brought on a resolution in the House of Lords charging the crown solicitor in Ireland with tampering with the panel of the jury selected to try one of the catholic delegates, but was defeated by a majority of 162 to 79. In the following March he was offered the vacant Garter, which he declined. In 1819 he attended a public meeting at York convened for the purpose of censuring the Manchester magistrates for their conduct at the Peterloo massacre, and was dismissed from the lord-lieutenancy for violent language.
The first Lady Fitzwilliam died on 13 May 1822, leaving one son, Charles William Wentworth, third earl [q. v.] On 21 July 1823 Fitzwilliam married Louisa, widow of the first Lord Ponsonby, and daughter of the third Viscount Molesworth. She died without issue, on 1 Sept. 1824. Fitzwilliam died on 8 Feb. 1833.
[Diary of Lord Colchester; Cornwallis Correspondence; Rockingham Papers; Froude's English in Ireland; Plowden's Hist. of Ireland; Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt; Massey's Hist. of England; Rose's Diary; Lord Malmesbury's Diary.]
FLAKEFIELD, WILLIAM (fl. 1700), first weaver of checked linen in Great Britain, was, it is said, son of a native (named Wilson) of Flakefield, in the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, who became a merchant in Glasgow about 1650, and was called Flakefield in order to distinguish him from another merchant named Wilson. However this may be, Richard Fleckfield was deacon of the incorporation of weavers of Glasgow in 1640, John Fleckfield in 1670, and Robert Fleckfield in 1673, 1675, and 1676 (Cleland, Annals of Glasgow, p. 425). William Flakefield may probably have been the son of John or Robert Fleckfield. After having learnt the art of weaving, he enlisted about 1670 in the Cameronian regiment; from this he was afterwards transferred to the Scots guards. While on service abroad he came across a blue and white check handkerchief of German make. He resolved immediately to imitate it when he returned to Glasgow, and when he obtained his discharge in 1700 he carried out his intention. With some difficulty he got together the means for making a web of two dozen handkerchiefs. The novelty of the blue and white check and the unusual fineness of the texture made the article so popular that it was soon very largely manufactured in Glasgow and its neighbourhood. As late as 1771 striped and checkered linen cloth and handkerchiefs were among the most important textile manufactures of Glasgow (Gibson, History of Glasgow, pp. 239, 248). Probably in consequence of being outstripped by imitators with larger means of carrying on the new manufacture, Flakefield himself seems to have obtained no benefit from the success of his scheme, for in his old age he was made town-drummer of Glasgow, and died in that office.
[Ure's Hist. of Rutherglen and East Kilbride, pp. 169–72.]
FLAMBARD, RANNULF (d. 1128), bishop of Durham and chief minister of William Rufus, was of obscure origin (Ord. Vit. iii. 310, iv. 107; William of Malmesbury, ii. 497), a phrase perhaps not to be taken too strictly in those days (cf. Ord. Vit. iv. 144). Domesday shows that Rannulf Flambard (Flamard, Flanbard, or Flanbart) was a landowner in Godalming hundred, Surrey, at Middleton-Stoney, Oxfordshire, and at ‘ Bile’ and ‘Becleslei’ in Hampshire. He was also tenant of a house in Oxford, and appears to have been dispossessed of part of his Hampshire property on the making of the New Forest (Domesday, 1 fol. 30b2, 157a1, 51a2, 154a1). He may also, as Mr. Freeman has remarked, be the Rannulf Flamme who holds land, in the Survey, at ‘Funtelei’ in Titchfield hundred, Hampshire (ib. fol. 49a2). Orderic says that he was the son of Turstin of Bayeux. His mother was still living in 1101, and his brother possibly in 1130–1, so that he could hardly have been settled in this country under Edward the Confessor (Ord. Vit. iii. 310, iv. 109–10), as has been sometimes held.
Rannulf seems to have attached himself in boyhood to the court of William I, where his comely person, intelligence, eloquence, and generosity soon cleared the road to success (ib. iii. 310; but cf. Cont. Hist. Dun. Eccles. i. 135). He pushed his way by flattery, treachery, and coarse indulgences (Ord. Vit. ib.). Though no scholar, he had a pliant wit and argumentative quickness. Even before the Conqueror's death he was feared by many nobles, whose failings he revealed to the king. Mr. Freeman suggests with probability that he is the Rannulf whom William I sent (c 1072) to force his ‘new customs’ on the bishopric of Durham, and who was driven from the diocese by the saint's vengeance (Simeon of Durham, i. 105–7; cf. Freeman, iv. 521). According, however, to Simeon's continuator, who appears to have possessed special knowledge as to Rannulf's early career, Rannulf was originally in the service of Maurice, bishop of London (1085–1107), whom he only left ‘propter decaniam sibi ablatam,’ and in the hope of doing better in the service of the king (apparently William II) (Cont. Hist.
