Flamsteed, John

(1646-1719), astronomer

by Frances Willmoth

© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved

Flamsteed, John (1646-1719), astronomer, the eldest child and only son of Stephen Flamsteed (c.1615-1688) of Derby and his first wife, Mary (d. 1649), the daughter of John Spateman, was born at Denby, near Derby, on 19 August 1646. His father came from a gentry family but derived his main income from business occupations such as brewing and malting, interests in the lead-mining industry, and perhaps trading in ores or metals. John was three when his mother died after giving birth to his sister Elizabeth (whose fate is unknown); when he was six he gained a stepmother in Elizabeth Bates, but she in turn died in 1654, following the birth of his half-sister Katherine (who survived into adulthood).

Early life to 1669
By his own account, Flamsteed was conventionally educated at Derby grammar school. In his leisure time he read romances and 'reall histories', both classical and modern (CUL, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, RGO 1/32A, fol. 4r). At fourteen he contracted a rheumatic illness, described as a 'weakenesse in my knees and Joynts' (ibid., RGO 1/32A, fol. 4v) or as 'a fit of sickness that was followed with a Consumption and other distempers' (ibid., RGO 1/32B, fol. 22r). He left school when he was fifteen, in May 1662, and could not attend university because of his poor health and his father's need for assistance in business and household concerns. He underwent various courses of medical treatment including, in August 1665, visiting Ireland to be 'stroked' by the famous healer Valentine Greatrakes; in the following spring Greatrakes travelled to England and Flamsteed met him at Worcester. On both occasions the results were disappointing, but the winter of 1666-7 is the last in which Flamsteed mentions suffering his 'usuall winter weaknesse' (ibid., RGO 1/32A, fol. 16v). References in Flamsteed's correspondence suggest that his health in later years was no worse than that of many of his contemporaries.

During his late teens Flamsteed's bouts of ill health encouraged him to pursue sedentary occupations. A month or two after he left school someone lent him a copy of Sacrobosco's De spera, the standard medieval introduction to astronomy; in September 1662 he put his new knowledge to use by observing a solar eclipse. Having been taught arithmetic by his father, with the aid of Fale's Art of Dialling he drew up a table of solar altitudes and made a small quadrant; he then sought out further mathematical and astronomical books. Over the next few years he was encouraged to do so by friends in the locality: first Elias Grice, a mathematically minded Derby tradesman, and later George Linacre, an expert on the fixed stars, and William Litchford, an expert on the planets.

Both these last seem to have been interested in astrology. Flamsteed notes that he 'would not be seene with Mr Gadburies booke lest I should be suspected Astrological'--the reference is to Genethlialogia, or, The Doctrine of Nativities (1658), by John Gadbury (1627-1704)--but he evidently learned a good deal about astrology before concluding that it gave 'generally strong conjecturall hints, not perfect declarations' (CUL, RGO 1/32A, fols. 7r, 16r). In place of Gadbury he obtained a copy of Streete's Caroline Tables (1661), which he used to calculate the places of the planets and to compile an 'Almanac burlesque' for 1666 (this does not survive). In August 1665 he presented to William Litchford a 'Mathematical essay' describing the construction and use of a quadrant and a ruler 'which I had drawne with my own hand'; after his return he added to it 'the projection of an universall diall' (ibid., RGO 1/32A, fols. 8r, 15r) and a catalogue of seventy fixed stars derived from Tycho Brahe. In the following spring he met Immanuel Halton of Wingfield Manor, who lent him further books. Studying Riccioli's Almagestum novum (1651) led him to examine solar and lunar parallax and to work intensively on the equation of time. All these details are recorded in his autobiographical 'Self-inspections of J. F.', finished in May 1667.

Emergence as an astronomer, 1669-1675
The astronomer and astrologer Vincent Wing appears to have been Flamsteed's first astronomical correspondent outside his immediate local circle. The two men exchanged letters several times in the summer of 1667, but Wing died soon afterwards. Two years then passed before Flamsteed took a crucial step to bring his work to the attention of a wider audience. He says that he was prompted to do this when an improved annual almanac he had prepared was rejected by a publisher 'as beyond the Capacity of the vulgar' (or for failing to include astrological predictions); he then 'excerped the Eclipse and Appulses and addressed the[m] with some Astronimicall speculations to the Royall Society suppresseing my name under my Anagramme' (CUL, RGO 1/32A, fol. 17v). The document was sent to John Stansby (known for his interest in astrology) and passed by him to Elias Ashmole, who presented it to a society meeting. It was well received. Since the anagram--'In mathesi a sole fundes', from Johannes Flamsteedius--was intended as a sign of modesty rather than for concealment, its owner was swiftly identified. The society's secretary, Henry Oldenburg, printed Flamsteed's predictions in the Philosophical Transactions and immediately began to correspond with him, as did the mathematician and intelligencer John Collins.

