proved satisfactory, but the defects of the mural circle occasioned Fallows bitter disappointment. The departure of Captain Ronald in October 1830 was a severe blow, and but for the devotion of Mrs. Fallows, who qualified herself to act as his assistant, he would have been forced to discontinue his observations. His own health had been shaken by a sunstroke soon after his arrival, and was finally wrecked by a dangerous attack of scarlatina in the middle of 1830. Incurable dropsy set in, but he still struggled to perform his duties, and during the early part of 1831 was carried daily in a blanket from his sick-room to the observatory. Towards the end of March he was removed to Simon's Bay, where he died on 25 July 1831. A slab of black Robben-island stone marks his grave opposite the observatory. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1823.
Fallows's scientific attainments were made more effective by the zeal, honesty, and clear good sense of his character. Letters still exist at the admiralty in which he urged the payment to his father of a portion of his salary of 600l. Several children were born to him at the Cape, but none survived him. He left nearly four thousand observations, which were reduced under the supervision of Sir George Airy, and published at the expense of the admiralty as ‘Results of the Observations made by the Rev. Fearon Fallows at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, in the years 1829–31.’ They form part of the nineteenth volume of the Royal Astronomical Society's ‘Memoirs,’ and include a catalogue of 425 stars, besides observations on the sun, moon, planets, and the comet of 1830. An account of a curious luminous appearance seen by him on 28 Nov. 1821 in the same dark part of the moon where similar effects had previously been witnessed by others, was laid before the Royal Society on 28 Feb. 1822 (Phil. Trans. cxii. 237), and his ‘Observations made with the Invariable Pendulum for the purpose of Determining the Compression of the Earth’ on 18 Feb. 1830 (ib. cxx. 153). The ellipticity deduced was 1/288.5. In the ‘Quarterly Journal of Science’ he published ‘An Account of some Parhelia seen at the Cape of Good Hope’ (xvi. 365, 1823), and ‘An Easy Method of Comparing the Time indicated by any number of Chronometers with the given Time at a certain Station’ (xvii. 315, 1824).
[Monthly Notices, ii. 163; Airy's Historical Introduction to Fallows's Results, Memoirs Roy. Astron. Soc. xix. 1; Proc. Roy. Soc. iii. 82; Gent. Mag. vol. ci. pt. ii. p. 378; André et Rayet's L'Astronomie Pratique, ii. 66; Lonsdale's Worthies of Cumberland, v. 161.]
FALMOUTH, Viscount. [See Boscawen, Hugh, first Viscount, d. 1734.]
FALMOUTH, Earl of. [See Boscawen, Edward, 1787–1841, first Earl.]
FANCOURT, SAMUEL (1678–1768), dissenting minister and projector of circulating libraries, is said to have been a native of the west of England. One of ‘the four London ministers’ of 1719 was his tutor, and another his predecessor at the place from which he removed to Salisbury (Preface to his Essay concerning Certainty and Infallibility). This probably indicates that he was trained for the ministry by Benjamin Robinson at Hungerford, and succeeded Jeremiah Smith as pastor at Andover (Walter Wilson, History of Dissenting Churches and Meeting-houses in London, i. 375, iii. 58). From 1718 to 1730 he was minister and tutor in Salisbury. On the occasion of the controversy which arose in consequence of the proceedings at the Salters' Hall conference of London ministers in February 1719, he wrote two tracts on the side of the dogmatists. Some years later he involved himself in a controversy about free-will and predestination, which eventually resulted in his having to leave Salisbury. He went to London and there established what was said, about forty years afterwards, to have been the first circulating library. A library conducted by him, in which the subscription was a guinea per annum, was dissolved at Michaelmas 1745, and he then carried out a new plan. This plan is described in the ‘Alphabetical Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets belonging to the Circulating Library in Crane Court’ (Fleet Street), 2 vols. 8vo, 1748, which he issued in parts between 1746 and 1748. According to this scheme for ‘The Gentlemen and Ladies' Growing and Circulating Library,’ any one might become a proprietor by an initial payment of a guinea and a quarterly payment of a shilling. The proprietors were to choose trustees in whom the library was to be vested, Fancourt himself being appointed librarian during good behaviour. Each proprietor was to be allowed to take out one volume and one pamphlet at a time. ‘He may keep them a reasonable time according to their bigness; but if they are not wanted by others he may keep them as long as he has a mind.’ The library contained two or three thousand bound volumes and about the same number of pamphlets; from a third to a half of the books and pamphlets consisted of theology and ecclesiastical history and controversy, and only about a tenth of it was ‘light’ literature. The house in Crane Court in
