The Royal Observatory, Greenwich: A Glance at Its History and Work

by E. Walter Maunder

THE 'CAMERA STELLATA' IN FLAMSTEED'S TIME.
(From an engraving in the 'Historia Cœlestis.')

The work was in consequence recommended to Prince George of Denmark, the Queen's Consort; but it was not till November 10, 1705, that the contract for the printing was signed. Two years later, the observations which he had made with his sextant in his first thirteen years of office were printed. Then came the difficulty of the catalogue. It was not complete to Flamsteed's satisfaction, and he was most unwilling to let it pass out of his hands. However, two manuscripts, comprising some three-quarters of the whole, were deposited with referees, the first of these being sealed up. The seal was broken with Flamsteed's concurrence; but the fact that it had been so broken was made by him the subject of bitter complaint later. At this critical juncture Prince George died, and a stop was put to the progress of the printing. Two years more elapsed without any advance being made, and then, in order to check any further obstruction, a committee of the Royal Society was appointed as a Board of Visitors to visit and inspect the Observatory, and so maintain a control over the Astronomer Royal. This was naturally felt by so sensitive a man as Flamsteed as a most intolerable wrong, and when he found that the printing of his catalogue had been placed in the hands of Halley as editor, a man for whom he had conceived the most violent distrust, he absolutely refused to furnish the Visitors with any further material. This led to, perhaps, the most painful scene in the lives either of Newton or Flamsteed. Flamsteed was summoned to meet the Council of the Royal Society at their rooms in Crane Court. A quorum was not present, and so the interview was not official, and no record of it is preserved in the archives. Flamsteed has himself described it with great particularity in more than one document, and it is only too easy to understand the scene that took place. Newton was a man who had an absolutely morbid dread of anything like controversy, and over and over again would have preferred to have buried his choicest researches, rather than to have encountered the smallest conflict of the kind. He was perhaps, therefore, the worst man to deal with a high-principled, sensitive, and obstinate man who was in the wrong, and yet who had been so hardly dealt with that it was most natural for him to think himself wholly in the right. Flamsteed adhered absolutely to his position, from which it is clear it would have been extremely difficult for the greatest tact and consideration to have dislodged him. Newton, on his part, simply exerted his authority, and, that failing, was reduced to the miserable extremity of calling names. The scene is described by Flamsteed himself, in a letter to Abraham Sharp, as follows:—

'I have had another contest with the President[2] of the Royal Society, who had formed a plot to make my instruments theirs; and sent for me to a Committee, where only himself and two physicians (Dr. Sloane, and another as little skilful as himself) were present. The President ran himself into a great heat, and very indecent passion. I had resolved aforehand his kn—sh talk should not move me; showed him that all the instruments in the Observatory were my own; the mural arch and voluble quadrant having been made at my own charge, the rest purchased with my own money, except the sextant and two clocks, which were given me by Sir Jonas Moore, with Mr. Towneley's micrometer, his gift, some years before I came to Greenwich. This nettled him; for he has got a letter from the Secretary of State for the Royal Society to be Visitors of the Observatory, and he said, "as good have no observatory as no instruments." I complained then of my catalogue being printed by Raymer, without my knowledge, and that I was robbed of the fruit of my labours. At this he fired, and called me all the ill names, puppy, etc., that he could think of. All I returned was, I put him in mind of his passion, desired him to govern it, and keep his temper: this made him rage worse, and he told me how much I had received from the Government in thirty-six years I had served. I asked what he had done for the £500 per annum that he had received ever since he had settled in London. This made him calmer; but finding him going to burst out again, I only told him my catalogue, half finished, was delivered into his hands, on his own request, sealed up. He could not deny it, but said Dr. Arbuthnott had procured the Queen's order for opening it. This, I am persuaded, was false; or it was got after it had been opened. I said nothing to him in return; but, with a little more spirit than I had hitherto showed, told them that God (who was seldom spoken of with due reverence in that meeting) had hitherto prospered all my labours, and I doubted not would do so to a happy conclusion; took my leave and left them. Dr. Sloane had said nothing all this while; the other Doctor told me I was proud, and insulted the President, and ran into the same passion with the President. At my going out, I called to Dr. Sloane, told him he had behaved himself civilly, and thanked him for it. I saw Raymer after, drank a dish of coffee with him, and told him, still calmly, of the villany of his conduct, and called it blockish. Since then they let me be quiet; but how long they will do so I know not, nor am I solicitous.'

The Visitors continued the printing, Halley being the editor, and the work appeared in 1712 under the title of Historia Cœlestis. This seemed to Flamsteed the greatest wrong of all. The work as it appeared seemed to him so full of errors, wilfully or accidentally inserted, as to be the greatest blot upon his fair fame, and he set himself, though now an old man, to work it out de novo and at his own expense. To that purpose he devoted the remaining seven years of his life. Few things can be more pathetic than the letters which he wrote in that period referring to it. He was subject to the attacks of one of the cruelest of all diseases—the stone; he was at all times liable to distracting headaches. He had been, from his boyhood, a great sufferer from rheumatism, and yet, in spite of all, he resolutely pushed on his self-appointed task. The following extract from one of his letters will give a more vivid idea of the brave old man than much description:—

'I can still, I praise God for it, walk from my door to the Blackheath gate and back, with a little resting at some benches I have caused to be set up betwixt them. But I found myself so tired with getting up the hill when I return from church, that at last I have bought a sedan, and am carried thither in state on Sunday mornings and back; I hope I may employ it in the afternoons, though I have not hitherto, by reason of the weather is too cold for me.'

After the death of Queen Anne, a change in the ministry enabled him to secure that three hundred copies of the total impression of four hundred of the Historia Cœlestis were handed over to him. These, except the first volume, containing his sextant observations (which had received his own approval), he burned, 'as a sacrifice to heavenly truth.' His own great work had advanced so far that the first volume was printed, and much of the second, when he himself died, on the last day of 1719. He was buried in the chancel of Burstow Church.

The completion of his work took ten years more; a work of piety and regard on the part of his assistant, Joseph Crosthwait.

When compared with the catalogues that have gone before, it was a work of wonderful accuracy. Nevertheless, as Caroline Herschel showed, nearly a century later, not a few errors had crept into it. Some of the stars are non-existent, others have been catalogued in more than one constellation; important stars have been altogether omitted. Perhaps the most serious fault arises from the neglect of Flamsteed to accept from Newton a practical hint, namely, to read the barometer and thermometer at the time of his observations. Nevertheless, the work accomplished was not only wonderful under the untoward conditions in which Flamsteed was placed; it was wonderful in itself, winning from Airy the following high encomium:—