church. It gave occasion to the Annals of Cardinal Baronius. Planck, in his History of Protestant Theology, is now acknowledged to have done injustice to the memory of Flach, and to have misunderstood his character and motives. In 1844 a vindication of his fame was published by Professor Twesten of Berlin, which has given a new tone to opinion in Germany; and he is now spoken of there as a "man of faith—one of that cloud of witnesses of whom the world is not worthy."—See a lengthened sketch of his life in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche.—P. L.
FLACOURT, Étienne de, a French governor of Madagascar, was born in 1607, and died in 1660. When he was sent out in 1648 to that island, the French affairs there were in a very loose and unsatisfactory condition. His firmness and foresight, however, soon restored order and tranquillity. But he afterwards broke faith with the natives, who thereupon became his enemies. His subsequent administration was very tyrannical and unjust. Returning to France in 1655, he was appointed director-general of the Oriental Company; and having gone out a second time to Madagascar, perished on his voyage home. He wrote a history of Madagascar, and a dictionary of the language of that island. The latter is a very careless and imperfect production; but his history contains much interesting and valuable information respecting Madagascar and the doings of his countrymen there.—R. M., A.
FLAHAULT DE LA BILLADERIE, Auguste Charles Joseph, Comte de, a French general and diplomatist, born at Paris, 20th April, 1785. His father, a general officer, perished in the Revolution. He was educated in England and Germany, under the care of his mother, who supported herself in exile by literary labours. He entered the army in 1799, and became successively aid-de camp on the staff of Murat, Berthier, and Napoleon. He was named general-of-brigade in 1813, was proscribed after the Hundred Days, sought refuge in England, where he married the daughter of Lord Keith, and returned to France in 1827. In 1813 he was sent as minister-plenipotentiary to Berlin, in 1842 ambassador to the court of Vienna, and in 1860 to that of St James. He died in 1870.—J. S., G.
FLAHERTY, Roderic. See O'Flaherty.
FLAMBARD, Ralph (Ranulphus), Bishop of Durham, and for a decade at least prime minister, so to speak, of William Rufus, was, according to Ordericus Vitalis, son of "an obscure priest of Bayeux," and his mother had with the monkish biographers of her son the reputation of being a sorceress. He seems to have accompanied in some humble capacity the army of William the Conqueror to England. Entering into holy orders, and uniting, as was common in those times, the functions of the priest and the lawyer, Flambard became chaplain to Maurice, who was at once bishop of London and chancellor during a portion of William the Conqueror's reign. There is every reason to believe that Flambard held some post in the bishop's court of chancery, and undoubtedly he was a clever pleader in it. "Invictus causidicus," is William of Malmesbury's description of him at this period. He had obtained from the Conqueror the church of Godalming in Surrey, to which other preferments were gradually added. We find him next one of the chaplains of William Rufus, in whose favour he rose rapidly, becoming his chief adviser after the death of Lanfranc in 1089. Flambard was not merely the instrument, but the instigator of his royal patron. It was he who invented new penalties for crimes, that the exchequer might be enriched. It was he who drew tighter the stringent forest laws of the time. It was he, above all, who hit upon the plan of augmenting the royal revenues, by placing the temporalities of vacant bishoprics and abbotships at the disposal of the sovereign; who rewarded him by grants of the temporalities of the abbey of Winchester, of the bishopric of Lincoln, and of the archbishopric of Canterbury itself. Further, it was at Flambard's instigation that a new survey of the land was made, despoiling the subjects to enrich the king. This policy made him hated by the people and by the clergy. The latter attempted to get rid of him by having him carried off to sea, but the plot miscarried. He was consecrated bishop of Durham in the June of 1099, not long before the death of Rufus in the New Forest. It is a moot-point whether Flambard ever was chancellor. Lord Campbell includes him among his chancellors, but the weight of evidence, as given by Mr. Foss, is decidedly against Lord Campbell's opinion. It is probable, however, that Flambard was chief justiciary of England, a post more important and