FRERE (FREURS, FRYER), Edward (by 1518-65), of Oxford.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1547

Family and Education

b. by 1518, 1st surv. s. of William Frere of Oxford by Agnes, da. of one Reeve of Stanton St. John. m. by 1539, Anne (d.1544), da. of John Bustard of Adderbury, 3s. inc. William 2da. suc. fa. 1546.1

Offices Held

Assistant to mayor, Oxford 1554.2

Biography

Edward Frere’s father, a brewer, served seven terms as mayor of Oxford and may have sought election to Parliament in 1529 and 1536, on the second occasion perhaps successfully. Frere’s own election in the year following his father’s death could have been in part a tribute to the older man and also have answered to the enhanced social standing indicated by Frere’s marriage into the Bustard family; one of Anne Bustard’s sisters, Jane, married William Chauncy. Perhaps because of this social advance Frere played little part in civic life; on 20 Sept. 1547, a week after his return to Parliament, he paid £6 13s.4d. to be excused for ever from the offices of chamberlain and bailiff. He had goods in Oxford valued for the subsidy at £35 in 1550 and £38 in 1551, but his election as one of the eight assistants to the mayor in 1554 is the only sign of his involvement in city affairs, apart from a resolution of 19 June 1562 that he and ten others should ‘remain out of the council’ for their support of John Cumber in his defiance of the corporation.3

In his will of 10 June 1563, proved on 19 June 1565, Frere asked to be buried beside his wife in the church of All Saints, Oxford. His lands were left to his son and executor William, except for the brewery which he had inherited from his father and an adjoining tenement in St. Giles’s parish, which went to a daughter, Anne Bailey, while a younger daughter Elizabeth received 12 silver spoons. The overseers were Thomas White, warden of New College, and Anne’s husband Henry Bailey, a doctor of physic. Frere’s younger daughter, who married into the Lovelace family, was reported as a recusant in 1577, as was a William Frere, but nothing is known of Frere’s own religion. According to his memorial in All Saints, as copied by Anthony Wood, Frere died on 13 Jan. 1565: he was buried on 27 Jan.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. F.T. Baker

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from marriage. PCC 34 Alen; Vis. Oxon. (Harl. Soc. v), 138-40, 196-7; Antiqs. Oxf. iii. (Oxf. Hist. Soc. xxxvii), 153-4.
  • 2. Oxf. Recs. 218.
  • 3. Ibid. 94, 103, 119, 134, 140, 162, 167, 189, 218, 289; LP Hen. VIII, x, xiii, xvi, xix; The Ancestor, xi. 15; C1/1136/24, 1150/23; E179/162/282, 289.
  • 4. PCC 20 Morrison; Cath. Rec. Soc. xxii. 98-99; Antiqs. Oxf. iii. 153-5, 210.