In the summer of 1670 Flamsteed visited London. Collins introduced him to Jonas Moore (1617-1679), surveyor-general of the ordnance, who made him the symbolic present of a Gascoigne-Towneley micrometer (the device that first enabled telescopes to be used as precision instruments) and wrote to him occasionally thereafter promising future help. On the return journey Flamsteed called at Cambridge and arranged to be admitted to Jesus College with the aid of Dr Richard Wroe, a fellow. His admission, with Wroe as his tutor, was recorded on 21 December 1670, some months after he had returned to Derby.

Once back home, Flamsteed was eager to improve his equipment for practical astronomy. He obtained telescope lenses with Collins's help, and enquired about prices of pendulum clocks. Applying his micrometer to a telescope, he measured the distances between the stars in the Pleiades cluster and took planetary diameters, in imitation of William Gascoigne's work, and observed Jupiter's satellites in imitation of J.-D. Cassini. Collins encouraged him to contact Richard Towneley, which he did in January 1671; he twice called at Towneley's house in Lancashire and on the second occasion, in the summer of 1672, met its owner. Towneley welcomed these overtures and allowed him to copy papers deriving from Jeremiah Horrocks, William Crabtree, and Gascoigne; similar items seem to have been supplied by Jonas Moore. Custody of this material enabled Flamsteed to participate in the compilation of John Wallis's edition Jeremiae Horroccii ... opera posthuma (1673), to which he contributed an account of Horrocks's lunar theory (in the sense of a mathematical basis for calculations) taken from a letter to Crabtree, with lunar tables based on the theory and an explanatory epilogue. He also supplied a treatise of his own on the equation of time--De inaequalitate dierum solarium dissertatio astronomica--written six years earlier. The whole publication played an important part in establishing Flamsteed's credentials as an astronomer in a distinctively English tradition.

In the summer of 1673, at the Royal Society's request, Flamsteed entered the international arena by initiating a correspondence with Cassini. It was carried on for some years with courtesy but caution on both sides, neither wishing to give too much away to a competitor. Flamsteed's views about the conduct of astronomy were far more fully revealed when James Gregory consulted him about equipping a planned observatory at St Andrews, in Scotland; the venture was to prove short-lived, but helped inspire those who felt the English should have an observatory of their own. In the same year Flamsteed prepared 'an Ephemeris wherein I shewed the falsity of Astrology' (CUL, RGO 1/32B, fol. 27r); he failed to secure its publication, probably because potential publishers found such an outspoken attack inappropriate.

In May 1674 Flamsteed again visited London, where he stayed at Moore's house in the Tower, and Cambridge, where on 5 June he proceeded MA from Jesus College by royal mandate (dated 15 May 1674). In the absence of any better provision, he intended to take holy orders and accept a living near Derby, but he was mistaken in assuming that an ordination ceremony would be held at Peterborough the following Christmas. He thus returned to London in February 1675, and the delay allowed time for alternative plans to come to fruition. He was eventually ordained deacon at Easter (at Ely House in London), after his appointment as the king's 'observator'; he was not to be ordained priest until 1685.

Founding the Royal Observatory, 1675-1680
Moore's letters from September 1674 onwards chart the progress of his campaign for the foundation of an observatory. Once the practical difficulties of using the Royal Society's Chelsea College site had proved insurmountable, Moore decided that he could solve at least part of the problem by 'moveing his Majesty for a yearly Annuity' for Flamsteed (Correspondence, 1.312). He had already made Flamsteed's name known at court through a tide table and ephemeris presented to Charles II. Flamsteed helped Moore's clerk Nicholas Stephenson to produce an extended version published as the Royal Almanack (printed late in 1674 for 1675, and annually until 1678). One item included was a description of the mercury barometer, which Flamsteed had learned about from Towneley; in December 1674 Moore demonstrated this to the king and the duke of York and, as Flamsteed recalled, 'was ordered to fit them with them ... togeather with my directions for judgeing of the Weather from their Rise or Fallings' (CUL, RGO 1/32B, fol. 28r). Moore was soon able to report that Flamsteed had also won the approval of Joseph Williamson, secretary of state, and several other courtiers.

Once Flamsteed was back in London he was co-opted, through Moore, to advise a committee examining an astronomical method of finding longitude at sea put forward by a Frenchman, known as 'le Sieur de St Pierre', associated with the king's mistress Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth. Flamsteed has been accused of acting disingenuously in that he supplied the requested data but adapted observations made in Derby so that they appeared to have been made elsewhere, prompting St Pierre to protest that they were 'feigned'. Whatever Flamsteed's motives, however, it was justifiable to offer observations made somewhere other than his known home town. From his point of view the result was satisfactory: St Pierre was dismissed, while he himself had the opportunity to explain that astronomical methods of finding longitude required the provision of a new catalogue of the fixed stars and accurate observations of other heavenly bodies. The committee conveyed this argument to the king and presented Flamsteed as a suitable appointee to take on the task, while the involvement of Moore and other ordnance officers ensured that funds to pay his salary and build an observatory were made available.

