until in the final and successful assault on 31 Aug. 1813 he was killed by a musket-ball in the forty-fifth year of his age. Sir Augustus Fraser says, in a letter written at the time: ‘We cannot get Sir Richard's loss from our minds; our trenches, our batteries, all remind us of one of the most amiable of men I ever knew, and one of the most solid worth. No loss will be more deeply felt, no place more difficult to be filled up.’
Fletcher was buried with three other engineer officers on the height of St. Bartholomew, opposite St. Sebastian, where a tombstone recorded the fact. A monument to his memory, designed by E. H. Baily, R.A., was erected in Westminster Abbey by his brother-officers of the corps of royal engineers. It stands at the west end of the north aisle.
Fletcher left a son and five daughters, his wife having died before him; his only son died in 1876 without issue, and the baronetcy became extinct.
[Jones's Sieges in Spain; Jones's War in Spain; Wellington Despatches; Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula; Alison's History of Europe; Landmann's Recollections; Sabine's Letters of Colonel Sir A. S. Fraser; Conolly's Notitia Historica of the Corps of Royal Engineers; Corps Records.]
FLETCHER, ROBERT (fl. 1586), verse writer, seems to be identical with a student of Merton College, Oxford, who came from Warwickshire, proceeded B.A. in 1564, and M.A. in 1567. He was admitted a fellow in 1563, but in 1569 quarrelled with Bickley, the new warden. ‘For several misdemeanors he was turned out from his fellowship of that house (i.e. Merton) in June 1569,’ whereupon he became schoolmaster at Taunton, and afterwards ‘preacher of the word of God’ (Wood). He wrote two works, both very rare, viz.: 1. ‘An Introduction to the Looue of God. Accoumpted among the workes of St. Augustine, and translated into English by Edmund [Freake], bishop of Norwich that nowe is … and newlie turned into Englishe Meter by Rob. Fletcher,’ London (by Thomas Purfoot), 1581, dedicated to Sir Francis Knollys. 2. ‘The Song of Solomon,’ in English verse, with annotations, London, by Thomas Chard, 1586. A third very rare volume—a copy is in the Grenville Library at the British Museum—by a Robert Fletcher, who may be identical with the author of the two former volumes, is entitled ‘The Nine English Worthies … beginning with King Henrie the first, and concluding with Prince Henry, eldest sonne to our soueraigne Lord the King,’ London, 1606, dedicated to Prince Henry, and to the Earls of Oxford and Essex, ‘and other young lords attending the princes highnesse.’ Fletcher commends Ascham's advice as to the need of learning in men of high rank. Prefatory verse is contributed by R. Fenne, Thomas, lord Windsor, Sir Will. Whorewood, John Wideup, Jo. Guilliams, Paul Peart, and others. A brief life of each monarch in prose is followed by an epitaph in verse, except in the last case, where the life is wholly in verse.
[Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 179; Oxford Univ. Reg. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), i. 253; Ames's Typ. Antiq. ed. Herbert, pp. 998, 1195; Brodrick's Memorials of Merton Coll., pp. 54, 267.]
FLETCHER, THOMAS (1664–1718), poet, eldest son of John Fletcher of Winchester by his wife Mary Bourne, was born at Wirley Magna, Staffordshire, on 21 March 1664, and was educated at Winchester School and at New College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 10 April 1689, M.A. on 14 Jan. 1692, B.D. and D.D. on 25 June 1707. He was fellow of his college, and held for a time a mastership at Winchester School. A man of the same name held the prebend of Barton David in the church of Wells from 1696 to 1713, and is probably the same person, though the cathedral archives do notestablish the fact. Fletcher was an admirer of Bishop Ken, and wrote some fulsome verses to him on his promotion to the see of Bath and Wells in 1685. The prebend did not fall vacant until after Ken's deprivation, but it is probable that he still retained and exerted sufficient influence with the dean and chapter of Wells to secure Fletcher's appointment, the more so as they cordially detested his successor, Bishop Kidder. Fletcher died on 21 Feb. 1718. By his wife, Catherine Richards, he had three daughters and one son, Thomas. He is now represented by Thomas William Fletcher, esq., of Lawneswood House, near Stourbridge, Staffordshire.
Fletcher is the author of a small volume of verse entitled ‘Poems on Several Occasions and Translations, wherein the first and second books of Virgil's Æneis are attempted in English,’ London, 1692, 8vo. A dedication to the Rev. William Harris, D.D., ‘school-master of the college near Winton,’ explains that the poems are chiefly juvenile exercises. The first book of the Æneid is translated in heroic couplets, part of the second and also part of the fourth in blank verse. The volume also contains a translation of the second epode of Horace, and of part of the first book of Boethius's ‘De Consolatione Philosophiæ,’ the verses to Ken referred to in the text, a ‘pastoral’ on the birth of Christ, and some other pieces of a conventional stamp.
