See The Political Works of Andrew Fletcher, Esq., Glasgow, 1749, to which estimates of his character by Rawlinson and Lockhart are prefixed; Essay on his Life and Writings, by the Earl of Buchan, 1792; Historical Account of the Ancient Rights and Power of the Parliament of Scotland, 1823, a laboured, interesting treatise, first published anonymously and now attributed to Fletcher.

FLETCHER, Giles (1548-1610), LL.D, father of the poets Giles and Phineas Fletcher, was himself a very distinguished man. He was born at Watford, in 1548; he studied at Cambridge, and after a stormy youth represented Winchelsea in parliament in 1585. In 1587 he travelled in Holland and Germany, and spent 1588-89 in Russia. In 1591 he printed his singular work, The Russ Commonwealth, which was suppressed for fear of angering the czar; in 1593 he brought out a volume of poems entitled Lida. He died in 1610.

FLETCHER, Giles (1584-1623), English poet of tho 17th century, was born in London about 1584. He was the second son of Dr Giles Fletcher, nephew of Richard Fletcher, bishop of London, cousin of John Fletcher the dramatist, and younger brother of Ishineas Fletcher. He went very young to Cambridge, and as early as 1603 he contributed a poem on the death of Queen Elizabeth to a volume entitled Sorrow's Joy. He was a bachelor of divinity of Trinity College, and remained at the university until 1617 or later. In 1610 he published his great poem of Christ's Victory and Triumph, of which a second edition appeared in 1632. In 1612 he edited the Remains of his cousin Nathanial Pownoll. It is not known in what year he was ordained, but he became a famous preacher from the pulpit of St Mary’s, and was popular for the florid religious rhetoric then in vogue. He left Cambridge to accept, it is supposed from the hand of Lord Bacon, the rectory of Alderton, on the coast of Suffolk, where “his clownish and low-parted parishioners valued not their pastor according to his worth, which disposed him to melancholy and hastened his dissolution.” In 1623 he published The Reward of the Faithful, a theological treatise in prose, and died in the same year, leaving a widow. The principal work by which Giles Fletcher is known is one of the most remarkable religious poems in the language. Its full title is Christ's Victory and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death. It is in four cantos, divided according to the suggestion of the title; the metre is an eight-line stanza adapted from the Spenserian by the omission of the seventh line. Giles Fletcher, like his brother Phineas, was a disciple of Spenser, whom he follows with more vigour and brilliance than any poet of his time. His style has much more nervous strength, terseness, and melody than his brother’s, and he had his subject far more thoroughly under control. In his very best passages Giles Fletcher attains to a rare sublimity, and to a rich, voluptuous music which charmed the ear of Milton. It was his misfortune to live in an age which considered the poems of Marini and Gongora insuperable, and he strives too often to outdo these his patterns in grotesque conceit. But when he is carried away by his theme, and forgets to be ingenious, he attains an extraordinary solemnity and harmony of style. His description of the Lady of Vain Delight, in the second canto, has been greatly admired; the portrait of Justice is even nobler still, and of the first order of poetry. Milton did not hesitate to borrow very considerably from the Christs Victory and Triumph in his Paradise Regained. Fletcher died in 1623.

The poetical writings of the Giles Fletchers, father and son, have been edited by Dr A. B. Grosart, who has succeeded in clearing up a great deal of the obscurity that till lately lay around their careers. The Russ Commonwealth has been reprinted and edited by Mr Bond. The prose works of Giles Fletcher the younger have never been reprinted.

FLETCHER, John (1579-1625). See Beaumont and Fletcher.

FLETCHER, Phineas(1582-c. 1665), English poet, and brother of Giles Fletcher the younger, was the eldest son of Dr Giles Fletcher. He was born at Cranbrook, in Kent, in April 1582. He was admitted a scholar of Eton, and in 1600 entered King’s College, Cambridge. In 1603 he contributed verses to Sorrow's Joy. He was in priest’s orders in 1611. In 1614 his pastoral drama of Sicelides was acted before the university. He left Cambridge to become chaplain to Sir Henry" Willoughby in 1616; the same patron presented him in 1621 with the rectory of Hilgay in Norfolk; in the same year he married. He named his eldest son Edmund, in honour, no doubt, of Edmund Spenser, for whom he preserved an intense admiration. In 1627 he published his long poem, in Latin and English, of Locustae, or the Apollyonists, a furious invective against the Jesuits. Next year appeared a fine but sensuous poem, entitled Britain's Ida, which was attributed on the title-page to Spenser; but many critics, and particularly Dr A. B. Grosart, consider it to be the work of Phineas Fletcher. The drama of Sicelides was printed in 1631. In 1632 he brought out a theological treatise in prose, entitled Joy in Tribulation, and in 1633 his magnum opus, the famous poem of The Purple Island. His Piscatory Eclogues and Miscellaneous Poems appeared on the same occasion. It is believed that in 1650 he was ejected from his living, but nothing is known of the date or circumstances of his death. In the preface to his posthumous prose work, A Father's Testament, published in 1670, he is spoken of as having been some years dead. The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, is a poem in twelve cantos, describing in cumbrous allegory the whole physiological and intellectual construction of the human body. The veins are spoken of as rivers, the bones as mountains, and the ingenuity as well as scientific knowledge displayed is very considerable. The manner of Spenser is preserved throughout, though not so closely as to destroy the distinct flavour of original genius. The allegory itself is found very tedious and prosaic at the present day; but some of the reflective passages, and the rich, jewelled descriptions of Arcadian scenery possess living charm. Five cantos are occupied with the phenomena of the body, and seven with those of the mind. The Piscatory Eclogues have nothing to do with fishing; they are simply pastorals in the usual style, the characters being supposed to be fisherboys reposing by the river Cam. The poetry of Phineas Fletcher never approaches the occasional sublimity of that of his brother Giles; it carries the Marini manner to a still more tasteless excess; but it is generally fluent, luxurious, and lacking neither colour nor music.

A very complete edition of the poetical works of Phineas Fletcher, in 4 vols., was privately printed by Dr Grosart in 1868. It is the only careful reprint that lias been issued.