Davenport, Francis (fl. 1670-94). In 1670, Davenport, the educated son of a Boston captain, sailed away from New England as a young man, and probably never returned. After surreptitiously taking over of a ship in the West Indies, he fled east across the Atlantic. Then he sailed still further east from England, on the Hopewell. He only entered the East India Company’s employ when he had got out to India. Then the frigate Zant took Davenport and the Company's factory establishment on to Tonkin. Leaving Portsmouth in November 1671 and in Bantam, on Java, during the May following, the ship made a quick passage. A frigate of 180 tons, the Zant provided several weeks of refuge to the adventurers, before continuing on to Macao.

The Zant arrived at Tonkin on a Tuesday, about noon. The four pilots watching her arrival were respectively nationals of Holland, Portugal, France and China. The adventurers navigated the ship over the rivers’ bar, ‘with much hazard and danger; but (blessed be God) in safety, onely lost a boate and an anchor’. Yet the Chinese pilot almost despaired for the safety of the newcomers. Nevertheless, brought-up inside the river mouth, the Zant successfully anchored near the town of Batsha. The bar crossing was hazardous; and it is as part of written advice for how to accomplish it without any loss, that Davenport made his tidal report.

During the summer of 1673 Henry Baker wrote several entries in the factory journal. A subsequent entry notes how several necessary papers were then embarked on a Portuguese ship going back to Bantam, the main centre of operations for the various national East India Companies. The last and eighth of those papers was, ‘Mr Baker’s observations of the tides at Battshaw, as alsoe his letter to the Commander of our ship that shall come next before this barr’. This first notification of an unusual Tonkin tide to reach London also stood supplementary to a more directly commercial report for crossing the bar.

Baker composed his set of tidal observations sometime between 1672 and 1676; for Davenport wrote in the second factory journal that he made his later account of the tides, ‘in compliance with your orders to that purpose of 29^th May last.’ The wording implies the year 1677. The Eagle probably brought out those orders, for the records indicate it making its departure from Tonkin during the eleventh month of that year. Davenport completed his highly detailed tidal account in July 1678. The result of information garnered from the natives and his own observations, he supplemented it with measurements taken over several months. With the report complete, a factory meeting of 23^rd September 1678 resolved that Davenport should return westwards. This was to be via Bantam, on the Formosa Frigate.

In London more than a year onwards, the Court of Committees’ reference to Davenport, in a past tense as the ‘late mariner’, was a premature death notice. The Formosa had various ports of call to make; when it got down to Bantam, Davenport transferred to a ship going direct to England. Unfortunately for him, the ship he then took, the Johannah, had a difficult voyage and he became marooned. This resulted in the prosecution of his career then continuing within Asia, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

Davenport had at one time enjoyed some social standing. Despite that, during an interim voyage from Tonkin, he took the boatswain’s job on the Flying Eagle; and then when finally leaving Tonkin in the Formosa, he secured a place as gunner down to Bantam. He also employed phrases of self effacement in his Tonkin sailing directions, and again in another set of 1694. After having been a pilot on the Hooghly and having become a qualified navigator, Davenport then rose to achieve a chart of the Ganges. Unusual for the time, he eschewed drink. Therefore he would seem to have been an ideal scientific observer. In contrast, several official depositions later came to be made, attacking his character. They were given in 1689 to the House of Commons, where the Company was attracting much criticism for its Jacobite monopoly. In the depositions given there, Davenport stood accused of bigamy, piracy, and murder.

