FRY, William (c.1588-1672), of Yarty, Membury, Devon.

The Frys were established as gentry in Membury, east Devon, by the end of the fourteenth century.25Vivian, Vis. Devon, 375. Nicholas Fry, William’s father, was sheriff of the county in 1625-6, and rebuilt Yarty, the manor house of the family.26List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 37; W.G. Hoskins, Devon (1954), 434. He may have been out of sympathy with at least some of the policies of the new king, Charles I: he was charged more than three and a half times his subsidy rate for not presenting himself for a knighthood, and it has been suggested that this punitive rate followed from his unwillingness to return others for the honour when he was sheriff.27M. Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War (Exeter, 1997), 87. He was never removed from the commission of the peace, however, and was active in 1627 in fortifying Seaton against the French.28Diary of Walter Yonge (Cam. Soc. 1848), 106. Nicholas Fry was evidently a puritan, and in his last days forbade the embalming of his corpse and the wearing of black at his funeral as ‘vanity of this world’.29PROB11/163/110. William Fry was educated at Oxford and the Inner Temple, and very soon after completing his studies married Mary Yonge of Colyton, making him the brother-in-law of the diarist, Walter Yonge I*. Fry enjoyed some independence while his father was still alive. As early as 1623 he invested in the Dorchester Company, a forerunner of successful colonising ventures in New England, and seems to have been drawn into this as part of a group surrounding the Yonge family. For his own part, Fry’s interest in colonising schemes seems to have ended when the Dorchester Company petered out a few years later.30Rose Troup, John White, 458; Wolffe, Gentry Leaders, 190.

William Fry might have been expected to take his father’s place in the commission of the peace when Nicholas Fry died in 1632, and it has been suggested that his failure to do so reflects some reluctance on Fry’s part, some antipathy towards the personal rule of Charles I.31Wolffe, Gentry Leaders, 20. This may be so, but more convincing an explanation of Fry’s marginalisation is surely the death of Christopher Salter, for which he was found guilty of manslaughter in the mid-1630s. A pardon for this crime passed the seals in June 1635, but Fry apparently served some time in prison and was released on pain of burning in the hand for a further offence.32Coventry Docquets, 16. Nothing further has been discovered of this incident, but the gravity of the punishment and Fry’s gentry status may have brought him to the attention of members of the government and was certainly enough to keep him out of the commission of the peace. Only from 1638 did he begin to appear in minor local government commissions. Nevertheless, he was active in other areas of public life. In the late 1630s, he was involved a in a flurry of transactions involving the rectories of Seaton in Devon and Creech St Michael, Somerset, both of which were soon to be bestowed on puritan incumbents, and it is possible that both these were attempts to sustain the work of the feoffees for impropriations by other means.33C66/2837/23; Coventry Docquets, 546; Calamy Revised, 37, 368. Fry conveyed Seaton rectory, which had been part of his wife’s dowry, to the Dorchester corporation; behind the deal lay John White, the so-called ‘puritan patriarch’ of the Dorset county town.34Rose Troup, John White, 263.

Fry was a captain of the trained bands in east Devon by 1639, and in 1642 helped reform the management of St Margaret’s hospital, Honiton.35Prince, Worthies (1701), 174-5. It was the military experience in the militia which gave him credibility as an officer in the service of Parliament in Devon at the outbreak of the civil war. With his puritan background and involvement in early colonising, not to mention his family links with Walter Yonge I, MP for Honiton, it was more likely that Fry would take the side of Parliament than that of the king in the conflict. He was named deputy lieutenant by Parliament in October 1642, and was active in arms in October and November. Payments were made to him by Charles Vaghan*, the treasurer of the parliamentary committee.36SP28/128 (Devon) Pt 27, Charles Vaghan acct. bk. f. 26v. He may have come to regret his early ardour as a parliamentarian officer, as in 1643 his name appeared on a round robin of Devon gentry, mainly royalists, who were working for peace between the two sides.37Add. 44058, ff. 20-1; Som. RO, DD WO/53/3/40; WO/56/6/30. At some point around 1640 he must have been introduced into the commission of the peace, but his interest in 1643 in schemes of peace and reconciliation did not prevent his dismissal from the commission by the king in May. Thereafter, he was named continuously to parliamentarian committees, and his commission as captain upgraded to that of colonel in the western army under Edward Massie*. His county regiment, along with that of Robert Shapcote*, was one of those reduced immediately after Devon had been brought under parliamentary control, but Fry moved over easily into civilian administration and as a committeeman appointed a number of sequestration agents in the county in June 1646.38CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 416; E113/6, answer of Philip Musgrave.

Fry was a stalwart of the Devon county committee, which before 1648 was a peripatetic body. In March 1647 he was one of four committeemen at Great Torrington to write to the MPs Sir John Bampfylde*, Sir Samuel Rolle*, Anthony Nicoll* and Charles Vaghan to report their attempts to disband garrisons at Barnstaple and Ilfracombe. They sympathised with the complaints of the populace against the military presence and its cost, but were aware also of the depredations by royalist renegades or ‘Gorings’ as they were called after George Goring*, their former commander. Fry and his colleagues reported a stream of difficulties including piracy by the Irish, claims by the Barnstaple citizens that Parliament had exempted them from taxes in lieu of reparations for their war losses, reports of indiscipline at the garrison of Exeter and arrears of pay at that of Dartmouth.39Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 805. Their next port of call in their tour was Plymouth, and it was to relieve the pressure on the governor there, Ralph Weldon*, that in the summer Fry and a larger group of 20 other committeemen set about trying to raise taxes, until at Exeter they were threatened with violence by the soldiers.40Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 507. He lent his signature to the letter sent in November by JPs and committeemen to Sir Thomas Fairfax*, complaining of the behaviour of Major Perkins’s horse troop in Exeter. Fairfax’s response was to allow the justice to disband the troop, provided that the soldiers would receive arrears of pay.41The Copy of a Letter to his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax (1647), 2-4 (E 413.12). In another aspect of the post-war settlement, Fry was prominent among the committeemen who ejected royalist-inclined ministers between 1647 and the early 1650s, in some cases arranging compensation for their families.42Bodl. Walker c.4, ff. 162, 163, 190, 195, 207.

