FRERE, Tobias (1590-1656), of Harleston, Norf.

The Freres were originally from Sweffling and later from Occold in Suffolk.17Vis. Norf. 1563 and 1613, 122; Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577 and 1612, 138. The MP’s father, Richard Frere, acquired property at Harleston, just over the border in Norfolk, probably as a result of his first marriage. In 1563 he obtained armorial bearings.18Frere, Pedigree, p. vi. By the time of his death in 1626, he was able to provide estates for all four of his sons. The eldest, also Richard, the only son from his first marriage, received most of the lands in Suffolk, while Tobias, as the third son, seems to have been allocated parts of those in Norfolk. Some of these had been granted to Tobias before 1615, with the proviso that they would, in due course, form part of his mother’s jointure. His father also left him other lands at Alburgh, Denton and Redenhall.19PROB11/149/156. Such was Tobias Frere’s wealth that by the 1620s he was probably lending money to his neighbours, the Gawdys of Redenhall. In 1620 Frances, Lady Gawdy, widow of Sir Thomas Gawdy† (d.1588), appointed him as one of the two feoffees of her estates.20P. Millican, ‘The Gawdys of Norf. and Suff,’, Norf. Arch. xxvii. 42. Then, in 1628, her daughter-in-law, Mary, widow of Sir Clipsby Gawdy†, sold some lands at Homersfield, Suffolk, to Frere and others.21Coventry Docquets, 580-1. Later, her son, Sir Thomas Gawdy, or his son, Charles, mortgaged the Gawdy estates to Frere.22Blomefield, Norf. v. 370; Millican, ‘Gawdys of Norf. and Suff,’, 73. In 1639, writing to the mayor of Norwich to apologise for felling some ash trees on land belonging to the Norwich corporation, Frere mentioned that he was still suffering from a ‘long and tedious sickness’.23Add. 15903, f. 20.

Another indication of Frere’s wealth is that in April 1642 he subscribed £1,000 to the Irish Adventure.24CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 173, 222; K.S. Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 182. That same sense of Protestant zeal was what probably then persuaded him to support Parliament in its civil war against the king. From 1643 he was an active member of Parliament’s assessment commissions for Norfolk.25A. and O.; CUL, Buxton pprs. 96/26-7; HMC Var. ii. 263, 266. During the war years that he was also added to the commission of the peace.26C231/6, p. 8. In January 1645 he was one of the Norfolk representatives at the Eastern Association meeting held at Bury St Edmunds to oppose the proposed army reforms.27Suff. ed. Everitt, 84. Moreover, by April 1648 he was acting as the solicitor for sequestrations for Norfolk, as he then submitted a detailed list of all the sequestered estates within the county to the Committee for Compounding in London.28CCC 113-16. He would remain a central figure in the sequestration and compounding processes in Norfolk into the 1650s.29CCC 172, 622, 638; HMC Var. vii. 347. In May 1648 he was named to the committee appointed by Parliament to examine the circumstances behind the Norwich riot.30CJ v. 559b. He was proposed to the Commons as a member of the Hale commission on law reform in January 1652, but his nomination was not confirmed.31CJ vii. 67b, 73b, 74a.

Frere had probably in the meantime stood for Parliament. Sir Nicholas L’Estrange, who thought him ‘a pretended zealot, but true ringleader and head of all factious and schismatical spirits in the country’, claimed that ‘puffed up with the pride and strength of his party’, Frere stood ‘to be k[nigh]t (or rather k[nave]) of the shire for Norfolk but fell most shamefully short and lost it, with many squibs and disgraces’.32Harl. 6395, ff. 78v-79; Anecdotes and Traditions ed. W.J. Thoms (Cam. Soc. 1st ser. v), p. xxvii. It seems likely that this refers to one of the Norfolk recruiter elections in either December 1645 or November 1647.

Frere’s first opportunity to sit in Parliament as MP for Norfolk did not come about through election. In 1653 he was recommended by representatives of seven Norfolk churches for membership of the Nominated Assembly and, on that basis, then summoned to sit.33J. Nickolls, Orig. Lttrs. and Pprs. of State (1743), 124-5. One of the oldest Members, he was named to seven committees, including those on Irish affairs (9 July), tithes (19 July) and receiving petitions (20 July).34CJ vii. 282a, 283b, 286a, 286b, 287a, 306b. On 9 September he was the only MP added to the committee on the bill for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners.35CJ vii. 368a. Three days later he was given leave of absence for one month.36CJ vii. 317b. He left no further trace on the records of the Parliament, but was said to be in favour of the public maintenance of a learned ministry.37Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 418.

Frere stood for re-election as an MP for Norfolk in July 1654. The 1,167 votes he received put him in tenth place and secured him the last available seat, although he was comfortably ahead of his nearest rival, Charles Fleetwood*.38R. Temple, ‘A 1654 protectorate parliamentary election return’, Cromwelliana, ser. 2, iii. 58. In opening this Parliament, Oliver Cromwell* demanded that all MPs take an oath promising not to alter the government. Frere was the only Norfolk MP to take it without first consulting his colleagues.39Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xxxv-xxxvi. Of his six committee appointments, four were in September, namely those to investigate the proceedings by the judges for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners (15 Sept.), on abuses in printing (22 Sept.), on the bill imposing the Recognition on MPs (25 Sept.) and on Irish affairs (29 Sept.).40CJ vii. 368a, 369b, 370a, 371b. He was also named on 5 October to the committee to regulate the jurisdiction of the court of chancery.41CJ vii. 374a. His last committee, to consider an additional clause to the bill to settle the government, was on 12 January.42CJ vii. 415a.

Frere seems to have been named among Norfolk commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in the autumn of 1655, as that November the deputy major-general, Hezekiah Haynes*, told John Thurloe* that Frere was one of those prevented from serving ‘by the immediate hand of God upon them’.43TSP iv. 171. The obvious inference must be that he was already terminally ill since he died three months later on 6 February 1656.44Blomefield, Norf. v. 365. He was buried in the church at Redenhall, where a monument, possibly by Martin Morley, was erected in his memory.45N. Pevsner and B. Wilson, Norf.: North-West and South, 610. The main beneficiaries under his will were his wife, Susanna, and their only son, Tobias. He also left directions that his wife should inherit his coach, three horses and equipage, as well as his silver posset pot.46Frere, Pedigree, app. i, 12. Later that year Tobias junior stood unsuccessfully in the Norfolk poll for the 1656 Parliament.47Norf. Arch. i. 67. He subsequently bought the lands, including Gawdy Hall, which the Gawdys had mortgaged to his father.48Blomefield, Norf. v. 370; Millican, ‘Gawdys of Norf. and Suff,’, 73, 77. He died in 1666, leaving only two children, both of whom died young, and in time, as a result of his widow’s second marriage, Gawdy Hall passed to John Wogan, one of the Wogans of Boulston, Pembrokeshire.49Frere, Pedigree, app. i, 8; Norf. Arch. xxii. p. liv; F. Green, ‘The Wogans of Boulston’, Y Cymmrodor, xv. 140-2.