Flamsteed, John (1646-1719), the first astronomer royal, born at Denby, five miles from Derby, 19 Aug. 1646, was the only son of Stephen Flamsteed, a maltster; his mother, Mary, daughter of John Spateman, an ironmonger in Derby, died when he was three years old. He was educated at the free school of Derby, where his father resided. A cold caught in the summer of 1660 while bathing produced a rheumatic affection of the joints, accompanied by other ailments. He became unable to walk to school, and finally left it in May 1662. His self-training now began, and it was directed towards astronomy by the opportune loan of Sacrobosco's ‘De Sphærâ’ In the intervals of prostrating illness he also read Fale's ‘Art of Dialling,’ Stirrup's ‘Complete Diallist,’ Gunter's ‘Sector’ and ‘Canon,’ and Oughtred's ‘Canones Sinuum.’ He observed the partial solar eclipse of 12 Sept. 1662, constructed a rude quadrant, and calculated a table of the sun's altitudes, pursuing his studies, as he said himself, ‘under the discouragement of friends, the want of health, and all other instructors except his better genius.’ Medical treatment, meantime, as varied as it was fruitless, was procured for him by his father. In the spring of 1664 he was sent to one Cromwell, ‘cried up for cures by the nonconformist party;’ in 1665 he travelled to Ireland to be ‘stroked’ by Valentine Greatrakes. A detailed account of the journey was found among his papers. He left Derby 16 Aug., borrowed a horse in Dublin, which carried him by easy stages to Cappoquin, and was operated upon 11 Sept., ‘but found not his disease to stir.’ His faith in the supernatural gifts of the ‘ stroker,’ however, survived the disappointment, and he tried again at Worcester in the February following, with the same negative result, ‘though several there were cured.’
    His talents gradually brought him into notice. Among his patrons was Imanuel Halton of Wingfield Manor, who lent him the ‘ Rudolphine Tables,’ Riccioli's ‘Almagest,’ and other mathematical books. For his friend, William Litchford, Flamsteed wrote, in August 1666, a paper on the construction and use of the quadrant, and in 1667 explained the causes of, and gave the first rules for, the equation of time in a tract, the publication of which in 1673, with Horrocks's ‘Posthumous Works,’ closed controversy on the subject. His first printed observation was of the solar eclipse of 25 Oct. 1668, which afforded him the discovery ‘that the tables differed very much from the heavens.’ Their rectification formed thenceforth the chief object of his labours.
    Some calculations of appulses of the moon to fixed stars, which he forwarded to the Royal Society late in 1669 under the signature ‘In Mathesi a sole fundes’ (an anagram of ‘Johannes Flamsteedius’), were inserted in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (iv. 1099), and procured him a letter of thanks from Oldenburg and a correspondence during five years with John Collins (1625-1683).
    About Easter 1670 he ‘made a voyage to see London; visited Mr. Oldenburg and Mr. Collins, and was by the last carried to see the Tower and Sir Jonas Moore’ (master of the ordnance), ‘who presented me with Mr. Townley's micrometer and undertook to procure me glasses for a telescope to fit it.’
    On his return from London he made acquaintance with Newton and Barrow at Cambridge, and entered his name at Jesus College. His systematic observations commenced in October 1671, and ‘by the assistance of Mr. Townley's curious mensurator’ they ‘attained to the preciseness of 5².’ ‘I had no pendulum movement,’ he adds, ‘to measure time with, they being not common in the country at that time. But I took the heights of the stars for finding the true time of my observations by a wood quadrant about eighteen inches radius fixed to the side of my seven-foot telescope, which I found performed well enough for my purpose.’ This was by necessity limited to such determinations as needed no great accuracy in time, such as of the lunar and planetary diameters, and of the elongations of Jupiter's satellites. He soon discovered that the varying dimensions of the moon contradicted all theories of her motion save that of Horrocks, lately communicated to him by Townley, and its superiority was confirmed by an occultation of the Pleiades on 6 Nov. 1671. He accordingly undertook to render it practically available, fitting it for publication in 1673, at the joint request of Newton and Oldenburg, by the addition of numerical elements and a more detailed explanation (Horroccii Op. Posth. p. 467). An improved edition of these tables was appended to Flamsteed's ‘Doctrine of the Sphere,’ included in Sir Jonas Moore's ‘New System of the Mathematicks’ (vol. i. 1680).
    A ‘monitum’ of a favourable opposition of Mars in September 1672 was presented by him both to the Paris Academy of Sciences and to the Royal Society, and he deduced from his own observations of it at Townley in Lancashire a solar parallax ‘not above 10², corresponding to a distance of, at most, 21,000 terrestrial radii’ (Phil. Trans. viii. 6100). His tract on the real and apparent diameters of the planets, written in 1673, furnished Newton with the data on the subject, employed in the third book of the ‘Principia;’ yet the oblateness of Jupiter's figure was, strange to say, first pointed out to Flamsteed by Cassini.
    At Cambridge on 5 June 1674, he took a degree of M.A. per literas regias, designing to take orders and settle in a small living near Derby, which was in the gift of a friend of his father's. He was in London as a guest of Sir Jonas Moore's at the Tower 13 July to 17 Aug., and by his advice compiled a table of the tides for the king's use; and the king and the Duke of York were each supplied with a barometer and thermometer made from his models, besides a copy of his rules for forecasting the weather by their means. Early in 1675 Moore again summoned him from Derby for the purpose of consulting him about the establishment of a private observatory at Chelsea to be placed under his direction.
    A certain ‘bold and indigent Frenchman,’ calling himself the Sieur de St. Pierre, proposed at this juncture a scheme for finding the longitude at sea, and through the patronage of the Duchess of Portsmouth obtained a royal commission for its examination. Flamsteed was, by Sir Jonas Moore's interest, nominated a member, and easily showed the Frenchman's plan to be futile without a far more accurate knowledge of the places of the fixed stars, and of the moon's course among them, than was then possessed. Charles II thereupon exclaimed with vehemence that ‘he must have them anew observed, examined, and corrected for the use of his seamen.’ Flamsteed was accordingly appointed ‘astronomical observator’ by a royal warrant dated 4 March 1675, directing him ‘forthwith to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation.’ A site in Greenwich Park was chosen for the new observatory by Sir Christopher Wren, and the building was hastily run up from his design at a cost of 520l., realised by the sale of spoilt gunpowder.Flamsteed was ordained by Bishop Gunning at Ely House at Easter 1675, and continued to observe at the Tower and afterwards at the queen's house in Greenwich Park, until 10 July 1676, when he removed to the Royal Observatory. He found it destitute of any instrument provided by the government; but Sir Jonas Moore gave him an iron sextant of seven feet radius, with two clocks by Tompion, and he brought from Derby a three-foot quadrant and two telescopes. His salary was 100l. a year, cut down by taxation to 90l., and for this pittance he was expected, not only to reform astronomy, but to instruct two boys from Christ's Hospital. His official assistant was a ‘surly, silly labourer,’ available for moving the sextant; and his large outlay in procuring skilled aid and improved instruments obliged him to take private pupils, numbering, between 1676 and 1709, about 140, many of them of the highest rank. Under these multiplied disadvantages, and in spite of continued ill-health, he achieved amazing results. The whole of the theories and tables of the heavenly bodies then in use were visibly and widely erroneous. Flamsteed undertook the herculean task of revising them single-handed. ‘My chief design,’ he wrote to Dr. Seth Ward on 31 Jan. 1680, ‘is to rectify the places of the fixed stars, and, of them, chiefly those near the ecliptic and in the moon's way’ (Baily, Flamsteed, p. 119). His first observation for the purpose was made on 19 Sept. 1676, and he had executed some twenty thousand by 1689. But they were made in the old way, by measuring intermutual distances, and gave only the relative places of the stars. He had as yet no instrument fit to determine the position of the equinox, but was compelled to take it on trust from Tycho Brahe. A small quadrant, lent to him by the Royal Society, was withdrawn after Sir Jonas Moore's death on 27 Aug. 1679, with which event, he remarks, ‘fell all my hopes of having any allowance of expenses for making such instruments as I still wanted.’ After some fruitless applications to government, he resolved to construct at his own cost a mural quadrant of fifty inches radius, which he himself set up and divided in 1683. With its aid he took the meridional altitudes of a number of stars with an estimated error of half a minute, and formed a rough working catalogue of some of the principal. But the quadrant proved too slight for stability, and the old sextant was after a time again resorted to.
    In 1684 Flamsteed was presented by Lord North to the living of Burstow in Surrey, and his circumstances were further improved by his father's death in 1688. With the aid of Abraham Sharp he was thus enabled to undertake the construction of the mural arc with which all his most valuable work was executed. Its completion marked a great advance in the art of mathematical instrument making. The limb, firmly fixed in the meridian, was of 140°, and was divided with hitherto unapproached accuracy; the radius was of seven feet. Observations with it were begun on 12 Sept. 1689. ‘From this moment,’ Baily writes (Flamsteed, p. xxix), ‘everything which Flamsteed did was available to some useful purpose, his preceding observations being only subsidiary, and dependent on results to be afterwards deduced from some fixed instrument of this kind.’ His first concern was to determine the latitude of the observatory, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the position of the equinox; and the method employed for this last object, by which he ascertained absolute right ascensions through simultaneous observations of the sun and a star near both equinoxes, was original, and may be called the basis of modern astronomy. He determined in this way in 1690 the right ascensions of forty stars to serve as points of reference for the rest. The construction of a catalogue, more accurate and extensive than any yet existing, was his primary purpose; but he continued, as he advanced with it, to compute the errors and correct the tables of the sun, moon, and planets.
Flamsteed was elected into the Royal Society on 8 Feb. 1677; he sat on the council 1681-4, and again 1698-1700. But some years later he allowed his subscription to drop, and his name was, on 9 Nov. 1709, erased from the list of fellows. In December 1677 Dr. Bernard offered to resign the Savilian professorship of astronomy in his favour; but the project was soon found to be hopeless, owing to Flamsteed's not being a graduate of Oxford.
    His observations on the great comet, extending from 22 Dec. 1680 to 15 Feb. 1681, were transmitted to Newton, and turned to account in the ‘Principia.’ He firmly held that they referred to the body already seen in November, which reappeared after passing the sun; while Newton believed that there were two comets, and only acknowledged his error in September 1685. His letter on the subject, however, shows no trace of the ‘magisterial ridicule’ which Flamsteed, in his subsequent ill-humour, declared had been thrown upon his opinion.
    In a letter dated 10 Aug. 1691 Newton advised Flamsteed to print at once a preliminary catalogue of a few leading stars. But Flamsteed had large schemes in view which he could not bear to anticipate by partial publication, and importunities irritated without persuading him. Hence he drifted into a position of antagonism to his scientific contemporaries, which his infirmities of temper deplorably aggravated.
    He attributed Newton's suggestion to the inimical influence of Halley, of whom, in his reply, he spoke in rancorous terms. He never, it would seem, forgave him for indicating, in 1686, a mistake in his tide-tables (Phil. Trans. xvi. 192), and certainly did what he could to frustrate his hopes of the Savilian professorship in 1691. He disliked him besides for his ‘bantering’ manner, and rejected all efforts towards reconciliation.
    Newton's resumption of his toil upon the lunar theory brought him into constant intercourse with the astronomer royal. ‘Sir Isaac,’ Flamsteed said afterwards, ‘worked with the ore he had dug.’ ‘If he dug the ore,’ Sir Isaac replied, ‘I made the gold ring’ (Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, ii. 178).
On 1 Sept. 1694 Newton visited the Royal Observatory, and Flamsteed, ‘esteeming him to be an obliged friend,’ explained the progress of his work, and gave him a hundred and fifty observed places of the moon with their tabular errors, for his private use in correcting the theory of her motions. He stipulated, however, that they should be imparted to no one else without his consent. Similar communications were repeated at intervals during sixteen months, not without chafings of spirit on both sides. Flamsteed was often ill, and always overworked; Newton was in consequence frequently kept waiting. There is evidence that he was occasionally kept waiting of set purpose; and his petulant letter of 9 July 1695 is largely excused by Flamsteed's admission that ‘I did not think myself obliged to employ my pains to serve a person that was so inconsiderate as to presume he had a right to that which was only a courtesy. And I therefore went on with my business of the fixed stars, leaving Mr. Newton to examine the lunar observations over again’ (Baily, Flamsteed, p. 63). An offer of a pecuniary recompense for his communications was rejected with justifiable warmth; yet the consequence of their grudging bestowal probably was that Newton desisted in disgust from his efforts to complete the lunar theory (Edleston, Correspondence of Newton and Cotes, p. lxiv).
    Flamsteed occasionally visited Newton in Jermyn Street after his appointment as warden of the mint, and found him civil, though less friendly than formerly. He, however, came to Greenwich on 4 Dec. 1698, and took away twelve lunar places.
