenis der Vlaamsche Letterkunde van het jaar 1830 tot heden (1899), by Theodoor Coopman and L. Scharpé; A. de Koninck, Bibliographie nationale (3 vols., 1886-1897); and Histoire politique et littéraire du mouvement flamand (1894), by Paul Hamelius. The Vlaamsche Bibliographie, issued by the Flemish Academy of Ghent, by Frans de Potter, contains a list of publications between 1830 and 1890; and there is a good deal of information in the excellent Biographisch woordenboeck der Noord- en Zuid-Nederlandsche Letterkunde (1878) of Dr W. J. A. Huberts and others. (E. G.)

FLENSBURG (Danish, Flensborg), a seaport of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, at the head of the Flensburg Fjord, 20 m. N.W. from Schleswig, at the junction of the main line Altona-Vamdrup (Denmark), with branches to Kiel and Glücksburg. Pop. (1905) 48,922. The principal public buildings are the Nikolai Kirche (built 1390, restored 1894), with a spire 295 ft. high; the Marienkirche, also a medieval church, with a lofty tower; the law courts; the theatre and the exchange. There are two gymnasia, schools of marine engineering, navigation, wood-carving and agriculture. The cemetery contains the remains of the Danish soldiers who fell at the battle of Idstedt (25th of July 1850), but the colossal Lion monument, erected by the Danes to commemorate their victory, was removed to Berlin in 1864. Flensburg is a busy centre of trade and industry, and is the most important town in what was formerly the duchy of Schleswig. It possesses excellent wharves, does a large import trade in coal, and has shipbuilding yards, breweries, distilleries, cloth and paper factories, glass-works, copper-works,

soap-works and rice mills. Its former extensive trade with the West Indies has lately suffered owing to the enormous development of the North Sea ports, but it is still largely engaged in the Greenland whale and the oyster fisheries.

Flensburg was probably founded in the 12th century. It attained municipal privileges in 1284, was frequently pillaged by the Swedes after 1643, and in 1848 became the capital, under Danish rule, of Schleswig.

See Holdt, Flensburg früher und jetzt (1884).

FLERS, a manufacturing town of north-western France, in the arrondissement of Domfront, and department of Orne, on the Vère, 41 m. S. of Caen on the railway to Laval. Pop. (1906) 11,188. A modern church in the Romanesque style and a restored château of the 15th century are its principal buildings. There is a tribunal of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a communal college and a branch of the Bank of France. Flers is the centre of a cotton and linen-manufacturing region which includes the towns of Condé-sur-Noireau and La Ferté-Macé. Manufactures are very important, and include, besides cotton and linen fabrics, of which the annual value is about £1,500,000, drugs and chemicals; there are large brick and tile works, flour mills and dyeworks.

FLETA, a treatise, with the sub-title seu Commentarius juris Anglicani, on the common law of England. It appears, from internal evidence, to have been written in the reign of Edward I., about the year 1290. It is for the most part a poor imitation of Bracton. The author is supposed to have written it during his confinement in the Fleet prison, hence the name. It has been conjectured that he was one of those judges who were imprisoned for malpractices by Edward I. Fleta was first printed by J. Selden in 1647, with a dissertation (2nd edition, 1685).

FLETCHER, ALICE CUNNINGHAM (1845- ), American ethnologist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1845. She studied the remains of Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, and worked and lived with the Omahas as a representative of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. In 1883 she was appointed special agent to allot lands to the Omaha tribes, in 1884 prepared and sent to the New Orleans Exposition an exhibit showing the progress of civilization among the Indians of North America in the quarter-century previous, in 1886 visited the natives of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands on a mission from the commissioner of education, and in 1887 was United States special agent in the distribution of lands among the Winnebagoes and Nez Percés. She was made assistant in ethnology at the Peabody Museum in 1882, and received the Thaw fellowship in 1891; was president of the Anthropological Society of Washington and of the American Folk-Lore Society, and vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and, working through the Woman's National Indian Association, introduced a system of making small loans to Indians, wherewith they might buy land and houses. In 1888 she published Indian Education and Civilization, a special report of the Bureau of Education. In 1898 at the Congress of Musicians held at Omaha during the Trans-Mississippi Exposition she read "several essays upon the songs of the North American Indians... in illustration of which a number of Omaha Indians... sang their native melodies." Out of this grew her Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), illustrating" a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared."