Flamsteed appears to have been the only candidate considered for the post of 'astronomical observator', as the warrant of appointment (4 March 1675) described it. The title 'astronomer royal' occasionally appeared in his lifetime, often in the form 'astronomicus regius', but was not in common use until much later; Flamsteed preferred to term himself 'Mathematicus Regius'. He was instructed:

forthwith to apply himselfe with the most exact care and diligence, to the rectifieing 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 perfecteing the Art of Navigation (Correspondence, 1.904)
in return for an annual salary of £100 backdated to the previous September.

At the same time a site was chosen for the proposed royal observatory, though its construction was not begun until August 1675. Robert Hooke acted as architect, presumably in consultation with Wren and Moore. The extent of Flamsteed's influence is unclear, but he helped to supervise the construction process, moving to Greenwich soon after the work started and temporarily setting up his instruments in the Queen's House. He was also closely involved in designing some of the large and innovative instruments provided by Moore for the observatory, especially the 7 foot sextant. The observatory was formally inaugurated with the observing of a partial solar eclipse on 1 June 1676, in the presence of several distinguished visitors; the king was expected but did not attend. Flamsteed took up permanent residence there from 10 July, and conducted regular observations with the sextant from September.

During Moore's lifetime Flamsteed did not have absolute control over the conduct of the institution. Aided by one skilled and one unskilled assistant, he spent much time testing the new instruments and struggling to make them fully operational. A mural quadrant designed by Hooke proved a failure, as did the long telescope placed in a 100 foot well in order to observe stellar transits in the daytime and detect stellar parallax. Fortunately a large sextant was a success; so too were two Tompion clocks with 13 foot pendulums, which enabled Flamsteed (by 1678) to prove to his own satisfaction that the earth rotates at a constant speed--a matter essential to the reliability of all other observations.

Other results were slower to emerge. While Moore and the Royal Society demanded the production of a star catalogue and an immediate solution to the longitude problem, Flamsteed was reluctant to publish unreliable preliminary findings. During 1678 the resulting friction with Moore led him seriously to consider resigning. Early in the year he attempted to become a candidate for the Savilian chair of astronomy at Oxford but gave up when he discovered that Edmond Halley was thought to have a better chance of it (and in fact the chair was not vacated). Halley had first written to Flamsteed in March 1675 and had since been a frequent visitor to the observatory, but this episode marks the beginning of an active rivalry between them. Halley's activities caused problems later in the year, when he returned from St Helena and immediately published a catalogue and chart of the southern stars. Comparisons were drawn with Flamsteed's apparent lack of productivity, and Moore threatened to have his salary stopped. Flamsteed defended himself vigorously and the threat was withdrawn, but anxieties of a different kind arose as a result of Moore's death in August 1679.

Astronomical contacts and quarrels, 1680-1688
Flamsteed's loss of his principal patron was followed by a royal financial crisis. Fearing that his salary might be lost in retrenchments, he looked to friends at court to intervene; a letter to Bishop Seth Ward helped to secure the necessary protection. The ordnance officers' support must also have been crucial; when Moore's son tried to claim the observatory's instruments, they demonstrated their goodwill by deciding the case in Flamsteed's favour. In acknowledgement of his late patron's munificence, Flamsteed supplied a highly technical Doctrine of the Sphere (1680) for inclusion in Moore's posthumous New Systeme of the Mathematicks (1681), and supervised the printing of the whole work.

From 1680 onwards the observatory's future appeared comparatively secure. It won increasing recognition as an institution of national and international importance as a result of Flamsteed's publications in the Philosophical Transactions and his correspondence with overseas astronomers. He remained in occasional contact with Cassini until 1683, and with Ole Roemer following Roemer's visits to Greenwich in 1679 and 1688; he also exchanged long letters with Johannes Hevelius from 1676 to 1685. Hevelius was concerned that Flamsteed had publicly taken Hooke's side against him in their dispute over the relative accuracy of telescopic (micrometric) and plain sights on astronomical instruments; much of their discussion related to this topic, though they also exchanged observations for other purposes. Flamsteed was in touch with Halley when the latter visited Hevelius on behalf of the Royal Society in connection with this dispute. The matter was never truly settled but was smoothed over in a respectful agreement to differ; when Hevelius's observatory burnt down in September 1679, Flamsteed helped him to re-equip by sending telescope lenses and a micrometer.

The appearance of a comet late in 1680 and of what was widely believed to be a second comet early in 1681 prompted a wide range of astronomers and observers to correspond with Flamsteed, including Isaac Newton, the Lucasian professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge, who made contact through James Crompton of Jesus College. It is not clear when Flamsteed first met Newton, but this was their first exchange of views on paper. It was Flamsteed who put forward the controversial proposal that this was one comet rather than two and had altered its course through being deflected away from the sun. Newton later took up this idea, modified it to suggest the comet had curved round behind the sun, and offended Flamsteed by claiming the entire credit.