In January 1694, on tabulating his observations of the pole-star, Flamsteed was surprised to find its polar distance always greater in July than in December. ‘ This is the first time, I am apt to think,’ he wrote, ‘that any real parallax hath been observed in the fixed stars.’ The apparent displacements noted by him were, in fact, caused by the aberration of light, the value of which his observations, discussed by Peters, gave, with a close approach to accuracy, as =20²×676 (Grant, Hist. of Astron. p. 477). He might easily have perceived that they were of a different character from any attributable to annual parallax, as J. J. Cassini at once pointed out (Mém. de l'Ac. des Sciences, 1699, p. 177). Flamsteed's ‘Letter to Dr. Wallis on the Parallax of the Earth's Annual Orb’ was published, turned into Latin, in Wallis's ‘Opera Mathematica’ (iii. 701, 1699). It contained a paragraph, inserted for the purpose of refuting the charge of uncommunicativeness current against him, referring to the lunar data imparted to Newton. Newton obtained the suppression of the statement; but Flamsteed's feelings towards him were thenceforth of unmitigated bitterness.Newton nevertheless dined at the Royal Observatory on 11 April 1704. The real object of the visit was to ascertain the state of the catalogue, which Flamsteed, ‘to obviate clamour,’ had announced to be sufficiently forward for printing. It was about half finished, and Newton offered to recommend its publication to Prince George of Denmark. The astronomer royal ‘civilly refused’ the proposal. ‘Plainly,’ he added, ‘his design was to get the honour of all my pains to himself.’
    Yet the suggested plan was carried out. A committee of the Royal Society, including Newton, Wren, Arbuthnot, and Gregory, was appointed by the prince, and on 23 Jan. 1705 reported in favour of publication. The prince undertook the expense; arrangements were made for printing the catalogue and observations, and articles between Flamsteed, the ‘referees’ (as the members of the committee were called), and the printers were signed on 10 Nov. 1705.
    A prolonged wrangle ensued. Each party accused the other of wilfully delaying the press, and a deadlock of many months was no unfrequent result of the contentions. Flamsteed gave free vent to his exasperation. His observations were made with his own instruments, and computed by his paid servants. He understood better than any man living how such a series ought to be presented, and naturally thought it a gross hardship to be placed at the mercy of a committee adverse to all his views.
    There were discreditable suspicions on both sides. ‘I fear,’ Flamsteed wrote to Sharp on 28 Nov. 1705, ‘Sir Isaac will still find ways to obstruct the publication of a work which perhaps he thinks may make him appear less. I have some reason to think he thrust himself into my affairs purposely to obstruct them.’ On the other hand, it was resolved at a meeting of the referees on 13 July 1708 ‘that the press shall go on without further delay,’ and ‘that if Mr. Flamsteed do not take care that the proofs be well corrected and go on with dispatch, another corrector be employed.’
    By Christmas 1707 the first volume, containing only the observations made with the sextant, 1676-89, was at last printed off, but as to the arrangement of the second there was total disagreement. While it was at its height the prince died, on 28 Oct. 1708, and the publication was suspended. Not ill-pleased, Flamsteed resumed his work with the catalogue. A board of visitors to the observatory, consisting of the president (Newton) and other members of the Royal Society, appointed by a royal order, dated 12 Dec. 1710, was, however, empowered both to superintend the publication and to take cognisance of official misconduct on the part of the astronomer-royal. Flamsteed's indignant protest elicited from Mr. Secretary St. John only the haughty reply that ‘the queen would be obeyed.’
    The visitors resumed without Flamsteed's knowledge the suspended printing of his catalogue. Two imperfect copies, comprising about three-fourths of the whole, had been deposited with the referees on 15 March 1706, and 20 March 1708, respectively. The first only was sealed, and Flamsteed raised a needless clamour about Newton's ‘treachery’ in opening it. The truth seems to be that the act complained of under the influence of subsequent wrath was accomplished, with Flamsteed's concurrence, as early as 1708. On 2 March 1711 he was applied to by Arbuthnot to complete the catalogue from his later observations, and at first appeared disposed to temporise; but on learning that Halley was the editor he kept no further terms, writing to Arbuthnot on 29 March ‘that the neglect of me, and the ill-usage I had met with, was a dishonour to the queen and the nation, and would cause just reflections on the authors of it in future times’ (Baily, Flamsteed, p. 227).
    In this temper he was summoned, on 26 Oct. 1711, to meet the president and other members of the board at the Royal Society's rooms in Crane Court. Requested to state the condition of his instruments, he declared they were his own, and he would suffer no one to concern himself with them. Whereupon Newton exclaimed, ‘As good have no observatory as no instruments!’ ‘I proceeded from this,’ Flamsteed relates, ‘to tell Sir Isaac (who was fired) that I thought it the business of their society to encourage my labours, and not to make me uneasy for them, and that by their clandestine proceedings I was robbed of the fruits of my labours; that I had expended above 2,000l. in instruments and assistance. At this the impetuous man grew outrageous, and said, “We are, then, robbers of your labours.” I answered, I was sorry they acknowledged themselves to be so. After this, all he said was in a rage. He called me many hard names¾puppy was the most innocent of them. I only told him to keep his temper, restrain his passion, and thanked him as often as he gave me ill names’ (ib. p. 228).
    We have only Flamsteed's account of this unseemly altercation. It at any rate put the finishing touch to the hostility between him and Newton, and inspired Flamsteed's resolution of printing his observations according to his own plan and at his own expense. His petition to the queen for the suppression of what he termed a ‘surreptitious’ edition of his works was without effect. The ‘Historia Celestis’ appeared in 1712, in one folio volume, made up of two books, the first containing the catalogue and sextant observations; the second, observations made with Sharp's mural arc, 1689-1705. But the catalogue was the avowedly imperfect one deposited with the referees in 1708, and completed, without Flamsteed's concurrence, from such of his observations as could be made available. Halley was said to have boasted, in Child's coffee-house, of his pains in correcting its faults. Flamsteed called him a ‘lazy and malicious thief,’ and declared he had by his meddling ‘very effectually spoiled’ the work. The observations were incompletely and inaccurately given, and Halley's preface was undoubtedly an offensive document.
    The energy displayed by Flamsteed during the last seven years of his life, in the midst of growing infirmities, was extraordinary. He was afflicted with a painful disease, prostrated by periodical headaches, and crippled with gout. ‘Though I grow daily feebler,’ he wrote in 1713, ‘yet I have strength enough to carry on my business strenuously.’ He observed diligently till within a few days of his death, while prosecuting his purpose of independent publication in spite of numerous difficulties. Newton's refusal to restore 175 sheets of his quadrant observations put him to an expense of 200l. in having them recopied; and he was compelled in 1716 to resort to legal proceedings for the recovery from him of four quarto volumes of ‘Night Notes’ (original entries of observations), entrusted to him for purposes of comparison in 1705. In the second edition of the ‘Principia’ Newton omitted several passages in which he had in 1687 acknowledged his obligations to his former friend.
    The enlarged catalogue was hastily printed before the close of 1712, but only a few copies were allowed to be seen in strict confidence. The death of Queen Anne on 1 Aug. 1714, quickly followed by that of Halifax, Newton's patron, brought a turn in Flamsteed's favour. The new lord chamberlain was his friend, and a memorial to the lords of the treasury procured him possession of the three hundred remaining copies (out of four hundred) of the spurious ‘Historia Celestis,’ delivered to him by order of Sir Robert Walpole. Sparing only from each ninety-seven sheets of observations with the sextant, he immediately committed them to the flames, ‘as a sacrifice to heavenly truth,’ and ‘that none might remain to show the ingratitude of two of his countrymen who had used him worse than ever the noble Tycho was used in Denmark.’ The extreme scarcity of the edition thus devastated is attested by the following inscription in a copy presented to the Bodleian Library by Sir Robert Walpole in 1725: ‘Exemplar hoc “Historiæ Celestis,” quod in thesauraria regia adservabatur, et cum paucis aliis vitaverat ignem et iram Flamsteedianum, Bibliotheca Bodleiana debet honorabili admodum viro Roberto Walpole, Scaccarii Cancellario,’ &c. Its value is enhanced by a letter from Mrs. Flamsteed pasted into it, requesting its removal as an ‘erroneous abridgment of Mr. Flamsteed's works.’Newton nevertheless dined at the Royal Observatory on 11 April 1704. The real object of the visit was to ascertain the state of the catalogue, which Flamsteed, ‘to obviate clamour,’ had announced to be sufficiently forward for printing. It was about half finished, and Newton offered to recommend its publication to Prince George of Denmark. The astronomer royal ‘civilly refused’ the proposal. ‘Plainly,’ he added, ‘his design was to get the honour of all my pains to himself.’
Yet the suggested plan was carried out. A committee of the Royal Society, including Newton, Wren, Arbuthnot, and Gregory, was appointed by the prince, and on 23 Jan. 1705 reported in favour of publication. The prince undertook the expense; arrangements were made for printing the catalogue and observations, and articles between Flamsteed, the ‘referees’ (as the members of the committee were called), and the printers were signed on 10 Nov. 1705.
    A prolonged wrangle ensued. Each party accused the other of wilfully delaying the press, and a deadlock of many months was no unfrequent result of the contentions. Flamsteed gave free vent to his exasperation. His observations were made with his own instruments, and computed by his paid servants. He understood better than any man living how such a series ought to be presented, and naturally thought it a gross hardship to be placed at the mercy of a committee adverse to all his views.
    There were discreditable suspicions on both sides. ‘I fear,’ Flamsteed wrote to Sharp on 28 Nov. 1705, ‘Sir Isaac will still find ways to obstruct the publication of a work which perhaps he thinks may make him appear less. I have some reason to think he thrust himself into my affairs purposely to obstruct them.’ On the other hand, it was resolved at a meeting of the referees on 13 July 1708 ‘that the press shall go on without further delay,’ and ‘that if Mr. Flamsteed do not take care that the proofs be well corrected and go on with dispatch, another corrector be employed.’
By Christmas 1707 the first volume, containing only the observations made with the sextant, 1676-89, was at last printed off, but as to the arrangement of the second there was total disagreement. While it was at its height the prince died, on 28 Oct. 1708, and the publication was suspended. Not ill-pleased, Flamsteed resumed his work with the catalogue. A board of visitors to the observatory, consisting of the president (Newton) and other members of the Royal Society, appointed by a royal order, dated 12 Dec. 1710, was, however, empowered both to superintend the publication and to take cognisance of official misconduct on the part of the astronomer-royal. Flamsteed's indignant protest elicited from Mr. Secretary St. John only the haughty reply that ‘the queen would be obeyed.’
    The visitors resumed without Flamsteed's knowledge the suspended printing of his catalogue. Two imperfect copies, comprising about three-fourths of the whole, had been deposited with the referees on 15 March 1706, and 20 March 1708, respectively. The first only was sealed, and Flamsteed raised a needless clamour about Newton's ‘treachery’ in opening it. The truth seems to be that the act complained of under the influence of subsequent wrath was accomplished, with Flamsteed's concurrence, as early as 1708. On 2 March 1711 he was applied to by Arbuthnot to complete the catalogue from his later observations, and at first appeared disposed to temporise; but on learning that Halley was the editor he kept no further terms, writing to Arbuthnot on 29 March ‘that the neglect of me, and the ill-usage I had met with, was a dishonour to the queen and the nation, and would cause just reflections on the authors of it in future times’ (Baily, Flamsteed, p. 227).
    In this temper he was summoned, on 26 Oct. 1711, to meet the president and other members of the board at the Royal Society's rooms in Crane Court. Requested to state the condition of his instruments, he declared they were his own, and he would suffer no one to concern himself with them. Whereupon Newton exclaimed, ‘As good have no observatory as no instruments!’ ‘I proceeded from this,’ Flamsteed relates, ‘to tell Sir Isaac (who was fired) that I thought it the business of their society to encourage my labours, and not to make me uneasy for them, and that by their clandestine proceedings I was robbed of the fruits of my labours; that I had expended above 2,000l. in instruments and assistance. At this the impetuous man grew outrageous, and said, “We are, then, robbers of your labours.” I answered, I was sorry they acknowledged themselves to be so. After this, all he said was in a rage. He called me many hard names¾puppy was the most innocent of them. I only told him to keep his temper, restrain his passion, and thanked him as often as he gave me ill names’ (ib. p. 228).
    We have only Flamsteed's account of this unseemly altercation. It at any rate put the finishing touch to the hostility between him and Newton, and inspired Flamsteed's resolution of printing his observations according to his own plan and at his own expense. His petition to the queen for the suppression of what he termed a ‘surreptitious’ edition of his works was without effect. The ‘Historia Celestis’ appeared in 1712, in one folio volume, made up of two books, the first containing the catalogue and sextant observations; the second, observations made with Sharp's mural arc, 1689-1705. But the catalogue was the avowedly imperfect one deposited with the referees in 1708, and completed, without Flamsteed's concurrence, from such of his observations as could be made available. Halley was said to have boasted, in Child's coffee-house, of his pains in correcting its faults. Flamsteed called him a ‘lazy and malicious thief,’ and declared he had by his meddling ‘very effectually spoiled’ the work. The observations were incompletely and inaccurately given, and Halley's preface was undoubtedly an offensive document.