FLETCHER, ANDREW, of Saltoun (1655-1716), Scottish politician, was the son and heir of Sir Robert Fletcher (16251664), and was born at Saltoun, the modern Salton, in East Lothian. Educated by Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, who was then the parish minister of Saltoun, he completed his education by spending some years in travel and study, entering public life as member of the Scottish parliament which met in 1681. Possessing advanced political ideas, Fletcher was a fearless and active opponent of the measures introduced by John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, the representative of

Although on grounds of prudence Fletcher objected to the rising of 1685, he accompanied Monmouth to the west of England, but left the army after killing one of the duke's trusted advisers. This incident is thus told by Sir John Dalrymple:

Being sent upon an expedition, and not esteeming times of danger to be times of ceremony, he had seized for his own riding the horse of a country gentleman (the mayor of Lynne) which stood ready equipt for its master. The master hearing this ran in a passion to Fletcher, gave him opprobrious language, shook his cane and attempted to strike. Fletcher, though rigid in the duties of morality, yet having been accustomed to foreign services both by sea and land in which he had acquired high ideas of the honour of a soldier and a gentleman and of the affront of a cane, pulled out his pistol and shot him dead on the spot. The action was unpopular in countries where such refinements were not understood. A clamour was raised against it among the people of the country; in a body they waited upon the duke with their complaints; and he was forced to desire the only soldier and almost the only man of parts in his army, to abandon him."

Another, but less probable account, represents Fletcher as quitting the rebel army because he disapproved of the action of Monmouth in proclaiming himself king.

His history during the next few years is rather obscure. He probably travelled in Spain, and fought against the Turks in Hungary; and having in his absence lost his estates and been sentenced to death, he joined William of Orange at the Hague, and returned to Scotland in 1689 in consequence of the success of the Revolution of 1688. His estates were restored to him; and he soon became a leading member of the "club," an organization which aimed at reducing the power of the crown in Scotland, and in general an active opponent of the English government. In 1703, at a critical stage in the history of Scotland, Fletcher again became a member of the Scottish parliament. The failure of the Darien expedition had aroused a strong feeling of resentment against England, and Fletcher and the national party seized the opportunity to obtain a greater degree of independence for their country.

His attitude in this matter, and also to the proposal for the union of the two crowns, is thus described by a writer in the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:—

The thought of England's domineering over Scotland was what his generous soul could not endure. The indignities and oppression which Scotland lay under galled him to the heart, so that in his learned and elaborate discourses he exposed them with undaunted courage and pathetical eloquence. In that great event, the Union, he performed essential service. He got the act of security passed, which declared that the two crowns should not pass to the same head till Scotland was secured in her liberties civil and religious. Therefore Lord Godolphin was forced into the Union, to avoid a civil war after the queen's demise. Although Mr Fletcher disapproved of some of the articles, and indeed of the whole frame of the Union, yet, as the act of security was his own work, he had all the merit of that important transaction."

Soon after the passing of the Act of Union Fletcher retired from public life. Employing his abilities in another direction, he did a real, if homely, service to his country by introducing from Holland machinery for sifting grain. He died unmarried in London in September 1716.

Contemporaries speak very highly of Fletcher's integrity, but he was also choleric and impetuous. Burnet describes him as a Scotch gentleman of great parts and many virtues, but a most violent republican and extremely passionate." In appearance he was a low, thin man, of a brown complexion; full of fire; with a stern, sour look." Fletcher was a fine scholar and a graceful writer, and both his writings and speeches afford bright glimpses of the manners and state of the country in his time. His chief works are: A Discourse of Government relating to Militias (1698); Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland (1698); and An Account of a Conversation concerning a right regulation of Governments for the common good of Mankind (1704). In Two Discourses he suggests that the numerous vagrants who infested Scotland should be brought into compulsory and hereditary servitude; and in An Account of a

FLETCHER, GILES (c. 1548-1611), English author, son of Richard Fletcher, vicar of Cranbrook, Kent, and father of the poets Phineas and Giles Fletcher, was born in 1548 or 1549. He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1569. He was a fellow of his college, and was made LL.D. in 1581. In 1580 he had married Joan Sheafe of Cranbrook. In that year he was commissary to Dr Bridgwater, chancellor of Ely, and in 1585 he sat in parliament for Winchelsea. He was employed on diplomatic service in Scotland, Germany and Holland, and in 1588 was sent to Russia to the

