pleasure of the Madras government’ (information supplied by the India Office). On 28 June 1838 Fraser became a major-general, which was regarded as an exceptional case of rapid promotion by seniority. On 31 Dec. 1839 he was appointed resident at Hyderabad, and was vested with a general superintendence over the post-offices and post-roads of the nizam's dominions. While there in 1842 Fraser ‘received the thanks of the government in council for his temper, decision, and energy on the occasion of the insubordination of certain native troops at Secunderabad’ (general order, 12 April 1842). The court of directors in their despatch dated 3 Aug. 1842 referred to this affair, and stated that his ‘conduct in the difficult and trying circumstances in which he was placed was such as they should have expected from the well-known judgment, temper, and energy of that distinguished officer and merits the highest approbation’ (information supplied by the India Office).
At Hyderabad, which he regarded as being, for good or evil, the political centre of India, Fraser remained fourteen years, his residence ending before the enlightened administration of that state by Sir Salar Jung. For details of this period reference must be made to the bulky volume published by Fraser's son, Colonel Hastings Fraser, Madras staff corps, under the title, ‘Memoirs and Correspondence of General J. S. Fraser’ (London, 1885), 8vo, which is largely devoted to Hyderabad affairs. Fraser appears again and again, without much success, to have urged on the supreme government the need of taking a firmer tone with the nizam. ‘Intrigue, corruption, and mismanagement are not to be corrected by whispers and unmeaning phrases,’ he wrote in 1849, and in 1851 he drafted a letter of remonstrance, which was never sent from Calcutta, couched in the strongest terms (Mem. pp. 327–9). But latterly he dissented from the high-handed measures of Lord Dalhousie, then governor-general. His strained relations with Dalhousie led Fraser to resign his appointment at Hyderabad in 1852 and return to England. He revisited India more than once afterwards, but held no public appointment. He became lieutenant-general 11 Nov. 1851, and general 2 June 1862. Except the war-medal he received no mark of distinction for his long and distinguished services.
In person Fraser was tall, standing over six feet three inches, and spare-built. A photograph, taken late in life, forms the frontispiece to his son's memoir of him. He was a good rider, a keen sportsman, and a man of some general culture. A tried official, his acts appear to justify the character given of him by his son as ‘a man of scrupulous integrity and unsullied honour, firm and faithful in all trials, and generous to a degree.’ Fraser, who for some time had been totally blind, but otherwise retained all his faculties, died in his eighty-seventh year, at Twickenham Park, 22 Aug. 1869.
[Information furnished by the India Office; Burke's Landed Gentry; Hastings Fraser's Mem. and Corresp. of General J. S. Fraser (Lond. 1885); critical notices of the latter in the Times, 29 Aug. 1885, and in Athenæum, 1885 (i.), 244.]
FRASER, JOHN (d. 1605), Scotch Recollect friar, was the fourth son of Alexander Fraser, and grandson of Sir William Fraser of Philorth, Aberdeenshire. He was educated for the church, took the degree of bachelor of divinity, and became abbot of Noyon or Compiègne in France. He died at Paris on 24 April 1605, and was buried in the Franciscan convent. He was the author of: 1. ‘Offer maid to a Gentilman of Qualitie by John Fraser to subscribe and embrace the Ministers of Scotlands religion, if they can sufficientlie prove that they have the true kirk and laufull calling,’ Paris, 1604, 8vo; another edition, ‘newlie corrected,’ printed abroad, s.l., 1605, 8vo. 2. ‘A lerned epistle of M. Iohn Fraser: Bachler of Divinitie to the ministers of Great Britanie. Wherein he sheweth that no man ought to subscribe to their confession of faith. And that their presumed authorite to excommunicate anie man, especially Catholiques, is vaine and foolish’ [Paris?], 1605, 8vo. 3. ‘In universam Aristotelis Philosophiam Commentarii.’
[Dempster's Hist. Ecclesiastica (1627), lib. vi. n. 549, p. 291; Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 260; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
FRASER, JOHN (1750–1811), botanist, was born at Tomnacloich, Inverness-shire, in 1750, and apparently came to London in 1770, when he married and settled as a hosier and draper at Paradise Row, Chelsea. Having acquired a taste for plants from visiting the Botanical Garden, Chelsea, then under the care of Forsyth, he sailed to Newfoundland in 1780 in search of new species, returning the same year. In 1784 he embarked for Charleston, whence he returned in 1785, only to start again the same year. His third, fourth, and fifth visits to North America were made in 1790, 1791, and 1795, he having in the latter year established a nursery at Sloane Square, Chelsea, to which his discoveries were consigned. Having introduced various American pines, oaks, azaleas, rhododendrons, and magnolias, in 1796 he visited St. Petersburg, where the Empress Catherine purchased a