    The energy displayed by Flamsteed during the last seven years of his life, in the midst of growing infirmities, was extraordinary. He was afflicted with a painful disease, prostrated by periodical headaches, and crippled with gout. ‘Though I grow daily feebler,’ he wrote in 1713, ‘yet I have strength enough to carry on my business strenuously.’ He observed diligently till within a few days of his death, while prosecuting his purpose of independent publication in spite of numerous difficulties. Newton's refusal to restore 175 sheets of his quadrant observations put him to an expense of 200l. in having them recopied; and he was compelled in 1716 to resort to legal proceedings for the recovery from him of four quarto volumes of ‘Night Notes’ (original entries of observations), entrusted to him for purposes of comparison in 1705. In the second edition of the ‘Principia’ Newton omitted several passages in which he had in 1687 acknowledged his obligations to his former friend.
    The enlarged catalogue was hastily printed before the close of 1712, but only a few copies were allowed to be seen in strict confidence. The death of Queen Anne on 1 Aug. 1714, quickly followed by that of Halifax, Newton's patron, brought a turn in Flamsteed's favour. The new lord chamberlain was his friend, and a memorial to the lords of the treasury procured him possession of the three hundred remaining copies (out of four hundred) of the spurious ‘Historia Celestis,’ delivered to him by order of Sir Robert Walpole. Sparing only from each ninety-seven sheets of observations with the sextant, he immediately committed them to the flames, ‘as a sacrifice to heavenly truth,’ and ‘that none might remain to show the ingratitude of two of his countrymen who had used him worse than ever the noble Tycho was used in Denmark.’ The extreme scarcity of the edition thus devastated is attested by the following inscription in a copy presented to the Bodleian Library by Sir Robert Walpole in 1725: ‘Exemplar hoc “Historiæ Celestis,” quod in thesauraria regia adservabatur, et cum paucis aliis vitaverat ignem et iram Flamsteedianum, Bibliotheca Bodleiana debet honorabili admodum viro Roberto Walpole, Scaccarii Cancellario,’ &c. Its value is enhanced by a letter from Mrs. Flamsteed pasted into it, requesting its removal as an ‘erroneous abridgment of Mr. Flamsteed's works.’
    Taken ill on Sunday, 27 Dec. 1719, Flamsteed expired about 9.30 p.m. on the 31st. He remained sensible to the last, but speech failed, and his last wishes remained unuttered. He was buried in the chancel of the parish church of Burstow, but though funds were, by Mrs. Flamsteed's will, appropriated to the purpose, no monument has ever marked his grave (E. Dunkin, Observatory, iv. 234). He married, on 23 Oct. 1692, Margaret, daughter of Mr. Ralph Cooke of London, but had no children. He left about 350l. in ready money, and settled upon his widow 120l. a year in Exchequer and South Sea stock. He made no arrangements for the completion of his great work, of which the first and most of the second volume were printed at his decease. The devotion of his assistant, Joseph Crosthwait, supplied the omission. ‘He has not left me in a capacity to serve him,’ he wrote, ‘notwithstanding he has often told me he would; but this I impute to his not being sensible of his near approach till it was too late; but the love, honour, and esteem I have, and shall always, for his memory and everything that belongs to him, will not permit me to leave Greenwich or London before, I hope, the three volumes are finished’ (Baily, Flamsteed, p. 333). This was accomplished, with Sharp's assistance, in 1725.
    Of the three folio volumes constituting the ‘Historia Celestis Britannica,’ the first comprised the observations of Gascoigne and Crabtree, 1638-43; those made by Flamsteed at Derby and the Tower, 1668-74, with the sextant observations at Greenwich 1676-89, spared from destruction with the edition of 1712. The second volume contained his observations with the mural arc, 1689-1720. The third opened with a disquisition entitled ‘Prolegomena to the Catalogue,’ on the progress of astronomy from the earliest ages, chiefly valuable for the description, with which it terminated, of the Greenwich instruments and methods; the catalogues of Ptolemy, Ulugh Beigh, Tycho Brahe, the Landgrave of Hesse, and Hevelius followed; finally came the ‘British Catalogue’ of 2,935 stars observed at Greenwich, to which Halley's southern stars were appended. A dedication to George I, by Margaret Flamsteed and James Hodgson (the husband of Flamsteed's niece), was prefixed to the first volume; but Flamsteed's vindication of his conduct was cancelled from the preface, doubtless out of regard to the reputation of Newton and Halley.
The appearance of the ‘Atlas Celestis,’ corresponding to the ‘British Catalogue,’ was delayed, owing to difficulties with engravers and lack of funds, until 1729. The figures of the constellations were drawn by Sir James Thornhill. Crosthwait's labours in editing his master's works thus extended over ten years, and involved the sacrifice of his own prospects in life. Yet he never received one farthing. For this signal act of injustice Mrs. Flamsteed was responsible. She showed, nevertheless, an active zeal for her husband's honour, and resisted with spirit and success the outrageous claim made by the government after his death to the possession of his instruments. She died on 29 July 1730, and was buried with him at Burstow.
Flamsteed was in many respects an excellent man, pious and conscientious, patient in suffering, of unimpeachable morality, and rigidly abstemious habits. His wife and servants were devoted to him, living and dead; but his naturally irritable temper, aggravated by disease, could not brook rivalry. He was keenly jealous of his professional reputation. His early reverence for Newton was recorded in the stray note among his observations: ‘I study not for present applause; Mr. Newton's approbation is more to me than the cry of all the ignorant in the world.’ Later he was not ashamed to call him ‘our great pretender,’ and to affect scorn for his ‘speculations about gravity,’ ‘crotchets,’ and ‘conceptions.’ The theory of gravitation he described in 1710 as ‘Kepler's doctrine of magnetical fibres, improved by Sir C. Wren, and prosecuted by Sir I. Newton,’ adding, ‘I think I can lay some claim to a part of it.’ He had certainly, in 1681, spoken of the attraction of the sun as determining the fall towards him of the great comet, but attributed the curve of its path to the resistance of the planetary vortex.
    ‘Flamsteed,’ Professor De Morgan wrote, ‘was in fact Tycho Brahe with a telescope; there was the same capability of adapting instrumental means, the same sense of the inadequacy of existing tables, the same long-continued perseverance in actual observation’ (Penny Cyclopædia). Nor was he a mere observer piling up data for others to employ, but diligently turned them to account for improving the power of prediction. His solar tables were constructed at the age of twenty-one, published in 1673 with Horrocks's ‘Opera Posthuma,’ and constantly, in subsequent years, amended. The discovery of the importance of the Horroxian lunar theory was due to him; he extended it to include the equations given by Newton in 1702, and he formed thence improved tables published in Lemonnier's ‘Institutions Astronomiques’ in 1746. He remarked the alternately and inversely accelerated and retarded movements of Jupiter and Saturn; determined the elements of the solar rotation, fixing its period at 25¼ days, and formed from diligent observations of sun-spots a theory of the solar constitution similar to that introduced later by Sir William Herschel, viz. ‘that the substance of the sun is terrestrial matter, his light but the liquid menstruum encompassing him’ (Brewster, Newton, ii. 103). He observed Uranus six times as a fixed star, the observation of 13 Dec. 1690 affording the earliest datum for the calculation of its orbit.
    Flamsteed's ‘British Catalogue’ is styled by Baily ‘one of the proudest productions of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.’ Its importance is due to its being the first collection of the kind made with the telescope and clock. Its value was necessarily impaired by defective reduction, and Flamsteed's neglect of Newton's advice to note the state of the barometer and thermometer at the time of his observations rendered it hopeless to attempt to educe from them improved results by modern processes of correction. The catalogue showed besides defects attributable to the absence of the author's final revision. Sir William Herschel detected errors so numerous as to suggest the need of an index to the original observations printed in the second volume of the ‘Historia Celestis.’ Miss Herschel undertook the task, and showed, by recomputing the place of each star, that Flamsteed had catalogued 111 stars which he had never observed, and observed 560 which he had not catalogued (Phil. Trans. lxxxvii. 293). Her catalogue of these inedited stars was published by order of the Royal Society in 1798; they were by Baily in 1829 arranged in order of right ascension, and identified (all but seventy) by comparison with later catalogues (Memoirs R. Astr. Soc. iv. 129).
    Flamsteed's portrait was painted by Gibson in 1712. An engraving by Vertue was prefixed to the ‘Historia Celestis,’ and the original was bequeathed by Mrs. Flamsteed to the Royal Society. A replica is preserved in the Bodleian Library. The features are strongly marked, and bear little trace of age or infirmity; the expression is intelligent and sensitive. Flamsteed was described by an old writer as a ‘humorist and of warm passions.’ That he occasionally relished a joke is shown in an anecdote related by him to his friend, Dr. Whiston, concerning the unexpected success with which he once assumed the character of a prophet (Cole, Athenæ Cantabr.; Add. MS. 5869, f. 77; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iii. 285). Peter the Great visited the Royal Observatory, and saw Flamsteed observe several times in February 1698.
    Flamsteed's communications to the Royal Society extended from 1670 to 1686 (Phil. Trans. iv-xvi.), and his observations during 1713, ‘abridged and spoiled,’ as he affirmed, were sent to the same collection by Newton (ib. xxix. 285). ‘A Correct Table of the Sun's Declination,’ compiled by him, was inserted in Jones's ‘ Compendium of the Art of Navigation’ (p. 103, 1702), and ‘A Letter concerning Earthquakes,’ in which he had attempted in 1693 to generalise the attendant circumstances of those phenomena, was published at London in 1750.
    Sources: The chief source of information regarding Flamsteed is Francis Baily's Account of the Rev. John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal (London, 1835, 4to). The materials for this valuable work were derived largely from a mass of Flamsteed's manuscript books and papers, purchased by the Board of Longitude for 100l. in 1771, which lay in disorder at the Royal Observatory until Baily explored them. The incentive to the search was, however, derived from a collection of Flamsteed's original letters to Sharp, discovered after long years of neglect in a garret in Sharp's house at Little Horton in Yorkshire, and submitted to Baily in 1832. They were exhibited before the British Association in 1833 (Report, p. 462), and are now in the possession of the Rev. R. Harley, F.R.S., who has kindly permitted the present writer to inspect them. The collection includes 124 letters from Flamsteed, 60 from Crosthwait, and 1 from Mrs. Flamsteed, dated 15 Aug. 1720, all addressed to Sharp, whose replies are written in shorthand on the back of each. The first part of Baily's Account contains Flamsteed's History of his own Life and Labours, compiled from original manuscripts in his own handwriting. The narrative is in seven divisions. The first, designated ‘The Self-Inspections of J. F., being an account of himself in the Actions and Studies of his twenty-one first years,’ was partially made known in the life of the author published in the General Dictionary (v. 1737), the materials for which were supplied by James Hodgson. The second division, entitled ‘Historica Narratio Vitæ Meæ, ab anno 1646 ad 1675,’ was composed in November 1707. Of the succeeding four, derived from scattered notices, No. 5 had been published in Hone's Every-day Book (i. 1091); while the seventh division, written February 1717, is the suppressed portion of the Original Preface to the Historia Celestis, and brings down the account of his life to 1716. An Appendix contains a variety of illustrative documents, besides Flamsteed's voluminous correspondence with Sharp, Newton, Wren, Halley, Wallis, Arbuthnot, Sir Jonas Moore, and others. The second part comprises the British Catalogue, corrected and enlarged to include 3,310 stars by Baily. An elaborate Introduction is prefixed, and a Supplement, added in 1837, gives Baily's reply to criticisms on the foregoing publication. See also Biog. Brit. arts. ‘Flamsteed,’ iii. 1943 (1750), ‘Halley,’ iv. 2509 (1757), ‘Wallis,’ vi. 4133 (1763); Rigaud's Correspondence of Scientific Men; Whewell's Flamsteed and Newton; Brewster's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. ii.; Weld's Hist. R. Society, i. 377; Roger North's Life of Lord Keeper North, p. 286; Edinburgh Review, lxii. 359 (Galloway); Gent. Mag. 1866, i. 239 (Carpenter); Annuaire de l'Observatoire de Bruxelles, 1864, p. 288 (Mailly); Grant's Hist. of Astronomy, p. 467; Whewell's Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, ii. 162; Cunningham's Lives of Eminent Englishmen, iv. 366; Noble's Continuation of Granger, ii. 132; Montucla's Hist. des Mathématiques, iv. 41; Bailly's Hist. de l'Astr. Moderne, ii. 423, 589, 650; Delambre's Hist. de l'Astr. au xviiie Siècle, p. 93; Mädler's Gesch. der Himmelskunde, i. 397, 453; André et Rayet's Astr. Pratique, i. 3; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Acta Eruditorum, 1721, p. 463; Journal R. Society, xvii. 129; Rigaud MSS. in Bodleian, Letter L; MSS. Collegii Corporis Christi, Oxon. Codex ccclxi. (correspondence of Flamsteed with Newton and Wallis in forty original letters, mostly printed in General Dict.); C. H. F. Peters on Flamsteed's Lost Stars, Memoirs American Academy, 1887, pt. iii. Flamsteed's horoscope of the Royal Observatory, 10 Aug. 1675, inscribed ‘Risum teneatis, amici?’ is reproduced in Hone's Every-day Book, i. 1090.
 