From late April 1681 until November 1684 Flamsteed regularly lectured at Gresham College in London as deputy for the professor of astronomy, Dr Walter Pope, an arrangement ratified by the college's court on 7 August 1681. Hooke, as Gresham professor of geometry, opposed the appointment and tried, unsuccessfully, to get Flamsteed replaced by Halley. English texts of most of the lectures survive, and Flamsteed at least partially fulfilled the requirement to repeat each lecture in Latin. He ignored the obligation to lecture on planetary theory, however, devoting his attention to such topics as solar parallax, cometary motion, telescope optics, a projection of the sphere, the constitution of the heavenly bodies, precession, and atmospheric refraction; he also discussed the history of astronomy, especially the errors of earlier observers. His investment of time and trouble in the venture suggests that he regarded it as providing an important platform for his ideas, despite the usual thinness of the audience.

Also in 1681, Hooke publicly challenged Flamsteed's knowledge of optics, prompting him to begin to compile a treatise on the subject (never published) and increasing his awareness of the need to justify and defend his own work. In July 1682 he compiled the first formal account of the observatory's history. Discussions of optical questions also played a major part in Flamsteed's correspondence with the young William Molyneux of Dublin, who regularly sought advice on astronomical issues from September 1681 onwards. Flamsteed supplied the answers with exemplary patience, and initially approved a plan to publish an optical treatise. When Molyneux's Dioptrica nova (1692) appeared, he was distressed to find that Halley and the Royal Society were associated with the work and complained that information derived from Gascoigne (by implication, from himself) had been insufficiently acknowledged.

At about the time that his Gresham employment ended, Flamsteed acquired a more substantial addition to his income: the rectory of Burstow, in Surrey, some 22 miles from Greenwich. The living, in the crown's gift, was offered to him through Lord Keeper North; he was consequently ordained priest in January 1685 and granted institution to the benefice on 2 February. The costs of this process and of employing a curate consumed most of the initial profits, but in the longer term the proceeds were probably roughly equivalent to his Greenwich salary. A head-and-shoulders portrait by Thomas Murray at the Royal Society shows Flamsteed in clerical dress and may have been commissioned to celebrate his new status. He was to prove a relatively conscientious rector, visiting the parish at Christmas, Easter, and harvest time, and meanwhile trying to ensure that the curate behaved well and refrained from developing high-church leanings. Towards the end of his life he rebuilt part of the Burstow parsonage house.

Through the early 1680s, despite distractions, Flamsteed attended to his duties as 'observator', continuing to measure angular distances with the sextant while planning to replace the failed mural quadrant with a better meridian instrument. His efforts were not immediately successful: a new 140° mural arc of 6 feet 9 inches radius was finished late in 1681, used from 1683 to 1686, then abandoned as too slight to be reliable. During 1686 and early 1687 he compiled a preliminary catalogue of about 140 fixed stars, which was distributed to a few colleagues; he insisted, however, that the data were provisional and that a reliable catalogue would depend on better instrumentation. It is not surprising, therefore, that he devoted some time to other matters, especially to study of the satellites of Jupiter, which could be accomplished using only a telescope. A catalogue of their expected eclipses, related tables, and his 'description and uses of an instrument for finding the distances of Jupiter's satellites from his axis' were published in the Philosophical Transactions in November and December 1685. The instrument came in the form of a printed plate, designed to be cut out and pasted on board; a superior 'painted' version was presented to Lord Keeper North.

Other demands on Flamsteed's time increased as Newton began to ask for data in association with work on what became the Principia. His first enquiries, at the end of 1684, concerned the comet of 1680-81, the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, and the motion of those planets; in the autumn of 1685 he requested further details of the comet and of the stars by which its course had been plotted. In autumn 1686 Newton returned to the subject of the satellites of Saturn and asked about the shape of Jupiter. On each occasion Flamsteed promptly supplied the information sought, often adding comments on its interpretation. The tone was courteous and even friendly on both sides.

The atmosphere changed after November 1686, when Flamsteed's bitter dislike of Halley, after brewing quietly for some time, exploded into the open. Contributory factors included their contrasting social backgrounds, relative wealth, personal characters, and styles of conduct of science. The immediate causes Flamsteed cited were social slights, Halley's 'ingratitude' for favours bestowed, and his supposed plagiarism of magnetic theories from Peter Perkins (perhaps also from Flamsteed). The outburst came when Halley had recently become clerk to the Royal Society. He was intimately involved with the publication of Newton's Principia and received all due credit as sponsor of the work, while Flamsteed felt that the equally essential contribution he had made by supplying data passed virtually unacknowledged. The timing may have another significance: during the brief reign of the Roman Catholic James II, Flamsteed, with reputed whig sympathies, may have had some cause to be anxious about his prospects and to feel seriously threatened when one of Halley's associates 'asked me why I did not resigne my place when I desired to know for what reason I should doe it hee answered that H might have it' (Correspondence, 2.310).

