Fletcher also wrote De literis antiquae Britanniae (ed. by Phineas Fletcher, 1633), a treatise on “The Tartars,” printed in Israel Redux (ed. by S(amuel) L(ee), 1677), to prove that they were the ten lost tribes of Israel, Latin poems published in various miscellanies, and Licia, or Poemes of Love in Honour of the admirable and singular vertues of his Lady, to the imitation of the best Latin Poets . . . whereunto is added the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the third (1593). This series of love sonnets, followed by some other poems, was published anonymously. Most critics, with the notable exception of Alexander Dyce (Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, i. p. xvi., 1843) have accepted it as the work of Dr Giles Fletcher on the evidence afforded in the first of the Piscatory Eclogues of his son Phineas, who represents his father (Thelgon), as having “raised his rime to sing of Richard’s climbing.”
See E. A. Bond’s Introduction to the Hakluyt Society’s edition; also Dr A. B. Grosart’s prefatory matter to Licia (Fuller Worthies Library, Miscellanies, vol. iii., 1871), and to the works (1869) of Phineas Fletcher in the same series. Fletcher’s letters relative to the college dispute with the provost, Dr Roger Goad, are preserved in the Lansdowne MSS. (xxiii. art. 18 et seq.), and are translated in Grosart’s edition.
FLETCHER, GILES (c. 1584–1623), English poet, younger son of the preceding, was born about 1584. Fuller in his Worthies of England says that he was a native of London, and was educated at Westminster school. From there he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1606, and became a minor fellow of his college in 1608. He was reader in Greek grammar (1615) and in Greek language (1618). In 1603 he contributed a poem on the death of Queen Elizabeth to Sorrow’s Joy. His great poem of Christ’s Victory appeared in 1610, and in 1612 he edited the Remains of his cousin Nathaniel Pownall. It is not known in what year he was ordained, but his sermons at St Mary’s were famous. Fuller tells us that the prayer before the sermon was a continuous allegory. He left Cambridge about 1618, and soon after received, it is supposed from Francis Bacon, the rectory of Alderton, on the Suffolk coast, where “his clownish and low-parted parishioners ... valued not their pastor according to his worth; which disposed him to melancholy and hastened his dissolution.” (Fuller, Worthies of England, ed. 1811, vol. ii. p. 82). His last work, The Reward of the Faithful, appeared in the year of his death (1623).
The principal work by which Giles Fletcher is known is Christ’s Victorie and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death (1610). An edition in 1640 contains seven full-page illustrative engravings by George Tate. It is in four cantos and is epic in design. The first canto, “Christ’s Victory in Heaven,” represents a dispute in heaven between Justice and Mercy, assuming the facts of Christ’s life on earth; the second, “Christ’s Victory on Earth,” deals with an allegorical account of the Temptation; the third, “Christ’s Triumph over Death,” treats of the Passion; and the fourth, “Christ’s Triumph after Death,” treating of the Resurrection and Ascension, concludes with an affectionate eulogy of his brother Phineas Fletcher (q.v.) as “Thyrsilis.” The metre is an eight-line stanza owing something to Spenser. The first five lines rhyme ababb, and the stanza concludes with a rhyming triplet, resuming the conceit which nearly every verse embodies. Giles Fletcher, like his brother Phineas, to whom he was deeply attached, was a close follower of Spenser. In his very best passages Giles Fletcher attains to a rich melody which charmed the ear of Milton, who did not hesitate to borrow very considerably from the Christ’s Victory and Triumph in his Paradise Regained. Fletcher lived in an age which regarded as models the poems of Marini and Gongora, and his conceits are sometimes grotesque in connexion with the sacredness of his subject. But when he is carried away by his theme and forgets to be ingenious, he attains great solemnity and harmony of style. His descriptions of the Lady of Vain Delight, in the second canto, and of Justice and of Mercy in the first, are worked out with much beauty of detail into separate pictures, in the manner of the Faerie Queene.