Halley, Edmund or more accurately Edmond (1656-1742), astronomer, was born at Haggerston, in St. Leonard's parish, Shoreditch, London, on 8 Nov. 1656. His father, Edmund Halley, a member of a good Derbyshire family, was a soap-boiler in Winchester Street in the city of London. He was rich, and sent his only son to St. Paul's School, under the care of Dr. Thomas Gale. Here he was equally distinguished in classics and mathematics, rose to be captain of the school at fifteen, constructed dials, observed the change in the variation of the compass, and studied the heavens so closely that it was remarked by Moxon the globe maker ‘that if a star were displaced in the globe he would presently find it out.’ He entered Queen's College, Oxford, as a commoner at midsummer term 1673, carrying with him, besides a competent knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, a ‘curious apparatus’ of instruments. With a telescope of 24 feet he observed a lunar eclipse on 27 June 1675 in Winchester Street, and at Oxford a remarkable sunspot in July and August 1676 (Phil. Trans. xl. 687), and the occultation of Mars by the moon on 21 Aug. 1676 (ib. p. 683). Before he was twenty he communicated to the Royal Society a ‘Direct and Geometrical Method of finding the Aphelia and Eccentricity of the Planets’ (ib. p. 683), finally abolishing the notion of a ‘centre of uniform motion;’ invented shortly afterwards an improved construction for solar eclipses, and noted defects in the theories of Jupiter and Saturn. For the correction of these he perceived that a revision of the places of the fixed stars was indispensable, and with the design of supplementing in the southern hemisphere the labours of Flamsteed and Hevelius in the northern, he left the university without a degree, and embarked for St. Helena in November 1676. His father allowed him 300l. a year; a recommendation from Charles II to the East India Company procured him facilities of transport; but the climate proved unfavourable, and by assiduous observations during eighteen months with a 5¾-foot sextant he succeeded in determining only 341 stars. His enterprise, however, laid the foundation of austral stellar astronomy, and earned for him from Flamsteed the title of the ‘Southern Tycho.’ In the course of the voyage he improved the sextant, collected a number of valuable facts relative to the ocean and atmosphere, noted the equatorial retardation of the pendulum, and made at St. Helena, on 7 Nov. 1677, the first complete observation of a transit of Mercury.
    On his return to England in October 1678 Halley presented to the king a planisphere of the southern constellations, including that of ‘Robur Carolinum,’ newly added by himself, and was rewarded with a mandamus to the university of Oxford for a degree of M.A., conferred on 3 Dec. 1678. His ‘Catalogus Stellarum Australium’ was laid before the Royal Society on 7 Nov. 1678, and immediately translated into French; but owing to his dependence upon Tycho's fundamental points it was of little practical value until Sharp reduced and included in the third volume of Flamsteed's ‘Historia Celestis’ (p. 77) 265 of the stars it contained. Halley appended to his ‘Catalogue’ a proposal for amending lunar theory by the introduction of an annual equation, and an account of the transit of Mercury, from which he deduced a solar parallax of 45². He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 30 Nov. 1678 at the age of 22, and was, six months later, sent by that body to Danzig as arbiter of a dispute between Hooke and Hevelius on the respective advantages of telescopic and plain sights. He shared the observations of Hevelius from 26 May to 18 July 1679, and testified to their accuracy in a letter printed by Hevelius in his ‘Annus Climactericus’ (1685, p. 101).
    Towards the close of 1680 he started on a continental tour with his school-friend, Robert Nelson, and caught sight near Calais of the great comet of that year, upon which he made, with Cassini, at Paris, observations of great service to Newton in fixing its orbit. He spent most of 1681 in Italy, and married in England in 1682 Mary, daughter of Mr. Tooke, auditor of the exchequer, an amiable and attractive woman. His first house was at Islington, where his instruments excited much curiosity; but he removed later to Golden Lion Court, Aldersgate Street. He lost no time in entering upon his favourite project of perfecting the lunar theory by means of observations continued through a ‘sarotic’ period of 223 lunations, or a little more than eighteen years, and secured at Islington in 1683-4 nearly two hundred observations, by which his expectation of the regular recurrence of errors was confirmed. These results were published by him in 1710 as an appendix to the second edition of Street's ‘Caroline Tables.’ He was, however, interrupted by the death of his father in 1684 in unexpectedly bad circumstances, and was obliged to postpone everything to the defence of the little that was left of his patrimony.
    In an address delivered at Cambridge on 19 April 1888 Dr. Glaisher expressed the conviction that ‘but for Halley the “Principia” would not have existed.’ His suggestions originated it; he averted the threatened suppression of the third book. ‘He paid all the expenses, he corrected the proofs, he laid aside all his own work in order to press forward to the utmost the printing. All his letters show the most intense devotion to the work.’ Keenly alive to the importance of the problem of gravity, Halley obtained from Kepler's third law in January 1684 the law of inverse squares, but failed to deduce from it the planetary motions. Having fruitlessly applied to Wren and Hooke, he in August 1684 paid a visit to Newton at Cambridge, and ‘learned from him the good news that he had brought this demonstration to perfection.’ The first eleven propositions of the ‘Principia’ were communicated three months later to Halley, who again repaired to Cambridge to confer with their author, and on 10 Dec. gave an account of them to the Royal Society. Although now a poor man, he undertook on 2 June 1686 to print Newton's work at his own charge, and in a letter to him of 5 July 1687 was able to announce its completion. His outlay was eventually reimbursed by the sale of copies. A ‘Discourse concerning Gravity’ was read by Halley before the Royal Society on 21 April 1686, by way of preparation for the ‘incomparable treatise of motion almost ready for the press’ (Phil. Trans. xvi. 3). He prefixed to the first edition a set of Latin verses ending with the line
Nec fas est propius mortali attingere Divos,
and presented to James II a copy of the ‘Principia’ with a discourse ‘On the true Theory of the Tides’ (ib. xix. 445).
Halley was refused the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford in 1691, owing to a suspicion, which he vainly tried to combat, of his holding materialistic views. Flamsteed, lately become his enemy, did his utmost to hinder his election. Halley acted as assistant secretary to the Royal Society and editor of the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ from 1685 to 1 Jan. 1693. Among his numerous contributions to them about this time were an ‘Historical Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons’ (ib. xvi. 153), giving the first detailed description and a sketch of a circulatory theory of these winds; ‘An Account of the Circulation of the Watery Vapours of the Sea, and of the Cause of Springs’ (ib. xvii. 468), establishing an equilibrium between expenditure by evaporation and supply by condensation in the waters of the globe; a ‘Discourse tending to prove at what Time and Place Julius Cæsar made his first Descent upon Britain’ (ib. p. 495); and a ‘New and General Method of finding the Roots of Equations’ (ib. xviii. 136). Appointed by Newton's influence deputy-controller of the mint at Chester in 1696, he held the post, in spite of ‘intolerable’ annoyances from his fellow-officials, until its abolition two years later. He corresponded meantime actively with the Royal Society through Sir Hans Sloane, observed at Chester the partial lunar eclipse of 19 Oct. 1697 (ib. xix. 784), and ascended Snowdon for the purpose of testing his method of determining heights by the barometer. His theory of the variation of the compass was proposed in 1683, and further developed in 1692 (ib. xiii. 208, xvii. 563). It assumed the direction of the needle to be governed by the influence of four magnetic poles, two fixed in the outer shell of the earth, two revolving with an inner nucleus in a period roughly estimated at seven hundred years. This hypothesis explained with surprising success the ‘abstruse mystery’ of secular magnetic changes. It was revived by Hansteen in 1819. Desirous of investigating thoroughly phenomena which he hoped might prove regular enough to serve for the determination of longitudes, Halley obtained from William III in 1698 the command of a war-sloop, the Paramour Pink, with orders to study the variation of the compass, and ‘attempt the discovery of what land lies to the south of the western ocean.’ He sailed from Portsmouth at the end of November 1698, but was compelled by the refractory conduct of his crew to return from Barbadoes in the following June. Having got his lieutenant cashiered, he started again in September, and penetrated to 52° south latitude, where he ‘fell in with great islands of ice, of so incredible a height and magnitude that I scarce dare write my thoughts of it.’ After a narrow escape from destruction he steered north, explored the Atlantic from shore to shore, and cast anchor in the Thames on 7 Sept. 1700, his ship's company diminished only by the loss of one boy swept overboard. Of this incident he could never afterwards speak without tears. His ‘General Chart’ of the variation of the compass appeared in 1701. It set the example of a method, since extensively employed, of representing to the eye a mass of complex facts, and gave the first general view of the distribution of terrestrial magnetism by means of lines of equal declination, long called ‘Halleyan lines.’Resuming the command of the Paramour Pink, Halley made in 1701, by the king's orders, a thorough survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, of which he published a map in 1702. He was next sent by Queen Anne, at the Emperor Leopold's request, to inspect the harbours of the Adriatic, and, on a second journey thither, aided the imperial engineers to fortify Trieste. In passing through Hanover he supped with the elector (afterwards George I) and his sister, the queen of Prussia, and at Vienna was presented by the emperor with a diamond ring from his own finger. Dr. Wallis [q.v.] having died just before his arrival in England, in November 1703, he was appointed in his room Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, where he was created D.C.L. on 16 Oct. 1710. He was no sooner installed in the Savilian chair than Dr. Aldrich engaged him to complete a translation from Arabic into Latin, begun by Dr. Bernard, of Apollonius's ‘De Sectione Rationis,’ till then unknown to European scholars. His success, and the useful emendations of the original manuscript which, notwithstanding his previous ignorance of Arabic, he suggested, were extremely surprising to Dr. Sike, the greatest orientalist of his time. He added a restoration, from the description of Pappus, of ‘De Sectione Spatii,’ by the same author, and the whole was published from the university press in 1706. The first complete edition of the ‘Conics’ of Apollonius, including a masterly restoration of the lost eighth book, was issued by him, with Serenus's ‘De Sectione Cylindri et Coni,’ in 1710. His edition of Ptolemy's ‘Catalogue’ formed part of the third volume of Hudson's ‘Geographiæ Veteris Scriptores Græci’ (Oxford, 1712), and his edition of the ‘Spherics’ of Menelaus was published by his friend Dr. Costard in 1758.
Halley was a leading member of the committee entrusted by Prince George of Denmark with preparing Flamsteed's observations for the press, and edited the first or ‘spurious’ version of the ‘Historia Celestis’ in 1712. His accurate prediction of the circumstances of the total solar eclipse of 2 May 1715 added greatly to his reputation. He observed the event, in company with the Earl of Abingdon and Chief-justice Parker (afterwards Earl of Macclesfield), from the roof of the Royal Society's house in Crane Court; and minutely described the corona, without venturing to decide whether it belonged to the sun or to the moon (Phil. Trans. xxix. 245). The great aurora of 16 March 1715, the first he had seen, was observed by him at London. He explained the auroral crown as an optical effect due to the ‘concourse’ of many streamers, and suggested a mode of determining the height of such phenomena (ib. p. 407). The hypothesis of their magnetic origin was a development of his views on terrestrial magnetism. He supposed auroræ to be occasioned by the escape of a ‘luminous medium,’ by which a subterranean globe was rendered habitable.
Halley became secretary to the Royal Society on Sir Hans Sloane's resignation, 13 Nov. 1713, and on 9 Feb. 1721 was appointed, through Lord-chancellor Parker's interest, astronomer-royal in succession to Flamsteed. He took possession of the house on 7 March, but on 6 May had not ‘yet got into the observatory,’ which he found ‘wholly unprovided with instruments, and, indeed, of everything else that was moveable.’ Five hundred pounds were allotted by the board of ordnance for supplying the needful apparatus, and in 1721 the first transit-instrument erected at Greenwich¾one 5¾ feet in length, constructed twenty years earlier by Hooke¾was in its place. Halley's observations with it, however, begun on 1 Oct. 1721, were rendered useless by the absence of any means of taking zenith distances. After October 1725 his main dependence was on a new iron quadrant, by Graham, of 8-feet radius. His leading object was to bring the lunar tables to the perfection required for gaining the prize offered for the solution of the problem of longitudes, and although in his sixty-fourth year at the time of his appointment, he resumed and carried out the design conceived forty years previously of observing the moon through a complete period of eighteen years. He immediately began to draw up lists of lunar errors, but published nothing; and at a meeting of the Royal Society on 2 March 1727 Newton remarked upon the neglect of the late queen's precept regarding the communication of results, whereupon Halley acquainted the council that he had numerous observations of the moon, but ‘had hitherto kept them in his own custody, that he might have time to finish the theory he designed to build upon them, before others might take the advantage of reaping the benefit of his labours’ (Baily, Memoirs Royal Astron. Society, viii. 188). It is said by Hearne that a quarrel ensued which shortened Newton's life. Four years later Halley announced to the Royal Society that he had made nearly fifteen hundred lunar observations, and was able to predict the place of the ‘sidus contumax’ (as he called it) within two minutes of arc. He added a narrative of his efforts towards the improvement of its theory (Phil. Trans. xxxvii. 185). He published, however, only his observations of a partial solar eclipse on 27 Nov. 1722 (ib. xxxii. 197), of the transit of Mercury on 29 Oct. 1723 (ib. xxxiii. 228), and of an eclipse of the moon on 15 March 1736 (ib. xl. 14).
About September 1729 Queen Caroline visited the Royal Observatory, and finding that Halley had held the commission, she procured for him the pay of a post-captain. His salary as astronomer-royal was 100l. a year, with no allowance for an assistant. Owing to the pressure of official duties he resigned in 1721 the secretaryship to the Royal Society, and declined some years later the post of mathematical preceptor to the Duke of Cumberland. He was elected in 1729 a foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Until 1737, when his right hand became affected with paralysis, he had never experienced a constitutional ailment, and was accustomed to relieve slight fever on catching cold with doses of quinine in water-gruel, which he called his ‘chocolate.’ Every Thursday regularly he went to London to dine with his friends and attend the meetings of the Royal Society; and he ‘stuck close to his telescope,’ aided only by his friend Gale Morris, F.R.S., as amanuensis, until 31 Dec. 1739. His bodily powers now failed rapidly, although his memory and cheerfulness remained unimpaired. At last, tired of the doctors' cordials, he asked for a glass of wine, drank it, and expired, on 14 Jan. 1741-2, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. He was buried in the churchyard of Lee, near Greenwich, with his wife, who died in 1737. The inscription marking the tomb was placed there in 1742 by the two daughters who survived him. Of these, the elder, Margaret, died unmarried on 13 Oct. 1743; the second, Mrs. Price, lived until 1765. His son, Edmund Halley, a surgeon in the royal navy, died before him, and he lost several children in infancy. His will was proved on 9 Feb. 1741-2, one of the witnesses to it being James Bradley [q.v.].In person Halley was ‘of a middle stature, inclining to tallness, of a thin habit of body, and a fair complexion,’ and it is added that ‘he always spoke as well as acted with an uncommon degree of sprightliness and vivacity.’ His disposition was ardent, generous, and candid; he was disinterested and upright, genial to his friends, an affectionate husband and father, and was wholly free from rancour or jealousy. He passed a life of almost unprecedented literary and scientific activity without becoming involved in a single controversy, and was rendered socially attractive by the unfailing gaiety which embellished the more recondite qualities of a mind of extraordinary penetration, compass, and power. One of his admirers was Peter the Great, who in 1697 not only consulted him as to his shipbuilding and other projects, but admitted him familiarly to his table. Portraits of Halley were painted by Murray, Phillips, and Kneller, and engravings from each were published. There is no trace in his writings of the sceptical views attributed to him by Whiston (Memoirs, i. 123). S. J. Rigaud, bishop of Antigua, endeavoured (in his ‘Defence of Halley,’ 1844) to exonerate him wholly from a charge perpetuated by the dedication to him, in the character of an ‘infidel mathematician,’ of Bishop Berkeley's ‘Analyst,’ but he doubtless habitually expressed free opinions. His moral character has been impeached, perhaps on insufficient grounds.
On his appointment as astronomer-royal, Halley withheld, in the hope of improving, the lunar and planetary tables he had printed in 1719 (Phil. Trans. xxxvii. 193); yet they appeared posthumously in 1749, without further alteration than the addition of the places and errors of the moon deduced from observations at Greenwich, 1722-39. An English edition was issued in 1752; they were translated into French by La Chappe and Lalande in 1754 and 1759, and continued in general use for many years. The mass of Halley's observations are preserved in manuscript at the Royal Observatory, in four small quarto volumes; a fifth, not included in the collection, was stated by Maskelyne to have been found at his death. They were copied for the Astronomical Society, at the instance of Baily, in 1832. No advantage adequate to the labour could accrue from their reduction. Halley took no account of fractional parts of seconds of time, and considered 10² of arc ‘as the utmost attainable limit of accuracy.’ His clocks were besides ill-regulated, and his system of registration unmethodical. He seems, as Professor Grant remarks, ‘to have undervalued those habits of minute attention which are indispensable to the attainment of a high degree of excellence in the practice of astronomical observation.’ His administration of the Royal Observatory was the least successful part of his career. Pursuing one end too exclusively, he virtually failed to reach it. His revival of the ‘saros’ was not for the advantage of science, yet he devoted to the scheme of lunar correction based upon it the most sustained efforts of his life. The dilapidated state of the observatory at his death was the natural consequence of his prolonged infirmity. The screws of the quadrant were broken, its adjustment was widely erroneous; the mark on the park wall for setting the transit instrument was intercepted by the growth of trees (Bradley, Miscellaneous Works, p. 382).
Halley's discovery of the ‘long inequality’ of Jupiter and Saturn was published at the end of his ‘Tables.’ He first attributed their opposite discrepancies from theory to the effects of mutual perturbation, assigning to each planet a secular equation increasing as the square of the time. From a comparison of ancient with modern eclipses he inferred in 1693 a progressive acceleration of the moon's mean motion (Phil. Trans. xvii. 913), explained on gravitational principles by Laplace in 1787. He set forth the conditions of the daylight visibility of Venus in 1716, ‘by some reckoned to be prodigious’ (ib. xxix. 466); collected observations of meteors (ib. p. 159), and deduced a height from the earth's surface of seventy-three miles for that seen in England on 19 March 1719 (ib. xxx. 978), while maintaining the origin of such objects from terrestrial exhalations (ib. p. 989). His most celebrated work, however, was ‘Astronomiæ Cometicæ Synopsis’ (ib. xxiv. 1882), communicated to the Royal Society in 1705, and separately published in English at Oxford the same year. It was reprinted with his ‘Tables’ in 1749, and translated into French by Le Monnier in 1743. Having computed, with ‘immense labour,’ the orbits of twenty-four comets, he found three so nearly alike as to persuade him that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were apparitions of a single body, to which he assigned a period of about seventy-six years. In predicting its return for 1758, he appealed to ‘candid posterity to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.’ The reappearance of ‘Halley's comet’ on Christmas day 1758 verified the forecast, and laid a secure foundation for cometary astronomy. A period of 575 years was erroneously assigned by Halley to the comet of 1680.
The employment of transits of Venus for ascertaining the sun's distance was first recommended by Halley in 1679; again in more detail in 1691 (ib. xvii. 511); finally in 1716, when his ‘method of durations’ was elaborated with special reference to the transit of 1761 (ib. xxix. 454). He believed that the great unit might in this way be measured within 1/500 of its value, and his enthusiasm stimulated the efforts made to turn the opportunity to account. An inquiry into precession led Halley in 1718 to the discovery of stellar proper motions evinced in the changes of latitude, since Ptolemy's epoch, of Sirius, Aldebaran, and Arcturus (ib. xxx. 736). From the instantaneousness of occultations he gathered the spurious nature of star-discs, and estimated the number of stars corresponding to each magnitude on the hypothesis of their uniform distribution through space (ib. xxxi. 1, 24). Nebulæ were regarded by him as composed of a ‘lucid medium shining with its own proper lustre,’ and as occupying ‘spaces immensely great, and perhaps not less than our whole solar system.’ Six such objects were enumerated by him in 1716 (ib. xxix. 390), and he discovered, in 1677 and 1714 respectively, the star clusters in the Centaur and in Hercules.
Halley divined and demonstrated in 1686 the law connecting elevation in the atmosphere with its density, consequently with barometrical readings (ib. xvi. 104); he materially improved diving apparatus, and himself made a descent in a diving-bell (ib. xxix. 492, xxxi. 177); experimented on the dilatation of liquids by heat (ib. xvii. 650); and by his scientific voyages laid the foundation of physical geography. As the compiler of the ‘Breslau Table of Mortality’ he takes rank as the virtual originator of the science of life-statistics. His papers on the subject (ib. pp. 596, 654) were reprinted in the ‘Assurance Magazine’ (vol. xviii.). It has been observed by M. Marie (Hist. des Sciences, vii. 125) that ‘his results in pure geometry, though the fruits only of leisure moments, would alone suffice to secure him a distinguished place in scientific history.’ Besides his important restorations of ancient authors, he investigated the properties of the loxodromic curve, and first solved the problem to describe a conic section of which the focus and three points are given. He furnished an improved construction for equations of the third and fourth degrees (Phil. Trans. xvi. 335); his universal theorem for finding the foci of object-glasses (ib. xvii. 960) appeared originally as an appendix to Molyneux's ‘Dioptricks’ (1692); and his account of the relations of weather to barometrical fluctuations was included by Cotes in his ‘Hydrostatical Lectures’ (2nd ed. 1747, p. 246). His papers on the ‘Analogy of the Logarithmic Tangents to the Meridian Line’ and on ‘A compendious Method of Constructing Logarithms’ were reprinted in Baron Maseres's ‘Scriptores Logarithmici’ (vol. ii. 1791). The ‘Miscellanea Curiosa,’ edited by Halley in 1708 (in 3 vols.), was largely composed of his contributions to the ‘Philosophical Trans.’ His ‘Journal’ during his two voyages, 1698-1700, was published in 1775 by Dalrymple in his ‘Voyages’; and many of his letters to Josiah Burchett, secretary to the admiralty, are at the Record Office (‘Captains' Letters, 1698-1700’). His ‘Southern Catalogue’ was reprinted by Baily in the Royal Astronomical Society's ‘Memoirs’ (xiii.). Dr. Gill recognised in 1877 the foundations of his observatory at St. Helena (Mrs. Gill, Six Months in Ascension, p. 33). A bibliography of Halley's writings, by Mr. Eugene Fairfield McPike, of Chicago, appeared serially in Notes and Queries (9th ser. x. p. 361 et seq.¾10th ser. ii. p. 224). Another bibliography by Mr. Alexander J. Rudolph, of Chicago, was published at Boston in 1905, with notes by Mr. McPike, who issued in the same year a bibliography of Halley's comet in the Smithsonian Institution's Miscell. Coll. xlviii. pt. I., 69-74.
Lalande styled Halley ‘the greatest of English astronomers,’ and he ranked next to Newton among the scientific Englishmen of his time. Of his eighty-four papers in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ a large proportion expounded in a brilliant and attractive style theories or inventions opening up novel lines of inquiry and showing a genius no less fertile than comprehensive. ‘While we thought,’ wrote M. Marian, ‘that the eulogium of an astronomer, a physicist, a scholar, and a philosopher comprehended our whole subject, we have been insensibly surprised into the history of an excellent mariner, an illustrious traveller, an able engineer, and almost a statesman.’
Sources