The effects of the quarrel were both immediate and long-lasting. Flamsteed had been a fellow of the Royal Society since February 1677 and a fairly active one, serving repeatedly on the society's council; he now gave up attending meetings (until the 1690s) and completely ceased publishing in the Philosophical Transactions. He never forgave Halley, complained bitterly about his conduct at frequent intervals, and by 1698 was calling him 'Raymer' (after Tycho Brahe's supposed plagiarist, Ursus--Nicolai Reymers Bär). His dislike and distrust of Halley also affected his relationships with other colleagues, above all with Newton.

Later astronomy: the great mural arc, 1688-1704
The revolution of 1688 and the accession of William and Mary must have reassured Flamsteed about his chances of retaining his post, though he says that he was encouraged to immerse himself in astronomy by the difficulties affecting 'men of my profession', which presumably meant the church's troubles over non-jurors. His financial circumstances had improved because of Burstow and because of an inheritance received on his father's death in March 1688. These factors together allowed him to contemplate investing a large sum in building an improved mural arc. Lord Dartmouth, as master of the ordnance, 'promised to reimburse what it cost me but he being removed from that post before it was finished and dyeing soon after and a chargable war following I lost all my hopes of being repaid' (Correspondence, 2.853). Flamsteed completed the project nevertheless, and boasted that he had spent £120 on it; but the frustrating of these initial hopes may help to explain the determination with which he later tried to obtain financial compensation for his labours.

As a basis for the new mural arc, the frame of the previous one was strengthened and a new brass limb added, producing an instrument of 6 feet 71Ú2 inches radius and taking in 140 degrees of arc. Flamsteed employed his former assistant Abraham Sharp to plane the limb, engrave divisions upon it, and complete the instrument's construction. It was finished in September or October 1689, carefully tested, and immediately brought into intensive use for observing transits of the fixed stars, moon, and planets. It was to prove highly successful, as it was easier to use than the sextant, produced readings that were more readily converted into usable data, and set new standards of accuracy which were profoundly to influence the observatories of Europe. In the shorter term, it enabled Flamsteed to give a new priority to work on a new catalogue of the fixed stars.

Once the mural arc was paid for, Flamsteed apparently decided that his income was at last sufficient to support a wife. On 23 October 1692, at St Lawrence Jewry, he married Margaret Cooke (c.1670-1730), the daughter of a lawyer, Ralph Cooke, and the granddaughter of a previous rector of Burstow. Margaret was an educated woman, both literate and numerate, with a special interest in mathematics. She assisted her husband in his astronomical work on occasions, but was presumably mostly occupied with household duties; after 1700 she was involved with the administration of Greenwich Girls' Charity School. The couple had no children, but from about two years after their marriage Flamsteed's niece Ann Heming lived with them, becoming, in effect, an adopted daughter. During the later part of her husband's life Margaret often acted as his amanuensis, and after his death she completed the publishing of his works.

During late 1692 and early 1693 Flamsteed drafted an exposition of his theory that most shocks perceived as earthquakes were in fact explosions in the air, ignited by 'nitrous' and 'sulphureous' particles; dismissed as 'nonsensicall' by critics, it was not to be published until 1750. His more strictly astronomical work continued meanwhile, though not fast enough for some of his contemporaries. In August 1691 Newton urged him to publish a star catalogue, asked for future planetary observations, and unguardedly remarked that Gregory and Halley were capable young men. In the several surviving drafts of Flamsteed's reply, composed early in 1692, he described his observational work, justified his slowness to publish, and vehemently attacked Halley as the suspected source of all criticisms. The episode may still have been in his mind a couple of years later, when Newton once again began to ask for lunar and other observations. Their discussions bore some fruit, in that Newton formulated a satisfactory account of atmospheric refraction. But he was increasingly unhappy at failing to produce a reliable mathematical account of lunar theory, and correctly suspected that Flamsteed's processing of data was exacerbating the problem. Flamsteed in his turn resented Newton's seeming assumption that he had a right to make endless demands while omitting to communicate any of his results. To make matters worse, Flamsteed suspected that Newton talked freely to Halley and would not prevent Halley from seeing data obtained from the observatory. Angry words were exchanged between them in the summer of 1695; Flamsteed attempted to smooth things over, but Newton ceased to respond to his letters.

