Flanagan became a member of the staff of the ‘Empire.’ He was subsequently chief editor of that journal, and during his connection with it published a series of essays on the aboriginals which attracted much attention. The writer dealt with the manners and customs of the natives, and severely criticised the treatment they had received at the hands of the colonists. In 1854 Flanagan joined the literary corps of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald,’ and in the columns of that newspaper he shortly began to grapple with the numerous events which tended to the making of New South Wales. For nearly four years he laboured arduously at his task of writing the history of the colony, and by November 1860 had made such progress in his undertaking that he left Sydney for London, bearing his manuscript with him. He succeeded in making arrangements for the publication of the work, but while engaged in revising the proof-sheets of the first volume was seized with illness, the result of over-exertion. He died towards the close of 1861, and was buried at a cemetery near London, where a public monument has been erected to his memory. Flanagan's work was posthumously issued in 1862, in 2 vols., under the title of the ‘History of New South Wales; with an Account of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), New Zealand, Port Phillip (Victoria), Moreton Bay, and other Australasian Settlements.’ While narrating the events which have marked the progress of New South Wales from the earliest times till beyond the middle of the nineteenth century, Flanagan also succeeded in bringing into one view the whole of the British Australasian territories. The work was pronounced to be the most comprehensive, moderate, and most generally accurate of any which had hitherto appeared dealing with the Australasian colonies.
[Heaton's Australian Dictionary of Dates and Men of the Time, 1879; Athenæum, 25 Oct. 1862.]
FLANAGAN, THOMAS (1814–1865), historical compiler, born in 1814, was educated at Sedgley Park School, Staffordshire, and at St. Mary's College, Oscott, where he remained as a professor, and was prefect of studies for many years. In 1851 he was appointed vice-president of Sedgley Park, and in August the same year he became the ninth president of that institution, in succession to Dr. James Brown, who, on the restoration of the catholic hierarchy by Pope Pius IX, had been advanced to the see of Shrewsbury. Flanagan was also nominated one of the original canons of the newly erected chapter of Birmingham. In July 1853 he resigned the presidentship of Sedgley Park, and returned to Oscott as prefect of studies. In 1854 he was appointed resident priest at Blackmore Park, and in 1860 he removed to St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham. He died on 21 July 1865 at Kidderminster, whither he had gone for the benefit of his health.
In addition to some controversial tracts, he wrote: 1. ‘A Manual of British and Irish History; illustrated with maps, engravings, and statistical, chronological, and genealogical tables,’ London, 1847, 12mo, 1851, 8vo. 2. ‘A Short Catechism of English History, ecclesiastical and civil, for children,’ London, 1851, 16mo. 3. ‘A History of the Church in England, from the earliest period, to the re-establishment of the Hierarchy in 1850,’ 2 vols., London, 1857, 8vo, the only work hitherto published which gives a continuous history of the Roman catholic church in England since the revolution of 1688. 4. ‘A History of the Middle Ages,’ manuscript, commenced at Sedgley Park, but never completed.
[Husenbeth's Hist. of Sedgley Park School, pp. 243, 244; Tablet, 29 July 1865, p. 468; Weekly Register, 5 Aug. 1865, p. 85; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.]
FLANN (d. 1056), Irish historian, commonly called Mainistrech (of the monastery), son of Eochaidh Erann, was twenty-second in descent from Ailill Oluim, king of Munster, according to some Irish historians (McFirbis in Curry, Cath Muighe Leana, p. 175); but this genealogy may justly be suspected to be an attempt to connect Flann after he became famous with St. Buite [q. v.], founder of Mainister Buite, now Monasterboice, co. Louth, the monastery in which this historian spent most of his life. He attained a great reputation for historical learning in his own time, and has since been constantly quoted by all writers of history in the Irish language. He is called ‘airdferleighinn ocus sui senchusa Erenn,’ archreader and sage of historical knowledge of Ireland (Annals of Ulster, i. 599, ed. Hennessy), and ‘ferléighind Mainistreach Buithe,’ reader of Monasterboice (Annala R. Eireann, ii. 870). O'Curry (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, vol. ii.) has tried to prove that he was not an ecclesiastic; but the verses on his death quoted in the annals (A. R. I. ii. 870) prove the contrary, ‘Fland a primchill Buithi bind’ (Flann of the chief church of melodious Buithe), while the ages of his sons, with the date of his compositions, favour the conclusion that he began life as a poetical historian, wandering through the northern half of Ireland,