court of the czar Theodore with instructions to conclude an alliance between England and Russia, to restore English trade, and to obtain better conditions for the English Russia Company. The factor of the company, Jerome Horsey, had already obtained large concessions through the favour of the protector, Boris Godunov, but when Dr Fletcher reached Moscow in 1588 he found that Godunov's interest was alienated, and that the Russian government was contemplating an alliance with Spain. The envoy was badly lodged, and treated with obvious contempt, and was not allowed to forward letters to England, but the English victory over the Armada and his own indomitable patience secured among other advantages for English traders exclusive rights of trading on the Volga and their security from the infliction of torture. Fletcher's treatment at Moscow was later made the subject of formal complaint by Queen Elizabeth. He returned to England in 1589 in company with Jerome Horsey, and in 1591 he published Of the Russe Commonwealth, Or Maner of Government by the Russe Emperour (commonly called The Emperour of Moskovia) with the manners and fashions of the people of that Countrey. In this comprehensive account of Russian geography, government, law, methods of warfare, church and manners, Fletcher, who states that he began to arrange his material during the return journey, doubtless received some assistance from the longer experience of his travelling companion, who also wrote a narrative of his travels, published in Purchas his Pilgrimes (1626). The Russia Company feared that the freedom of Fletcher's criticisms would give offence to the Muscovite authorities, and accordingly damage their trade. The book was consequently suppressed, and was not reprinted in its entirety until 1856, when it was edited from a copy of the original edition for the Hakluyt Society, with an introduction by Mr Edward A. Bond.

Fletcher was appointed "Remembrancer" to the city of London, and an extraordinary master of requests in 1596, and became treasurer of St Paul's in 1597. He contemplated a history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and in a letter to Lord Burghley he suggested that it might be well to begin with an account from the Protestant side of the marriage of Henry VIII. and Ann Boleyn. But personal difficulties prevented the execution of this plan. He had become security to the exchequer for the debts of his brother, Richard Fletcher, bishop of London, who died in 1596, and was only then saved from imprisonment by the protection of the earl of Essex. He was actually in prison in 1601, when he addressed a somewhat ambiguous letter to Burghley from which it may be gathered that his prime offence had been an allusion to Essex's disgrace as being the work of Sir Walter Raleigh. Fletcher was employed in 1610 to negotiate with Denmark on behalf of the "Eastland Merchants," and he died next year, and was buried on the 11th of March in the parish of St Catherine Colman, London

The Russe Commonwealth was issued in an abridged form in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, Voyages, &c. (vol. i. p. 473, ed. of 1598), a somewhat completer version in Purchas his Pilgrimes (pt. iii. ed. 1625), also as History of Russia in 1643 and 1657.

Fletcher also wrote De literis antiquae Britanniae (ed. by Phineas Fletcher, 1633), a treatise on "The Tartars," printed in Israel Redux (ed. by Samuel) L(ee), 1677), to prove that they were the ten lost tribes of Israel, Latin poems published in various miscellanies, and Licia, or Poemes of Love in Honour of the admirable and singular vertues of his Lady, to the imitation of the best Latin Poets...whereunto is added the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the third (1593). This series of love sonnets, followed by some other poems, was published anonymously. Most critics, with the notable exception of Alexander Dyce (Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, i. p. xvi., 1843) have accepted it as the work of Dr Giles Fletcher on the evidence afforded in the first of the Piscatory Eclogues of his son Phineas, who

represents his father (Thelgon), as having “ raised his rime to sing of Richard's climbing.' See E. A. Bond's Introduction to the Hakluyt Society's edition; also Dr A. B. Grosart's prefatory matter to Licia (Fuller Worthies Library, Miscellanies, vol. iii., 1871), and to the works (1869) of the college dispute with the provost, Dr Roger Goad, are preserved in the Lansdowne MSS. (xxiii. art. 18 et seq.), and are translated in Grosart's edition..

Phineas Fletcher in the same series. Fletcher's letters relative to

FLETCHER, GILES (c. 1584-1623), English poet, younger son of the preceding, was born about 1584. Fuller in his Worthies of England says that he was a native of London, and was educated at Westminster school. From there he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1606, and became a minor fellow of his college in 1608. He was reader in Greek grammar (1615) and in Greek language (1618). In 1603 he contributed a poem on the death of Queen Elizabeth to Sorrow's Joy. His great poem of Christ's Victory appeared in 1610, and in 1612 he edited the Remains of his cousin Nathaniel Pownall. It is not known in what year he was ordained, but his sermons at St Mary's were famous. Fuller tells us that the prayer before the sermon was a continuous allegory. He left Cambridge about 1618, and soon after received, it is supposed from Francis Bacon, the rectory of Alderton, on the Suffolk coast, where " his clownish and low-parted parishioners... valued not their pastor according to his worth; which disposed him to melancholy and hastened his dissolution." (Fuller, Worthies of England, ed. 1811, vol. ii. p. 82). His last work, The Reward of the Faithful, appeared in the year of his death (1623).

