Flatman's ‘Poems and Songs’ were first collected in 1674, 8vo, and reached a fourth edition in 1686. Prefixed are commendatory verses by Walter Pope (only in first edition), Charles Cotton, Richard Newcourt, and others. In the third and fourth editions are a portrait of the author, engraved by R. White, and a dedicatory epistle to the Duke of Ormonde, who is said to have been so pleased with the ode on the death of his son, the Earl of Ossory (published in 1680), that he sent the poet a diamond ring. The edition of 1686 is the most complete. Some of the poems were in the first instance published separately, or had appeared in other collections. ‘A Panegyrick … to Charles the Second,’ s. sh. fol. 1660, and two copies of verses prefixed to Sanderson's ‘Graphice,’ 1658, were not reprinted; but Flatman was careful to collect most of his scattered poems. Among his ‘Poems and Songs’ he included his commendatory verses before Faithorne's ‘Art of Graveing,’ 1662, ‘Poems by Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda,’ 1667, Creech's translation of ‘Lucretius,’ 2nd edit. 1683, and Izaak Walton's edition of Chalkhill's ‘Thealma and Clearchus,’ 1683; also some satirical verses contributed to ‘Naps upon Parnassus,’ 1658 [see Austin, Samuel, the younger].
He died in Three-leg Alley, St. Bride's, London, 8 Dec. 1688, and was buried in the parish church. On 26 Nov. 1672 he had married a ‘fair virgin’ of some fortune, and in Hacket's epitaphs there is an epitaph upon one of his sons. Flatman is said to have possessed a small estate at Tishton, near Diss. Two miniature portraits of him, painted by himself, are preserved; one in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, and another in the Dyce collection at South Kensington. There are also portraits of him by Sir Peter Lely and by Faithorne.
Wood ascribes to him ‘Montelion's Almanac’ for 1661 and 1662; also a mock romance, ‘Don Juan Lamberto: or, a Comical History of the Late Times. By Montelion, Knight of the Oracle,’ &c., b. l., two parts, 1661, 4to (reprinted in vol. vii. of ‘Somers Tracts,’ 1812), ‘to both which parts (very witty and satyrical), tho' the disguis'd name of Montelion, Knight of the Oracle, &c., is set, yet the acquaintance and contemporaries of Th. Flatman always confidently aver'd that the said Flatman was the author of them.’ A satirical tract, ‘Heraclitus Ridens,’ 1681, has been attributed to Flatman. Wood (Fasti, ed. Bliss, ii. 37) states that in May 1672 ‘there had like to have been a poetical war’ between Flatman and Dr. Robert Wild; but ‘how it was ended I cannot tell.’
[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iv. 244–6; Granger's Biog. Hist. 2nd ed. iv. 54–6, 117–18; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 1849, pp. 460–1; Gent. Mag. March 1834; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iv. 251; Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Phillips, p. 113, &c.; Hunter's Chorus Vatum, Addit. MS. 24490, fol. 206; Corser's Collectanea; Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists; information kindly supplied by the Warden of New College, Oxford.]
FLATTISBURY, PHILIP (fl. 1500), compiler, was of a family members of which, from the thirteenth century, held important positions as landowners in the county of Kildare, Ireland, and occasionally filled legal offices under the English government there. Flattisbury appears to have been a retainer of Gerald Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Kildare [q. v.], deputy-governor of Ireland under Henry VII and Henry VIII. In 1503 Flattisbury made for that nobleman a compilation styled the ‘Red Book of the Earls of Kildare.’ This volume consists mainly of documents connected with or bearing upon the lands and possessions of the Geraldine house of Kildare. This volume was sought for eagerly, but in vain, by the governmental agents at the time of the attainder of the heads of the house of Kildare in 1537. It is now in the possession of the Duke of Leinster. A reproduction from it was given on plate lx. of the third part of ‘Facsimiles of National MSS. of Ireland,’ published in 1879.
Flattisbury also transcribed for Gerald, ninth earl of Kildare [q. v.], in 1517, a collection of Anglo-Irish annals in Latin, terminating in 1370 [see Pembridge, Christopher]. To them he appended at the end a few lines of additional matter, with a brief panegyric on the Earl of Kildare. The manuscript bears the following title: ‘Hic inferius sequuntur diversæ Cronicæ ad requisitionem nobilis et præpotentis domini, Geraldi filii Geraldi, deputati domini regis Hiberniæ, scriptæ per Philippum Flattisbury de Johnston juxta le Naas, anno Domini mdxvii. et anno regni Henrici Octavi ix.’ Edmund Campion, in his ‘History of Ireland,’ written in 1571, and Richard Stanihurst, somewhat later, referred erroneously to Flattisbury as the author of the annals of which he was the transcriber. Stanihurst did not record the date of Flattisbury's death, but mentioned that it took place ‘at his town styled Johnstown,’ near Naas, in Kildare, and observes that he was a ‘worthy gentleman and a diligent antiquary.’ The original annals, from which Flattisbury transcribed, were printed for the first time in 1607 by Camden, in his ‘Britannia,’ from a manuscript lent to him by Lord Howard of Naworth, and subse-