Giles Fletcher’s poem was edited (1868) for the Fuller Worthies Library, and (1876) for the Early English Poets by Dr A. B. Grosart. It is also reprinted for The Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature (1888), and in R. Cattermole’s and H. Stebbing’s Sacred Classics (1834, &c.) vol. 20. In the library of King’s College, Cambridge, is a MS. Aegidii Fletcherii versio poetica Lamentationum Jeremiae.
FLETCHER, JOHN WILLIAM (1729–1785), English divine, was born at Nyon in Switzerland on the 12th of September 1729, his original name being de la Fléchière. He was educated at Geneva, but, preferring an army career to a clerical one, went to Lisbon and enlisted. An accident prevented his sailing with his regiment to Brazil, and after a visit to Flanders, where an uncle offered to secure a commission for him, he went to England, picked up the language, and in 1752 became tutor in a Shropshire family. Here he came under the influence of the new Methodist preachers, and in 1757 took orders, being ordained by the bishop of Bangor. He often preached with John Wesley and for him, and became known as a fervent supporter of the revival. Refusing the wealthy living of Dunham, he accepted the humble one of Madeley, where for twenty-five years (1760–1785) he lived and worked with unique devotion and zeal. Fletcher was one of the few parish clergy who understood Wesley and his work, yet he never wrote or said anything inconsistent with his own Anglican position. In theology he upheld the Arminian against the Calvinist position, but always with courtesy and fairness; his resignation on doctrinal grounds of the superintendency (1768–1771) of the countess of Huntingdon’s college at Trevecca left no unpleasantness. The outstanding feature of his life was a transparent simplicity and saintliness of spirit, and the testimony of his contemporaries to his godliness is unanimous. Wesley preached his funeral sermon from the words “Mark the perfect man.” Southey said that “no age ever provided a man of more fervent piety or more perfect charity, and no church ever possessed a more apostolic minister.” His fame was not confined to his own country, for it is said that Voltaire, when challenged to produce a character as perfect as that of Christ, at once mentioned Fletcher of Madeley. He died on the 14th of August 1785.
Complete editions of his works were published in 1803 and 1836. The chief of them, written against Calvinism, are Five Checks to Antinomianism, Scripture Scales to weigh the Gold of Gospel Truth, and the Portrait of St Paul. See lives by J. Wesley (1786); L. Tyerman (1882); F. W. Macdonald (1885); J. Maratt (1902); also C. J. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, pp. 384-423 (1869).
FLETCHER, PHINEAS (1582–1650), English poet, elder son of Dr Giles Fletcher, and brother of Giles the younger, noticed above, was born at Cranbrook, Kent, and was baptized on the 8th of April 1582. He was admitted a scholar of Eton, and in 1600 entered King’s College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1604, and M.A. in 1608, and was one of the contributors to Sorrow’s Joy (1603). His pastoral drama, Sicelides or Piscatory (pr. 1631) was written (1614) for performance before James I., but only produced after the king’s departure at King’s College. He had been ordained priest and before 1611 became a fellow of his college, but he left Cambridge before 1616, apparently because certain emoluments were refused him. He became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he married and spent the rest of his life. In 1627 he published Locustae, vel Pietas Jesuitica. The Locusts or Apollyonists, two parallel poems in Latin and English furiously attacking the Jesuits. Dr Grosart saw in this work one of the sources of Milton’s conception of Satan. Next year appeared an erotic poem, Brittains Ida, with Edmund Spenser’s name on the title-page. It is certainly not by Spenser, and is printed by Dr Grosart with the works of Phineas Fletcher. Sicelides, a play acted at King’s College in 1614, was printed in 1631. In 1632 appeared two theological prose treatises, The Way to Blessedness and Joy in Tribulation, and in 1633 his magnum opus, The Purple Island. The book was dedicated to his friend Edward Benlowes, and included his Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poetical Miscellanies. He died in 1650, his will being proved by his widow on the 13th of December of that year. The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, is a poem in twelve cantos describing in cumbrous allegory the physiological structure of the human body and the mind of man. The intellectual qualities are personified, while the veins are rivers, the bones the mountains of the island, the whole analogy being worked out with great ingenuity. The manner of Spenser is preserved throughout, but Fletcher never lost sight of his moral