The principal work by which Giles Fletcher is known is Christ's Victorie and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death (1610). An edition in 1640 contains seven full-page illustrative engravings by George Tate. It is in four cantos and is epic in design. The first canto, "Christ's Victory in Heaven," represents a dispute in heaven between Justice and Mercy, assuming the facts of Christ's life on earth; the second, "Christ's Victory on Earth," deals with an allegorical account of the Temptation; the third, "Christ's Triumph over Death," treats of the Passion; and the fourth, "Christ's Triumph after Death," treating of the Resurrection and Ascension, concludes with an affectionate eulogy of his brother Phineas Fletcher (q.v.) as Thyrsilis." The metre is an eight-line stanza owing something to Spenser. The first five lines rhyme ababb, and the stanza concludes with a rhyming triplet, resuming the conceit which nearly every verse embodies. Giles Fletcher, like his brother Phineas, to whom he was deeply attached, was a close follower of Spenser. In his very best passages Giles Fletcher attains to a rich melody which charmed the ear of Milton, who did not hesitate to borrow very considerably from the Christ's Victory and Triumph in his Paradise Regained. Fletcher lived in an age which regarded as models the poems of Marini and Gongora, and his conceits are sometimes grotesque in connexion with the sacredness of his subject. But when he is carried away by his theme and forgets to be ingenious, he attains great solemnity and harmony of style. His descriptions of the Lady of Vain Delight, in the second canto, and of Justice and of Mercy in the first, are worked out with much beauty of detail into separate pictures, in the manner of the Faerie Queene.

Giles Fletcher's poem was edited (1868) for the Fuller Worthies Library, and (1876) for the Early English Poets by Dr A. B. Grosart. It is also reprinted for The Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature (1888), and in R. Cattermole's and H. Stebbing's Sacred Classics (1834, &c.) vol. 20. In the library of King's College, Cambridge, is a MS. Aegidii Fletcherii versio poetica Lamentationum

Jeremiae.

FLETCHER, JOHN WILLIAM (1729-1785), English divine, was born at Nyon in Switzerland on the 12th of September 1729, his original name being DE LA FLÉCHIÈRE. He was educated at Geneva, but, preferring an army career to a clerical one, went to Lisbon and enlisted. An accident prevented his sailing with his regiment to Brazil, and after a visit to Flanders, where an uncle offered to secure a cominission for him, he went to England, picked up the language, and in 1752 became tutor in a Shropshire family. Here he came under the influence of the new Methodist preachers, and in 1757 took orders, being ordained by the bishop of Bangor. He often preached with John Wesley and for him, and became known as a fervent supporter of the revival. Refusing the wealthy living of Dunham, he accepted the humble one of Madeley, where for twenty-five years (1760-1785) he lived and worked with unique devotion and zeal. Fletcher was one of the few parish clergy who understood Wesley and his work, yet he never wrote or said anything inconsistent with his own Anglican position. In theology he upheld the Arminian against the Calvinist position, but always with courtesy and fairness; his resignation on doctrinal grounds of the superintendency (1768-1771) of the countess of Huntingdon's college at Trevecca left no unpleasantness. The outstanding feature of his life was a transparent simplicity and saintliness of spirit, and the testimony of his contemporaries to his godliness is unanimous. Wesley preached his funeral sermon from the words "Mark the perfect man." Southey said that "no age ever provided a man of more fervent piety or more perfect charity, and no church ever possessed a more apostolic minister." His fame was not confined to his own country, for it is said that Voltaire, when challenged to produce a character as perfect as that of Christ, at once mentioned Fletcher of Madeley. He died on the 14th of August 1785.

Complete editions of his works were published in 1803 and 1836. The chief of them, written against Calvinism, are Five Checks to and the Portrait of St Paul. See lives by J. Wesley (1786); L. Antinomianism, Scripture Scales to weigh the Gold of Gospel Truth, Tyerman (1882); F. W. Macdonald (1885); J. Maratt (1902); also C. J. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, pp. 384-423 (1869).