Flamsteed had meanwhile found another use for mural arc observations: his study of the pole star pursued over several years appeared in the third volume of Wallis's Opera mathematica (1699) as 'Epistola ... Dec. 20 1698. De parallaxi orbis annui telluris observata'. Flamsteed believed he had discovered a regular deviation of about 40 seconds in pole star observations, which he interpreted as evidence of the parallax of the earth's orbit and thus as the first empirical proof of Copernicanism. While Flamsteed's English text was being turned into Latin, David Gregory intervened to request the suppression of a comment about observations having been supplied to Newton; the ensuing wrangle ended with Flamsteed's reluctant acquiescence. After publication he was forced to concede that the discrepancies he had detected occurred at the wrong time of year to be caused by parallax, though the accuracy of his observations was not challenged. In 1729 the effect was explained by James Bradley as caused by the aberration of light.

From the late 1690s Flamsteed gave serious attention to the task of preparing the rest of his work for publication, planning to print not only the catalogue of fixed stars so long sought by his contemporaries but full transcripts of all his observations, lunar and planetary tables derived from them, and a lavish celestial atlas. To fulfil this ambition he recruited extra assistants. From 1696 onwards calculators were at work both in Derbyshire and at Greenwich, so that errors could be detected by comparing their results; star charts were drawn up by Thomas Weston and ornamented by the artist Paul van Somer during 1703-4. One new aspiration of Flamsteed's emerged after 1699, when the Revd James Pound undertook a voyage to China: Flamsteed kept in contact with him and supervised the making and shipping of a quadrant for his use, hoping that it might produce data for a new catalogue of the southern stars.

The publication dispute and its aftermath, 1704-1719
Flamsteed's attempts to secure funding for publication of his works began with an informal approach to Queen Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark, made through a friend at court. Newton visited Greenwich on 10 or 11 April 1704, viewed the material in preparation, and proposed to recommend the project to the prince; Flamsteed, suspecting his motives, declined the offer. Some months later Flamsteed drew up an 'Estimate', itemizing the planned contents of the Historia coelestis, and circulated it to a few friends. This unintentionally, as he claimed, resulted in its being read to a Royal Society meeting on 15 November 1704. A society deputation then approached the prince, who instructed a group of members to inspect Flamsteed's papers and assess the costs. The same group--initially comprising Newton, Wren, Dr John Arbuthnot, David Gregory, and Francis Robartes--then served as referees supervising expenditure of the grant.

Flamsteed was not greatly alarmed at being outmanoeuvred by Newton and the Royal Society, commenting to Sharp that 'God takes care of my business I doe not very well like the hands by which tis managed but I doubt not but his good providence will turn all to good' (RS, MS 798.21). But the nature of the arrangement and the different parties' attitudes to it seem to have made the subsequent difficulties almost inevitable. Flamsteed said the grant was needed principally to pay for engraving the celestial atlas, and to pay amanuenses and calculators to prepare other material for the press; he privately hoped that profits from the sale of copies would compensate him for money previously spent. The referees appeared unaware of this personal agenda, and conducted the business as though the public benefit was the sole aim; to them, the most important item was the still incomplete star catalogue. They were in no hurry to begin printing the observations, which led Flamsteed to conclude that Newton would like to see the work delayed or spoiled. He was distressed at his own lack of influence, and was especially annoyed when a publisher was recruited (an expense for which he had not originally estimated) while the cash designed for paying his amanuenses was withheld. He refused to join in the first agreement made with the publisher, but was eventually forced to sign formal articles on 10 November 1705.

The referees then demanded his manuscript observing records and a copy of the still incomplete star catalogue. Flamsteed complied but, with their agreement, handed the catalogue over in a sealed package. The printing of the observations was begun in May 1706, but progressed very slowly and stopped altogether once the sextant observations were finished. New terms for the delivery of further copy were proposed to Flamsteed on 20 March 1708 and led eventually to his receiving some of the expected money for paying amanuenses; the press, however, remained at a standstill. In the following July the referees suggested that Flamsteed should no longer be allowed to correct proofs, implying that he was causing extra delays; he defended himself vigorously. Nothing further happened before Prince George died on 28 October 1708. Flamsteed, believing that the referees' authority then ceased, went back to working on his star catalogue and related material at his own pace.

On 9 November 1709 the Royal Society ended his exemption from dues, and used non-payment as an excuse to expel him. On 12 December 1710 Queen Anne signed an order constituting the president and council members of the Royal Society 'Constant Visitors of the Royall Observatory' (CUL, RGO 1/33, fol. 133v), authorizing them to demand a copy of each year's observations, to direct what observations should be made, and to examine the observatory's instruments. Flamsteed protested vigorously, on paper and in person. On 29 December he drafted a petition to the queen asking that the president and council of the Royal Society should be excluded from acting as visitors and that the remainder of the money granted by the late prince should be made available to complete the planned publication.

