FLETCHER, ANDREW, of Saltoun, a celebrated Scottish patriot and politician, was the son of sir Rbbert F. and Catherine Bruce, daughter of sir Henry Bruce of Clack mannan. He was b. in 1653. Notwithstanding the strong anti-English feelings which characterized him throumh life, F. was of English descent by the father's side; his father being the fifth in the direct line from sir Bernard F. of the co. of York. But his mother was of the royal house of Scotland, thesfirst of the Clackmannan family having been the third son lord of Annandale, Robert do Bruce, who was the grandfather of the great king Robert. F.'s father, who died in his childhood, consigned him to the care of Gilbert Burhet, then minister of Saltoun, afterwards the well-known bishop of Salisbury; by whom he was instructed not only in literature and religion, hut in those principles of free government of which he afterwards became so zealous an advocate. So early as 1681, when he sat in parliament for the first time as dommissioner for East Lothian, F.. offered so determined an opposition to the measures of the duke of York (afterwards James II.), then acting as the royal commissioner in Scotland, that he found it necessary to retire, first into England, and then into Holland. He there entered into close alliance with the English refugees, who had assembled in considerable numbers; knd on his return. to Englam..1 in 16S8,. shated the cohuselse7oftlaiNtity of which Ens sell, Essex, Howard, Algernon Sydney, and John Hampden (the grandson of the still more famous patriot of the same name) were the leaders. Though usually regarded as a republican, F.'s political creed, like that of Algernon Sydney, approached regarded nearerto aristocracy than to democracy in the modern sense; for though lie was disposed to restrict the monarchical element of the constitution within the narrowest limits, if not to abolish it altogether, he was so far from being an advocate for a universal participa tion iu political rights, that one of his favorite schemes for the reformation of the hosts of vagrants and paupers by whom Scotland was infested in his day, consisted in the establishment of slavery in the form itt.•hich it had existed in the classical nations of
antiquity. On the discovery of the Rye house plot, V. returned to Holland. His next visit to England was as a volunteer under the unfortunate duke of "Ilonmouth in 1685; but he was compelled to leave the insurgeUt army, at the beginning of the enterprise, in consequence of his having shot the mayorof Lynn, with whom he had had a personal quarrel about a horse. The next hiding-place which F. selected was Spain; but he had no sooner arrived, than he was thrown into prison at the instasice of the English ambas sador, and would have been transmitted to England, to share the fate of his fellow patriots, had he not been mysteriously delivered from prison by an unknown friend. From Spain he proceeded to Hungary, where he entered the army as a volunteer, and greatly distinguished himself. Ile returned to England at the revolution. A few years later, he met in London, accidentally, it should seem, the famous William Paterson, the founder of the bank,of England, and the projector of the Darien expedition in Lon don; and it was at F.'s solicitation that Paterson came to Scotland, and offered to the acceptance of his countrymen, a project which he had originally' intended should be carried out by the far greater resources either of the trading communities of the Hanse towns, or of the princes of the German empire. The bitterness. caused by the treatment which the Darien colonists received at the hands of king Williams government, tended to confirm F. and his friends in their opposition to the union with England, and led to his delivering in parliament those spirited harangues in favor of an exclusive Scot tish nationality, which still stir the blood of his countrymen. After the union, he retired in disgust from public life, and died in London in 1716. F.'s writings originally appeared in the form of tracts, and anonymously; they were, however, collected and reprinted at London in 1737, under the title of the Political Works of Andrew Fletcher, Esquire.