FLETCHER, PHINEAS (1582-1650), English poet, elder son of Dr Giles Fletcher, and brother of Giles the younger, noticed above, was born at Cranbrook, Kent, and was baptized on the 8th of April 1582. He was admitted a scholar of Eton, and in 1600 entered King's College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1604, and M.A. in 1608, and was one of the contributors to Sorrow's Joy (1603). His pastoral drama, Sicelides or Piscatory (pr. 1631) was written (1614) for performance before James I., but only produced after the king's departure at King's College. He had been ordained priest and before 1611 became a fellow of his college, but he left Cambridge before 1616, apparently because certain emoluments were refused him. He became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he married and spent the rest of his life. In 1627 he published Locustae, vel Pietas Jesuitica. The Locusts or Apollyonists, two parallel poems in Latin and English furiously attacking the Jesuits. Dr Grosart saw in this work one of the sources of Milton's conception of Satan. Next year appeared an erotic poem, Brittains Ida, with Edmund Spenser's name on the title-page. It is certainly not by Spenser, and is printed by Dr Grosart with the works of Phineas Fletcher. Sicelides, a play acted at King's College in 1614, was printed in 1631. In 1632 appeared two theological prose treatises, The Way to Blessedness and Joy in Tribulation, and in 1633 his magnum opus, The Purple Island. The book was dedicated to his friend Edward Benlowes, and included his Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poetical Miscellanies. He died in 1650, his will being proved by his widow on the 13th of December of that year.

The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, is a poem in twelve cantos describing in cumbrous allegory the physiological tellectual qualities are personified, while the veins are rivers, structure of the human body and the mind of man. The inthe bones the mountains of the island, the whole analogy being worked out with great ingenuity. The manner of Spenser is preserved throughout, but Fletcher never lost sight of his moral

aim to lose himself in digressions like those of the Faerie Queene. | What he gains in unity of design, however, he more than loses in human interest and action. The chief charm of the poem lies in its descriptions of rural scenery. The Piscatory Eclogues are pastorals the characters of which are represented as fisher boys on the banks of the Cam, and are interesting for the light they cast on the biography of the poet himself (Thyrsil) and his father (Thelgon). The poetry of Phineas Fletcher has not the sublimity sometimes reached by his brother Giles. The mannerisms are more pronounced and the conceits more farfetched, but the verse is fluent, and lacks neither colour nor music.

A complete edition of his works (4 vols.) was privately printed by Dr A. B. Grosart (Fuller Worthies Library, 1869).

FLEURANGES, ROBERT (III.) DE LA MARCK, SEIGNEUR DE (1491-1537), marshal of France and historian, was the son of Robert II. de la Marck, duke of Bouillon, seigneur, of Sedan and Fleuranges, whose uncle was the celebrated William de la Marck, "The Wild Boar of the Ardennes." A fondness for military exercises displayed itself in his earliest years, and at the age of ten he was sent to the court of Louis XII., and placed in charge of the count of Angoulême, afterwards King Francis I. In his twentieth year he married a niece of the cardinal d'Amboise, but after three months he quitted his home to join the French army in the Milanese. With a handful of troops he threw himself into Verona, then besieged by the Venetians; but the siege was protracted, and being impatient for more active service, he rejoined the army. He then took part in the relief of Mirandola, besieged by the troops of Pope Julius II., and in other actions of the campaign. In 1512 the French being driven from Italy, Fleuranges was sent into Flanders to levy a body of 10,000 men, in command of which, under his father, he returned to Italy in 1513, seized Alessandria, and vigorously assailed Novara. But the French were defeated, and Fleuranges narrowly escaped with his life, having received more than forty wounds. He was rescued by his father and sent to Vercellae, and thence to Lyons. Returning to Italy with Francis I. in 1515, he distinguished himself in various affairs, and especially at Marignano, where he had a horse shot under him, and contributed so powerfully to the victory of the French that the king knighted him with his own hand. He next took Cremona, and was there called home by the news of his father's illness. In 1519 he was sent into Germany on the difficult errand of inducing the electors to give their votes in favour of Francis I.; but in this he failed. The war in Italy being rekindled, Fleuranges accompanied the king thither, fought at Pavia (1525), and was taken prisoner with his royal master. The emperor, irritated by the defection of his father, Robert II. de la Marck, sent him into confinement in Flanders, where he remained for some years. During this imprisonment he was created marshal of France. He employed his enforced leisure in writing his Histoire des choses mémorables advenues du règne de Louis XII et de François I, depuis 1499 jusqu'en l'an 1521. In this work he designates himself Jeune Adventureux. Within a small compass he gives many curious and interesting details of the time, writing only of what he had seen, and in a very simple but vivid style. The book was first published in 1735, by Abbé Lambert, who added historical and critical notes; and it has been reprinted in several collections. The last occasion on which Fleuranges was engaged in active service was at the defence of Péronne, besieged by the count of Nassau in 1536. In the following year he heard of his father's death, and set out from Amboise for his estate of La Marck; but he was seized with illness at Longjumeau, and died there in December 1537.