If this document was presented to the queen, it did not have the desired result. The order was not rescinded, and nothing more was heard of the Historia coelestis until a letter from Arbuthnot two months later requested a complete star catalogue or details of the constellations needed to complete the previous one. Rather than supplying them, Flamsteed suggested discussing new work on planetary tables. His refusal to co-operate over the catalogue led Arbuthnot and his colleagues to make the best they could of the incomplete copy in the sealed package, which they opened, they claimed, by royal command. On 25 March 1711 Flamsteed heard:

that my Catalogue was in the press ... April the 2nd I got the printed 1st sheet and soon after the 3 wherein I found that many of the names I used which were translated from Ptolemy ... were altered ... and I learnt further that Dr Halley looked after the press and was the author of all this confusion. Till I knew this, I was willing to have filled up the copy of the catalogue but perceiving hereby that Halley was minding to spoil the work ... I sent Dr Arbuthnott an account of his villainous outrage and desired he would permit me to print my own catalogue at my own charge. (RS, MS 798.70)
Some exchanges followed in which Halley explained the reasons for alterations and Flamsteed rejected them. In June Halley sent a set of the printed sheets, volunteering to see that any errors were corrected.

This only strengthened Flamsteed's resolve to produce a catalogue free of Halley's supposed 'improvements'. Among the features he rejected were the numbers Halley had given to stars, which were, ironically, to become known as 'Flamsteed numbers'. He was briefly deterred by the high price of paper and by uncertainty about Halley's plans, but began his own printing in the summer of 1712. In the following November he had his portrait painted by Thomas Gibson, intending to have it engraved as a frontispiece to his catalogue; it shows him with one hand on a book of observations and the other laid on his heart, a gesture proclaiming the work's authenticity. Halley's volume appeared towards the end of 1712, although the exact date is uncertain. By 25 November Flamsteed had heard of but not seen the preface in which Halley condemned his slowness to publish and described the book's contents as supporting Newton's theories. By January 1713 Flamsteed had started composing a preface of his own, in which he not only discussed the history of astronomy and the Royal Observatory's accomplishments but gave a blow-by-blow account of his disputes with Newton and Halley.

The visitors, meanwhile, were flexing their muscles. Angry exchanges took place on 26 October 1711, when Flamsteed met Newton and a committee of the Royal Society and told them that the observatory's instruments were his own property, so outside their control. This point gained, a visit to the observatory on 1 August 1713 was more peaceably conducted. Flamsteed obeyed the royal order in that he handed over copies of his observations for 1711, 1712, and 1713, although he disapproved of how they were edited for publication in the Philosophical Transactions. Believing that the visitors' authority automatically ceased on Queen Anne's death in 1714, he ignored later requests.

The arrival of a whig government in 1715, following the accession of George I, brought about a change in Flamsteed's fortunes. Through application to the lords of the Treasury, he succeeded in obtaining 300 unsold copies of the 1712 Historia coelestis. After extracting the sextant observations that he had personally approved, and reserving a few copies of the catalogue and mural arc observations in order to display their errors to his friends, he burnt the rest or, as he put it, 'made a Sacrifice of them to heavenly Truth' (CUL, RGO 1/32C, fol. 104r).

The improvement in Flamsteed's situation seems to be echoed in his depiction on the ceiling of the lower hall of the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich. Late additions to Sir James Thornhill's original scheme included a set of astronomers: Tycho, Copernicus, and Flamsteed with his assistant Thomas Weston, the mural arc, and a diagram of the 1715 total solar eclipse; Newton, however, was represented by an ancient philosopher holding mathematical diagrams. The eclipse was one that excited much interest, and a broadsheet showing Mr Flamsteed's Figure of the Eclipse of the Sun, that will Happen April 22d. 1715 competed with Halley's printed map showing its expected track. Halley later published his observations with the comment that little had been learned from those made at Greenwich. Flamsteed must have been pleased to appear as an expert on the eclipse, therefore, and indeed to be accurately portrayed where most figures were purely allegorical. Since he knew Thornhill personally, it is not impossible that he directly influenced the picture's astronomical content.

During his last few years Flamsteed continued to prepare material for the press, printing his version of the star catalogue and mural arc observations, beginning work on planetary and subsidiary tables, and completing his preface. His attempts to retrieve manuscripts from Newton were only partially successful. He was also hindered by increasing physical frailty, including several attacks of 'my old cruel distemper the stone' (RS, MS 798.109); in 1717, finding it difficult to walk up Greenwich Hill, he bought a sedan chair. His final illness began on 27 December 1719 and concluded with his death at the Royal Observatory on 31 December; he was buried at Burstow on 12 January 1720. His will, made on 28 February 1717 and proved on 16 January 1720, left everything, apart from a few charitable donations, to his wife for her lifetime. It may have proved unfortunate that the largest part of the bequest consisted of £1000 invested in South Sea stock. A separate schedule mentioned as disposing of his books and manuscripts was never found, so they passed to Mrs Flamsteed and Ann Hodgson, née Heming, as joint executors, and thus to Ann's husband, James Hodgson.