The first design of a biography by Israel Lyons, of Cambridge, was interrupted by his death in 1775. Prof. Rigaud's collections (deposited at his death in 1839 in the Bodleian Libr.) await an editor. See Biog. Brit. vol. iv. (1757), supplying the substance of manuscript memoirs imparted by Halley's son-in-law, Mr. Henry Price; Mairan's ‘Éloge,’ in Mémoires de l'Acad. des Sciences, Paris, 1742 (Histoire, p. 182), translated in Gent. Mag. xvii. 455, 503; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 536; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii. 368; Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Men, ii. 365; Thomson's Hist. R. Society, pp. 207, 335; Rigaud, in Bradley's Miscellaneous Works (see Index); Memoirs R. Astr. Society, ix. 205; Monthly Notices, iii. 5, vi. 204; Philosophical Mag. viii. 219, 224 (1836); Baily's Account of Flamsteed, pp. xxxi, 193, 213, 747; Hutton's Mathematical Dict. 1815; Brewster's Life of Newton; Grant's Hist. of Phys. Astronomy, p. 477 and passim; Whewell's Hist. of the Inductive Sciences; Phil. Trans. Abridg. (Hutton), ii, 326 (1809); H. Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 291; Lysons's Environs, iv. 504, 509; Nature, xxi. 303 (Halley's Mount); Walford's Insurance Cyclopædia, v. 616; Graetzer's E. Halley und Caspar Neumann (Breslau, 1883); Poggendorff's Hist. de la Physique (1883), p. 436 and passim; Montucla's Hist. des Mathématiques, iv. 50, 308; Bailly's Hist. de l'Astr. Moderne, ii. 432; Delambre's Hist. de l'Astr. au XVIIIe Siècle, p. 116; Lalande's Préface Historique aux Tables de Halley (1759); Delisle's Lettres sur les Tables de Halley (1749); Wolf's Geschichte der Astronomie; Mädler's Gesch. der Himmelskunde; Cunningham's Lives of Eminent Englishmen, iv. 453; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. iv. 22, 33; The Observatory, iii. 348 (Oliver), viii. 429 (Lynn), xxix. 137-8 (McPike's Halleiana Inedita); Notes and Queries, 9th ser. xi. 366; Mailly's Annuaire de l'Observatoire de Bruxelles, 1864, p. 305; Addit. MS. 4222, f. 177; Egerton MSS. 2231, f. 186, 2334 C. 2. Unpublished letters from Halley to Sir Hans Sloane and others are in the Guard Book and Letter Books of the Royal Society.