See his own book in the Nouvelle Collection des mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France (edited by J. F. Michaud and J. J. F. Poujoulat, series i. vol. v. Paris, 1836 seq.).

FLEUR-DE-LIS (Fr. "lily flower "), an heraldic device, very widespread in the armorial bearings of all countries, but more particularly associated with the royal house of France. The conventional fleur-de-lis, as Littré says, represents very imperfectly three flowers of the white lily (Lilium) joined together,

the central one erect, and each of the other two curving outwards. The fleur-de-lis is a common device in ancient decoration, notably in India and in Egypt, where it was the symbol of life and resurrection, the attribute of the god Horus. It is common also in Etruscan bronzes. It is uncertain whether the conventional fleur-de-lis was originally meant to represent the lily or white iris-the flower-de-luce of Shakespeare-or an arrow-head, a spear-head, an amulet fastened on date-palms to ward off the evil eye, &c. In Roman and early Gothic architecture the fleur-de-lis is a frequent sculptured ornament. As early as 1120 three fleurs-de-lis were sculptured on the capitals of the Chapelle Saint-Aignan at Paris. The fleur-de-lis was first definitely connected with the French monarchy in an ordonnance of Louis le Jeune (c. 1147), and was first figured on a seal of Philip Augustus in 1180. The use of the fleur-de-lis in heraldry dates from the 12th century, soon after which period it became a very common charge in France, England and Germany, where every gentleman of coat-armour desired to adorn his shield

with a loan from the shield of France, which was at first d'azur, reduced the number of fleurs-de-lis to three-in honour of the semé de fleurs de lis d'or. In February 1376 Charles V. of France Trinity-and the kings of France thereafter bore d'azur, à trois fleurs de lis d'or. Tradition soon attributed the origin of the and explained that it represented the lily given to him by an fleur-de-lis to Clovis, the founder of the Frankish monarchy, angel at his baptism. Probably there was as much foundation for this legend as for the more rationalistic explanation of William Newton (Display of Heraldry, p. 145), that the fleur-de-lis was the figure of a reed or flag in blossom, used instead of a sceptre at the proclamation of the Frankish kings. Whatever be the true origin of the fleur-de-lis as a conventional decoration, it is demonstrably far older than the Frankish monarchy, and history does not record the reason of its adoption by the royal house of France, from which it passed into common use as an heraldic charge in most European countries. An order of the Lily, with a fleur-de-lis for badge, was established in the Roman states by Pope Paul III. in 1546; its members were pledged to defend the patrimony of St Peter against the enemies of the church. Another order of the Lily was founded by Louis XVIII. in 1816, in memory of the silver fleurs-de-lis which the comte d'Artois had given to the troops in 1814 as decorations; it was abolished by the revolution of 1830.

FLEURUS, a village of Belgium, in the province of Hennegau, 5 m. N.E. of Charleroi, famous as the scene of several battles. The first of these was fought on August 19/29, 1622, between the forces of Count Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick and the Spaniards under Cordovas, the latter being defeated. The second is described below, and the third and fourth, incidents of Jourdan's campaign of 1794, under FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS. The ground immediately north-east of Fleurus forms the battlefield of Ligny (June 16, 1815), for which see WATERLOO CAMPAIGN.

The second battle was fought on the 1st of July 1690 between 45,000 French under François-Henri de Montgomery-Bouteville, duke of Luxemburg, and 37,000 allied Dutch, Spaniards and Imperialists under George Frederick, prince of Waldeck. The latter had formed up his army between Heppignies and St. Amand in what was then considered an ideal position; a double barrier of marshy brooks was in front, each flank rested on a village, and the space between, open upland, fitted his army exactly. But Luxemburg, riding up with his advanced guard from Velaine, decided, after a cursory survey of the ground, to