Hodgson and Mrs Flamsteed nominally served as joint editors of Flamsteed's three-volume Historia coelestis Britannica (1725). Its contents were as Flamsteed had envisaged except for the 'Prolegomena' or preface, where it was judged politic to omit the section describing his dealings with Newton and Halley. Crosthwait and Sharp were responsible for finishing the technical side of the work; Mrs Flamsteed recruited artists and engravers to complete the Atlas coelestis (1729). Hodgson's main contribution, as custodian of Flamsteed's papers, was the long-term guardianship of his reputation.

Flamsteed's image thus remained untarnished until 1835, when Francis Baily's Account revealed details of his disputes with his contemporaries, boldly took his side against academic devotees of Newton, and offered him as a model for nineteenth-century astronomers. The resulting controversy had such enduring effects that it has only recently become possible to escape its influence and avoid seeing Flamsteed simply as Newton's opponent. At the end of the twentieth century he was recognized as a leading proponent of an influential kind of practical astronomy, which sought advance through the improvement of instrumentation and claimed independence from the concerns of natural philosophers. As a result of the conflicts this generated, Flamsteed took especial care to preserve records which reveal both the extraordinary quality of his observational work and the character of the society in which it was carried out.

FRANCES WILLMOTH

Sources  
The correspondence of John Flamsteed, the first astronomer royal, ed. E. G. Forbes and others, 3 vols. (1995-2001)
F. Willmoth, ed., Flamsteed's stars: new perspectives on the life and work of the first astronomer royal (1997)
F. H. Willmoth, Sir Jonas Moore: practical mathematics and Restoration science (1993)
F. Baily, An account of the Revd John Flamsteed, the first astronomer-royal (1835)
Flamsteed MSS, CUL, Royal Greenwich Observatory archives
The preface to John Flamsteed's Historia coelestis Britannica, or, British catalogue of the heavens, ed. A. Chapman, trans. A. D. Johnson (1982)
The Gresham lectures of John Flamsteed, ed. E. G. Forbes (1975)
E. G. Forbes, 'The origins of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich', Vistas in Astronomy, 20 (1976), 39-50
D. Howse, Greenwich observatory, 3: The buildings and instruments (1675-1975) (1975)
M. Hunter, 'Science and astrology in seventeenth-century England: an unpublished polemic by John Flamsteed', Astrology, science and society: historical essays, ed. P. Curry (1997), 260-86
F. Willmoth, 'John Flamsteed's letter concerning the natural causes of earthquakes', Annals of Science, 44 (1987), 23-70
R. Iliffe and F. Willmoth, 'Astronomy and the domestic sphere: Margaret Flamsteed and Caroline Herschel as assistant-astronomers', Women, science, and medicine, 1500-1700, ed. L. Hunter and S. Hutton (1997)
College Register, Jesus College, Cambridge, col. 1.1
The diary of Robert Hooke ... 1672-1680, ed. H. W. Robinson and W. Adams (1935)
'The diary of Robert Hooke', Early science in Oxford, ed. R. T. Gunther, 10: The life and work of Robert Hooke, part 4 (1935), 69-265
R. North, The lives of ... Francis North ... Dudley North ... and ... John North, ed. A. Jessopp, 3 vols. (1890); repr. as The lives of the Norths (1972)
will, PRO, PROB 11/572, sig. 7
RS, MSS 798.21, 798.70, 798.109

Archives  
CUL, department of manuscripts and university archives, papers
CUL, Royal Greenwich Observatory archives
Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, tables of sun and moon
York Minster Library, York Minster Archives, navigational tables |  Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with E. Bernard
CUL, corresp. with Sir Isaac Newton
Magd. Cam., papers relating to navigation
MHS Oxf., letters to Sir John Moore
priv. coll., letters to John Collins
RS, letters to Henry Oldenburg, etc.
RS, letters to Abraham Sharp
RS, letters to Richard Towneley
Southampton Archives Office, corresp. with William Molyneux
Trinity Cam., letters to Johannes Hevelius
U. Edin. L., special collections division, papers

Likenesses  
T. Murray, oils, c.1684, RS
T. Gibson, oils, 1712, RS [see illus.]
J. Thornhill, ceiling painting, c.1714, Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Painted Hall
D. le Marchand, ivory plaque, in or after 1719
G. Dave, mezzotint, pubd 1805 (after T. Gibson), BM, NPG
T. Gibson, oils, second version, Bodl. Oxf.
F. Place, portrait (part of Camera stellata; after sketch by R. Thacker), repro. in Vivarium Grenovicanum (c.1676)
J. Simon, mezzotint (after T. Gibson), BM, NPG
G. Vertue, engraving (after T. Gibson, 1712)
G. Vertue, line engraving (after T. Gibson), BM, NPG

Wealth at death  
approx. £2000; incl. £1000 in South Sea stock: will, PRO, PROB 11/572, sig. 7; Baily, Account, 333


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