Molyneux, William (1656–1698), experimental philosopher and constitutional writer, was born in Dublin, near Ormond Gate, on 17 April 1656, the second of five children of Samuel Molyneux (1616–1693), lawyer and landowner, and his wife, Anne, née Dowdall. His great-grandfather Thomas Molyneux (1531–1597) came from the English colony in Calais and settled in Ireland in the 1570s. The family achieved a place in the protestant ascendancy network that controlled the administration and much of the economy, and their prosperity, derived from rents from property in co. Armagh and other counties, freed Molyneux from the need to earn a living.

After his early education by private tutor and attendance at a Dublin grammar school (probably attached to St Patrick's Cathedral), on 10 April 1671 Molyneux entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a fellow-commoner. He developed an interest in mathematical and scientific studies, and delighted in the writings of leading figures of the scientific revolution. He was admitted bachelor of arts on 27 February 1674 and, having been sent to London to study law, entered the Middle Temple in June 1675. On his return he married, on 19 September 1678, Lucy (d. 1691), the youngest daughter of Sir William Domville, attorney-general for Ireland. In November she suffered a severe illness that led to the loss of her eyesight. Leading London physicians were unable to help, and Molyneux sought consolation in the study of mathematics and science. In the winter of 1679–80 he translated work by Descartes, which he published as Six Metaphysical Meditations in April 1680. A translation of Galileo's Discorsi remained unpublished. He developed an interest in the study of optics, optical instruments, and astronomical observation. The communication of observations of a lunar eclipse on 1 August 1681 led to a correspondence with John Flamsteed, in which problems of optics, astronomy, ballistics, and tidal observations were discussed.

