This letter was dated November 4, 1669, and on January 14, Mr. Oldenburg, the secretary of the Society, replied to him in a letter which the young man cannot but have felt encouraging and flattering to the highest degree.
'Though you did what you could to hide your name from us,' he writes, 'yet your ingenious and useful labours for the advancement of Astronomy addressed to the noble President of the Royal Society, and some others of that illustrious body, did soon discover you to us, upon our solicitous inquiries after their worthy author.'
And after congratulating him upon his skill, and encouraging him to furnish further similar papers, he signs himself, 'Your very affectionate friend and real servant'—no unmeaning phrase, for the friendship then commenced ceased only with Oldenburg's life.
The following June, his father, pleased with the notice that some of the leading scientific men of the day were taking of his son, sent him up to London, that he might be personally acquainted with them; and he then was introduced to Sir Jonas Moore, the Surveyor of the Ordnance, who made him a present of Townley's micrometer, and promised to furnish him with object-glasses for telescopes at moderate rates.
On his return journey he called at Cambridge, where he visited Dr. Barrow and Newton, and entered his name in Jesus College.
It was not until the following year, 1671, that he was enabled to complete his own observatory, as he had had to wait long for the lenses which Sir Jonas Moore and Collins had promised to procure for him. He still laboured under several difficulties, in that he had no good means for measuring time, pendulum clocks not then being common. He, therefore, with a practical good sense which was characteristic, refrained from attempting anything which lay out of his power to do well, and he devoted himself to such observations as did not require any very accurate knowledge of the time. At the same time, he was careful to ascertain the time of his observations as closely as possible, by taking the altitudes of the stars.
The next four years seem to have passed exceedingly pleasantly to him. The notes of ill-health are few. He was making rapid progress in his acquaintanceship with the work of other astronomers, particularly with those of the three marvellously gifted young men—Horrox, Crabtree, and Gascoigne—who had passed away shortly before his own birth. He was making new friends in scientific circles, and, in particular, Sir Jonas Moore was evidently esteeming him more and more highly. In 1674 he became more intimate with Newton, the occasion which led to this acquaintanceship being the amusing one, that his assistance was asked by Newton, who had found himself unable to adjust a microscope, having forgotten its object-glass—not the only instance of the great mathematician's absent-mindedness.
The same year he took his degree of A.M. at Cambridge, designing to enter the Church; but Sir Jonas Moore was extremely anxious to give him official charge of an observatory, and was urging the Royal Society to build an astronomical observatory at Chelsea College, which then belonged to that body. He therefore came up to London, and resided some months with Sir Jonas Moore at the Tower. But shortly after his coming up to London, 'an accident happened,' to use his own expression, that hastened, if it did not occasion, the building of Greenwich Observatory.
'A Frenchman that called himself Le Sieur de St. Pierre, having some small skill in astronomy, and made an interest with a French lady, then in favour at Court, proposed no less than the discovery of the Longitude, and had procured a kind of Commission from the King to the Lord Brouncker, Dr. Ward (Bishop of Salisbury), Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Charles Scarborough, Sir Jonas Moore, Colonel Titus, Dr. Pell, Sir Robert Murray, Mr. Hook, and some other ingenious gentlemen about the town and Court, to receive his proposals, with power to elect, and to receive into their number, any other skilful persons; and having heard them, to give the King an account of them, with their opinion whether or no they were practicable, and would show what he pretended. Sir Jonas Moore carried me with him to one of their meetings, where I was chosen into their number; and, after, the Frenchman's proposals were read, which were:
'(1) To have the year and day of the observations.
'(2) The height of two stars, and on which side of the meridian they appeared.
'(3) The height of the moon's two limbs.
'(4) The height of the pole—all to degrees and minutes.
'It was easy to perceive, from these demands, that the sieur understood not that the best lunar tables differed from the heavens; and that, therefore, his demands were not sufficient for determining the longitude of the place where such observations were, or should be, made, from that to which the lunar tables were fitted, which I represented immediately to the company. But they, considering the interests of his patroness at Court, desired to have him furnished according to his demands. I undertook it; and having gained the moon's true place by observations made at Derby, February 23, 1672, and November 12, 1673, gave him observations such as he demanded. The half-skilled man did not think they could have been given him, and cunningly answered "They were feigned." I delivered them to Dr. Pell, February 19, 1674–5, who, returning me his answer some time after, I wrote a letter in English to the commissioners, and another in Latin to the sieur, to assure him they were not feigned, and to show them that, if they had been, yet if we had astronomical tables that would give us the two places of the fixed stars and the moon's true places, both in longitude and latitude, nearer than to half a minute, we might hope to find the longitude of places by lunar observations, but not by such as he demanded. But that we were so far from having the places of the fixed stars true, that the Tychonic Catalogues often erred ten minutes or more; that they were uncertain to three or four minutes, by reason that Tycho assumed a faulty obliquity of the ecliptic, and had employed only plain sights in his observations: and that the best lunar tables differ one-quarter, if not one-third, of a degree from the heavens; and lastly, that he might have learnt better methods than he proposed, from his countryman Morin, whom he had best consult before he made any more demands of this nature.'
This was in effect to tell St. Pierre that his proposal was neither original nor practicable. If St. Pierre had but consulted Morin's writings (Morin himself had died more than eighteen years before), he would have known that practically the same proposal had been laid before Cardinal Richelieu in 1634, and had been rejected, as quite impracticable in the then state of astronomical knowledge. Possibly Flamsteed meant further to intimate that St. Pierre had simply stolen his method from Morin, hoping to trade it off upon the government of another country; in which case he would no doubt regard Flamsteed's letter as a warning that he had been found out.
Flamsteed continues:—
'I heard no more of the Frenchman after this; but was told that, my letters being shown King Charles, he startled at the assertion of the fixed stars' places being false in the catalogue; said, with some vehemence, "He must have them anew observed, examined, and corrected, for the use of his seamen;" and further (when it was urged to him how necessary it was to have a good stock of observations taken for correcting the motions of the moon and planets), with the same earnestness, "he must have it done." And when he was asked Who could, or who should do it? "The person (says he) that informs you of them." Whereupon I was appointed to it, with the incompetent allowance aforementioned; but with assurances, at the same time, of such further additions as thereafter should be found requisite for carrying on the work.'
FLAMSTEED'S SEXTANT.
(From an engraving in the 'Historia Cœlestis.')
Thus, in his twenty-ninth year, John Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal. In many ways he was an ideal man for the post. In the twelve years which had passed since he left school he had accomplished an amazing amount of work. Despite his constant ill-health and severe sufferings, and the circumstance—which may be inferred from many expressions in his autobiographies—that he assisted his father in his business, he had made himself master, perhaps more thoroughly than any of his contemporaries, of the entire work of a practical astronomer as it was then understood. He was an indefatigable computer; the calculation of tables of the motions of the moon and planets, which should as faithfully