dignified in those days than the chancellorship; and that in this capacity he was the first judicial functionary who presided in Westminster Hall, the building of which was completed in the last months of Rufus' reign. With the accession of Henry I., a new policy was inaugurated, and the instruments of that pursued in the former reign were at once disgraced. By the advice of the great council of the kingdom, Flambard, as the chief counsellor of the late monarch, was committed a close prisoner to the tower of London, from which he effected his escape in rather a romantic manner, rope-fashion, from his window; his guards being intoxicated out of what was then thought his splendid prison allowance of two shillings a day! Taking refuge in Normandy with the Conqueror's eldest son, he was a leading instigator of the invasion of England by Duke Robert in the summer of 1101. Flambard afterwards returned to England, and regained the see of Durham; but all his efforts to procure the favour of Henry I. seem to have been ineffectual, although, it must be added, there is some slight evidence to show that he was appointed a treasurer of the new monarch. He settled down to his duties, in the discharge of which he distinguished himself during the rest of his life by carrying matters with a high episcopal hand, and better still, by various works of constructive magnificence, ecclesiastical and secular, among which may be noted his completion of the cathedral church of Durham, and his erection of the stronghold of Norham, as a defence against the inroads of the Scotch. He died in the September of 1128. Neither Lord Campbell nor Mr. Foss alludes to a curious quotation from the Latin Chronicle of Peterborough, made by Mr. Ingram in his notes to the Saxon Chronicle, and according to which Flambard, though condemned as illiterate by his monkish biographers, was the author of a work, "De Legibus Angliæ." This statement, if correct, would make him the earliest of our writers on English law, and give him, in point of time, a priority over Bracton, Fleta, and Fortescue. In Hutchinson's History of Durham will be found a good collection of most extant notices, both published and manuscript, of this singular man, who stands out in striking contrast to the Lanfrancs and Anselms of his age.—F. E.
FLAMEL, Nicolas, a French alchemist, who flourished in the fourteenth century, between the death of Raymond Lully and the appearance of Basil Valentine. Having at an early age devoted himself to the hermetic art, he accidentally obtained, we are told, the manuscripts of a certain mysterious sage, Jew or Arabian, and following up the clue contained in these precious documents, became possessed of the grand secret. He then repeatedly effected the transmutation of base metals on a large scale, and acquired thus immense wealth. A part of his riches he employed in erecting a vast number of houses, together with churches not a few. Finally, having attained immortality by the use of the philosopher's stone, he and his wife disappeared from France, and retired, it was supposed, to the east, to live for ever in splendour. According to more sober statements, Flamel was simply an accountant and usurer, who lent money on mortgage, and in this manner became possessed of a great number of houses.—J. W. S.
FLAMINIO, Giovanni Antonio, born at Imola about 1464. His family name was Zarabbini; but, having become a member of the Academy of Venice, he assumed, according to custom, the Roman name of Flaminio, which he transmitted to posterity. At twenty-one years of age he was called to Serravalle as professor of belles-lettres, and there, in token of public favour, received letters patent of nobility. Flaminio has left some Latin poetry of inferior merit, and many works in Latin prose on education and grammar. He died at Bologna on the 18th of May, 1556.—A. C. M.
FLAMINIO, Marcantonio, son of the preceding, was born at Serravalle in 1498. His father was his instructor; and such was the progress made by Marcantonio, that whilst only seventeen years of age, he was sent by his father to Pope Leo X., for the purpose of offering to that protector of letters some poetical compositions in Latin. Marcantonio was warmly received and intrusted by the pontiff to the care of Brandolini, an orator and a poet, then deservedly enjoying the highest reputation. At a second meeting with the pope, Flaminio having answered many questions on literature, in the presence of several of the cardinals, Leo expressed his approbation by sending to the young poet the following motto from Virgil:—
" Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra."