 Molyneux has a claim to be considered the founder of modern science in Ireland. In October 1683 he set himself the task of forming a society in Dublin on the design of the Royal Society. As first secretary and treasurer he conducted correspondence and exchanged minutes with the Royal Society and its sister society at Oxford. He took an active part in the proceedings of the society, elucidating discoveries, demonstrating experiments and instruments, discussing books, showing curious objects, undertaking the calculation of solar and lunar eclipses, and recording weather data. The first phase of the society continued until the spring of 1687. By then Molyneux had discoursed on twenty different subjects in optics, astronomy, and natural science. A total of nine of his papers were published in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions. Papers of his, or accounts of his books, appeared in the Acta Eruditorum and the Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique. The Dublin Philosophical Society was revived after the Williamite wars but Molyneux no longer held office. As late as 1697, however, he published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society a scientific paper on the effect of magnetic variation on surveys.

In the summer of 1685 Molyneux visited his brother Sir Thomas Molyneux, then a graduate medical student at Leiden, and they undertook a three-month tour of the Netherlands and the Rhineland, ending up in Paris. They visited Christiaan Huygens at The Hague, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek at Delft, and Jean-Dominique Cassini at Paris. In September Molyneux spent two or three weeks in London and was invited to Greenwich by Flamsteed. He also took the opportunity to commission an instrument maker, Richard Whitehead, to make a combined dial and telescope. Although the instrument never performed well, Molyneux demonstrated it to the Dublin society, claiming it had improved the art of dialling by application of telescopic sights, and in 1686 he published a small book, Sciothericum telescopium, describing it. On 9 December 1685 he was proposed for admission to the Royal Society, and his election as a fellow followed in 1686.

Molyneux secured an official appointment as joint surveyor-general and chief engineer in Ireland (which carried an annual salary of £300) on payment of a sum of £250 to the previous patentee, William Robinson. The new patent was granted on 31 October 1684. In February 1687, when the Catholic Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell, was appointed lord deputy, Robinson left Ireland, leaving Molyneux in sole charge. The major work in hand was the restoration of Dublin Castle, damaged by a fire in April 1684, which Molyneux was left to execute in the eighteen months that remained before his own dismissal by Tyrconnell. In the course of a mass exodus of protestants, Molyneux and his family decided to leave at the end of January 1689. A house was rented in Chester, where they lived for two years until the restoration of the protestant ascendancy following the victory of William III at the Boyne. On returning to Dublin in December 1690 Molyneux was appointed a commissioner of army accounts by the Williamite government. His wife followed in January with their son Samuel Molyneux, born at Chester on 18 July 1689, but she died on 9 May 1691.

While at Chester Molyneux started assembling material for a book on dioptrics. For certain propositions Molyneux gave the solutions of Flamsteed in addition to his own, but the publication led to a breach between the two, with Flamsteed taking offence probably because the manuscript was not shown to him before publication but entrusted instead to his rival Halley.

Molyneux remains one of the more multifaceted characters of the English-speaking world of his time. Philosophers still discuss the Molyneux problem, historians of science still enjoy his unusually frank correspondence with the scientific centres of his day, and historians of political thought consider him to be a writer that interpreted the principles of the revolution of 1688 in ‘Lockean’ fashion, and thereby arrived at conclusions more radical than Locke would allow.

Molyneux spent about five weeks from early August 1698 as Locke's guest at London and Oates. Within a month of his return to Dublin he died, on 11 October, at his home, near Ormond Gate, after a recurrence of a chronic kidney disease. He was buried in St Audoen's Church, Dublin. In what remains of the church today he is commemorated, in an inscription that borrows the philosopher's words, as ‘the man whom Locke was proud to call his friend’.

James G. O'Hara

Moray, Sir Robert (1608/9?–1673), army officer and politician, was said to be aged fifty in March 1659; he was the eldest son of Sir Mungo Moray of Craigie, Perthshire, and his wife, a daughter of George Halkett of Pitfirran, Fife. Tradition asserts that he was educated first at the University of St Andrews (where a man of his name matriculated in 1627, though that would of course make him a relatively late arrival), and then in France; references within his own subsequent correspondence, however, make his education at St Andrews unlikely. Near contemporary sources provide fleeting glimpses—often contradictory—of his early career. There is general agreement that by the mid-1630s he was in the French military service as a member of a Scottish regiment, probably the one raised in 1633 by Sir John Hepburn. There is also a consensus that he had developed, though in unknown circumstances, an acquaintance with Cardinal Richelieu, then still the effective leader of Louis XIII's government. In 1639, however, as a well-connected presbyterian of considerable military experience and with strong interests in mathematics, science, and engineering, he returned to Britain to take up the post of general of the ordnance in Scotland.

In view of his lifelong interest in science, his regular visits to Paris at through 1642-3 might well have brought him into contact with Gassendi, Pascal, and Descartes, whose intellectual circle was then at the height of its activity in the city.

Moray seems to have spent some of his time in London in 1645–6 mingling with those scientists—notably John Wilkins and Robert Boyle—whose meetings prefigured the later Royal Society; his own keen interest in the study of natural phenomena, fuelled by foreign travel and wide reading and perhaps given further stimulus by his enthusiasm for occult knowledge, must have made their conversation and company an agreeable diversion.

Moray, stopping only to make detailed observations of tidal conditions and barnacles as he passed through the Western Isles, followed Middleton to Paris, where Balcarres was also in exile.

Indeed, his attachment to London was nowhere more fruitful than in his participation in the formal establishment of the Royal Society: he attended the momentous foundation meeting at Gresham College on 28 November 1660, was chosen to preside at many of the early gatherings (his combination of genuine scientific enthusiasm and impeccable connections proving irresistibly attractive), and oversaw its royal incorporation from Charles II in 1662. Moray also strove energetically to procure funds for the infant society, though his greatest pleasure remained in reporting to his colleagues on the practical experiments and astronomical observations he had personally undertaken.

This was the final significant episode in a life full of intrigue and activity. On 4 July 1673 Moray was suddenly taken ill at his London home. Though cheered by a visit from his friend Aubrey he died that evening. Lamented by many, and with his passing noted by the admiring pens of Burnet and Evelyn, he was buried two days later, at the king's expense, in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.  David Allan

Newton, Isaac

Oldenburg, Henry

Phillippes, HenryHenry Phillippes (fl.1648-77), a teacher of mathemtics,

Sanderson, Nicholas, Professor at Cambridge

Smith, Thomas

Stephenson, Nicholas (fl.1674-1680), Flamsteed's assistant in tides at the Royal Greenwich Observatory