and there can be no doubt that his services were chiefly of a fiscal character. His name is regularly connected by the chroniclers with the ingenious methods of extortion from which all classes suffered between 1087 and 1100. He profited largely by the tyranny of Rufus, farming for the king a large proportion of the ecclesiastical preferments which were illegally kept vacant, and obtaining for himself the wealthy see of Durham (1099). His fortunes suffered an eclipse upon the accession of Henry I., by whom he was imprisoned in deference to the popular outcry. A bishop, however, was an inconvenient prisoner, and Flambard soon succeeded in effecting his escape from the Tower of London. A popular legend represents the bishop as descending from the window of his cell by a rope which friends had conveyed to him in a cask of wine. He took refuge with Robert Curthose in Normandy and became one of the advisers who pressed the duke to dispute the crown of England with his younger brother; Robert rewarded the bishop by entrusting him with the administration of the see of Lisieux. After the victory of Tinchebrai (1106) the bishop was among the first to make his peace with Henry, and was allowed to return to his English see. At Durham he passed the remainder of his life. His private life was lax; he had at least two sons, for whom he purchased benefices before they had entered on their teens; and scandalous tales are told of the entertainments with which he enlivened his seclusion. But he distinguished himself, even among the bishops of that age, as a builder and a pious founder. He all but completed the cathedral which his predecessor, William of St Carilef, had begun; fortified Durham; built Norham Castle; founded the priory of Mottisfout and endowed the college of Christchurch, Hampshire. As a politician he ended his career with his submission to Henry, who found in Roger of Salisbury a financier not less able and infinitely more acceptable to the nation. Ranulf died on the 5th of September 1128.
See Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, vols. iii. and iv. (ed. le Prévost, Paris, 1845); the first continuation of Symeon’s Historia Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (Rolls ed., 1882); William of Malmesbury in the Gesta pontificum (Rolls ed., 1870); and the Peterborough Chronicle (Rolls ed., 1861). Of modern writers E. A. Freeman in his William Rufus (Oxford, 1882) gives the fullest account. See also T. A. Archer in the English Historical Review, ii. p. 103; W. Stubbs’s Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897); J. H. Round’s Feudal England (London, 1895). (H. W. C. D.)
FLAMBOROUGH HEAD, a promontory on the Yorkshire
coast of England, between the Filey and Bridlington bays of
the North Sea. It is a lofty chalk headland, and the resistance
it offers to the action of the waves may be well judged by contrast
with the low coast of Holderness to the south. The cliffs of the
Head, however, are pierced with caverns and fringed with rocks
of fantastic outline. Remarkable contortion of strata is seen
at various points in the chalk. Sea-birds breed abundantly on
the cliffs. A lighthouse marks the point, in 54° 7′ N., 0° 5′ W.
FLAMBOYANT STYLE, the term given to the phase of Gothic
architecture in France which corresponds in period to the
Perpendicular style. The word literally means “flowing” or
“flaming,” in consequence of the resemblance to the curved
lines of flame in window tracery. The earliest examples of
flowing tracery are found in England in the later phases of the
Decorated style, where, in consequence of the omission of the
enclosing circles of the tracery, the carrying through of the
foliations resulted in a curve of contrary flexure of ogee form
and hence the term flowing tracery. In the minster and the
church of St Mary at Beverley, dating from 1320 and 1330, are
the earliest examples in England; in France its first employment
dates from about 1460, and it is now generally agreed that the
flamboyant style was introduced from English sources. One of
the chief characteristics of the flamboyant style in France is
that known as “interpenetration,” in which the base mouldings
of one shaft are penetrated by those of a second shaft of which
the faces are set diagonally. This interpenetration, which was
in a sense a tour de force of French masons, was carried to such
an extent that in a lofty rood-screen the mouldings penetrating
the base-mould would be found to be those of a diagonal buttress
situated 20 to 30 ft. above it. It was not limited, however, to
internal work; in late 15th and early 16th century ecclesiastical
architecture it is found on the façades of some French
cathedrals, and often on the outside of chapels added in later
times.
FLAME (Lat. flamma; the root flag- appears in flagrare, to
burn, blaze, and Gr. φλέγειν). There is no strict scientific
definition of flame, but for the purpose of this article it will be
regarded as a name for gas which is temporarily luminous in
consequence of chemical action. It is well known that the
luminosity of gases can be induced by the electrical discharge,
and with rapidly alternating high-tension discharges in air an
oxygen-nitrogen flame is produced which is long and flickering,
can be blown out, yields nitrogen peroxide, and is in fact indistinguishable
from an ordinary flame except by its electrical
mode of maintenance. The term “flame” is also applied to
solar protuberances, which, according to the common view,
consist of gases whose glow is of a purely thermal origin. Even
with the restricted definition given above, difficulties present
themselves. It is found, for example, with a hydrogen flame
that the luminosity diminishes as the purity of the hydrogen
is increased and as the air is freed from dust, and J. S. Stas
declared that under the most favourable conditions he was only
able, even in a dark room, to localize the flame by feeling for it,
an observation consistent with the fact that the line spectrum
of the flame lies wholly in the ultra-violet. On the other hand,
there are many examples of chemical combination between gases
where the attendant radiation is below the pitch of visibility,
as in the case of ethylene and chlorine. It will be obvious from
these facts that a strict definition of flame is hardly possible.
The common distinction between luminous and non-luminous
flames is, of course, quite arbitrary, and only corresponds to a
rough estimate of the degree of luminosity.
The chemical energy necessary for the production of flame may be liberated during combination or decomposition. A single substance like gun-cotton, which is highly endothermic and gives gaseous products, will produce a bright flame of decomposition if a single piece be heated in an evacuated flask. Combination is the more common case, and this means that we have two separate substances involved. If they be not mixed en masse before combination, the one which flows as a current into the other is called conventionally the “combustible,” but the simple experiment of burning air in coal gas suffices to show the unreality of this distinction between combustible and supporter of combustion, which, in fact, is only one of the many partial views that are explained and perhaps justified by the dominance of oxygen in terrestrial chemistry.
Although hydrocarbon flames are the commonest and most interesting, it will be well to consider simpler flames first in order to discuss some fundamental problems. In hydrocarbon flames the complexity of the combustible, its susceptibility to change by heating, and the possibilities of fractional oxidation, create special difficulties. In the flame of hydrogen and oxygen or carbon monoxide and oxygen we have simpler conditions, though here, too, things may be by no means so simple as they seem from the equations 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O and 2CO + O2 = 2CO2. The influence of water vapour on both these actions is well known, and the molecular transactions may in reality be complicated. We shall, however, assume for the sake of clearness that in these cases we have a simple reaction taking place throughout the mass of flame. There are various ways in which a pair of gases may be burned, and these we shall consider separately. Let us first suppose the two gases to have been mixed en masse and a light to be applied to the stationary mixture. If the mixture be made within certain limiting proportions, which vary for each case, a flame spreads from the point where the light is applied, and the flame traverses the mixture. This flame may be very slow in its progress or it may attain a velocity of the order of one or two thousand metres per second. Until comparatively recent times great misunderstanding prevailed on this subject. The slow rate of movement of flame in short lengths of gaseous mixtures was taken to be the velocity of explosion, but more recent researches by M. P. E. Berthelot,