The problems facing the Devon committee in 1648 were essentially the same as those of 1647, but Fry was among the most dependable of its members, and was active in the county militia which was reformed in August. While the assessment tax was collected effectively, a lack of arms and ammunition undermined the performance of the militia, and the committee, in which Fry, Arthur Upton*, Robert Shapcote, William Morice* and Sir John Northcote* were prominent, also had to report ‘intestine seditions’ in the county.43Add. 44058, ff. 36v-38; Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 173. As a response to these difficulties the committee was reorganized, with Fry appearing on the third committee, so that ‘none of us may be troubled but once in three weeks’.44Add. 44058, ff. 26v-27. Fry was also active as a justice of the peace as the county was restored to order after the civil war. His experiences as a committeeman fed into his behaviour as a magistrate. With Morice and John Quicke* he helped draft the petition of early 1648 asserting the commitment of the Devon county leaders to a re-conquest of Ireland but pleading for a more equitable redistribution of the direct tax burden.45Devon RO, QS rolls, Midsummer 1647, misplaced petition. In the areas of local government more traditionally the responsibility of justices, Fry helped plague relief efforts at Honiton in 1646, and attended quarter sessions regularly through the later 1640s and 50s. He was absent from the sessions of Epiphany 1649, when the trial of the king was proceeding but attended at Easter, after the regicide, and subsequently through the government of the commonwealth.46Devon RO, QS order bks. 1/8, 1/9. His commitment to the republic was evident in his willingness once more to take commissions in the county militia, his son serving under him as captain.47CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 504, 507. Under the authority of Fry and other Devon magistrates, prisoners were held in Exeter gaol for piracy, and the council of state gave directions for their processing.48CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 64. Fry may have had to contend with the kind of unruly villager who disparaged him as ‘no more justice than his arse’, but this invective was more probably a reflection on the commonwealth government than on Fry’s qualifications for local office: his family had a long history in the magistracy.49Quoted in S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County (Exeter, 1985), 34.

When he was elected to the first Parliament of the Cromwellian protectorate in 1654, therefore, Fry had behind him formidable experience of local government, in peace and in war. He was evidently acceptable to the government, having been named a commissioner in the conciliar ordinance of August 1654 for trying and ejecting ministers, and from February that year began a period of continuous inclusion in the commission of oyer and terminer. Once at Westminster, he was named with William Bastard on 25 September to the parliamentary committee charged with revising the protectoral ordinance on scandalous ministers, and with Robert Shapcote was soon added to the privileges committee (5 Oct.). On 10 October, he was among those added to the committee revising legislation produced by the Nominated Assembly, but this appears to have been his last committee appointment.50CJ vii. 370a, 373b, 375b. Fry’s absence from the quarter sessions in the meetings of Epiphany 1655 point to the probability that he continued to attend the House until it was dismissed on 22 January 1655.51Devon RO, QS order bks. 1/8, 1/9.

Fry had returned to Yarty in time to participate in the Easter 1655 quarter sessions at Exeter, when a number of justices, including William Morice, Henry Hatsell* and Fry, were active in reforming the jury selection procedure in response to instructions issued under the seal of the lord protector.52Add. 44058, f. 42v. During the episode of the major generals, John Disbrowe* requested that he be appointed to the Dorset bench of magistrates.53TSP iv. 337. Fry continued to attend quarter sessions diligently, but seems to have harboured no further aspirations towards another seat in Parliament. As a religious conservative of Presbyterian sympathies, he had no patience with the emerging Quaker movement, and in November 1657 was addressed by the protector’s council in a letter to the Devon magistrates questioning their treatment of the Friends.54Add. 44058, f. 58; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 156. In the late 1650s, little evidence of Fry’s activities can be traced. His personal finances may have been under pressure, as he mortgaged Chelton manor and lands in Moorlinch, Somerset.55Som. RO, DD WO/11/10/4. He resumed his militia supervisory appointments when the Rump was restored in 1659; also in that year Fry was active in rebuilding the Honiton house of correction and with Thomas Bampfylde* and John Copleston* helped arbitrate in a dispute between two clergymen over the west Devon living of Ashwater.56Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/9, Jan. 1659; Add. 29319 f. 124.

The Restoration of the monarchy spelled the end of Fry’s career in public office. He last attended quarter sessions at Easter 1660, and had been removed from the commission of the peace by 1662. Although he was named as a commissioner for the poll tax of 1660, it was probably his son who sat in 1663, by virtue of exchequer commissions, on the cases of former parliamentarian committeemen.57E113/6, answer of Zachariah Spiller. Fry was probably regarded by the episcopal hierarchy with as much distaste as they viewed his nephew, Sir Walter Yonge*.58J. Simmons, ‘Some Letters from Bishop Ward of Exeter’, Devon and Cornw. N and Q, xxi. 284. He was never involved with the formal structures of local government again, and died in 1672, being buried at Membury on 1 May that year.