FLAMSTEED. 
anil other learned men, Mr. Flamsteed for 
a long time afterwards kept up a correspon- 
dence, by letters on literary subjects. 
In 1670, Ills father observing he held cor- 
respondence with these ingenious gentle- 
men, advised him to take a journey to Lon- 
don, to make himself perfectly acquainted 
with them ; an offer which he gladly em- 
braced, and visited Mr. Oldenburg and Mr. 
Collins, who introduced him to Sir Jonas 
Moore, which proved the means of his 
greatest honour and preferment : he here 
got the knowledge and practice of astrono- 
mical instruments, as telescopes, micro- 
meters, &c. On his return, he called at 
Cambridge, and visited Dr. Barrow, Mr. 
Isaac Newton, and other learned men 
there, and entered himself a student of Je- 
sus College. In 1672, he extracted several 
observations from Mr. Gascoigne’s and Mr. 
Crabtree’s letters, which improved him 
greatly in dioptrics. In this year he made 
many celestial observations, which, with cal- 
culations of the appulses of the moon and 
planets to fixed stars for the year following, 
he sent to Mr. Oldenburg, who published 
them in the “ Philosophical Transactions.” 
In 1673, Mr. Flamsteed wrote a small 
tract concerning the true diameters of all 
the planets, when at their greatest and least 
distances from the earth, which he lent to 
Mr. Newton in 1685, who made some use 
of it in the fourth book of his “ Principia.” 
In 1674, he wrote an ephemeris to shew the 
falsity of astrology, and the ignorance of 
those who pretended to it ; with calcula- 
tions of the moon’s rising and setting , also 
occultations and appulses of the moon and 
planets to the fixed stars. To which, at Sir 
Jonas Moore’s request, he added a table of 
the Moon’s southings for that year; from 
'which, and from Philips’s “ Theory of the 
Tides,” the high-waters being computed, he 
found the times come very near. In 1674 
too, he drew up an accouut of the tides for 
the use of the King. Sir Jonas also shewed 
the King, and the Duke of York, some ba- 
rometers and thermometers that Mr. Flam- 
steed had given him, with the necessary 
rules forjudging of the weather; and other- 
wise took every opportunity of Speaking fa- 
vourably of Flamsteed to them, till at 
length he brought him a warrant to be the 
King ’s' astronomer, with a salary of lOOf. 
per annum, to be paid out of the office of 
ordnance, because Sir Jonas was then sur- 
veyor general of the ordnance. This, how- 
ever, did not abate our author’s propensity 
for holy orders, and he was accordingly or- 
dained at Ely, by Bishop Gunning. 
On the 10th of August 1675, the founda- 
tion of the Royal Observatory at Green- 
wich was laid ; and, during the building of 
it, Mr. Flamsteed’s temporary observatory 
was in the Queen’s house, where he made 
his observations of the appulses of the moon 
and planets to the fixed stars, and wrote his 
“ Doctrine of the Sphere,” which was after- 
wards published by Sir Jonas, in his “ Sys- 
tem of Mathematics.” 
About the year 1684, he was presented 
to the living of Burstow in Surry, which he 
held as long as he lived. Mr. Flamsteed 
was equally respected by the great men his 
contemporaries, and by those who have suc- 
ceeded since his death. Dr. Wotton, in 
his Reflections upon Ancient and Mo- 
dern Learning,” styles our author one of 
the. most accurate observers of the planets 
and stars, and says he calculated tables of 
the eclipses of the several satellites, which 
proved very useful to the astronomers : 
and Mr. Molyneux, in his “ Dioptrica No- 
va,” gives him a high character ; and in the 
admonition to the reader, prefixed to the 
work, observes, that the geometrical me- 
thod of calculating a ray’s progress, is quite 
new, and never before published ; and for 
the first hint of it, says he, I must acknow- 
ledge myself obliged to my worthy friend 
Mr. Flamsteed. 
He wrote several small tracts, and had 
many papers inserted in the “ Philosophi- 
cal Transactions,” viz. several in almost 
every volume, from the fourth to the twen- 
ty- nin th, too numerous to be mentioned in 
this place particularly. 
But his great work, and that which con- 
tained the main operations of his life, was 
the “ Historia Ccelestis Britannica,” pub- 
lished in 1725, in three large folio volumes ; 
the first of which contains the observations 
of Mr. William Gascoigne, the first inven- 
tor of the method of measuring angles in a 
telescope, by means of screws, and the 
first who applied telescopical sights to as- 
tronomical instruments, taken at Middle- 
ton, near Leeds in Yorkshire, between the 
years 1638 and 1643 ; extracted from his 
letters by Mr. Crabtree, with some of Mr. 
Crabtree’s observations about the same 
time ; and also those of Mr. Flamsteed him- 
self, made at Derby, between the years 
1670 and 1(375 ; besides a multitude of cu- 
rious observations, and necessary tables, to 
be used with them, made at the Royal Ob- 
