Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/236

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Frazer
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Freake

was promoted major by brevet on 4 June 1811. In November 1812 he exchanged troops of royal horse artillery with Major Bull, whose health had broken down in the Peninsula, and he joined the allied Anglo-Portuguese army in its winter quarters at Freneda. In April 1813, when he had been but a short time with the army, Lord Wellington determined to have an officer on his staff for the general command of all the horse artillery in the field, and offered the post to Frazer, as senior horse artillery officer with the army. In this capacity he served on the staff throughout the rest of the Peninsular campaigns, and was present at the affairs of Salamanca and Osma, the battle of Vittoria, the siege of San Sebastian, at which he commanded the right artillery attack, at the passage of the Bidassoa, the battles of the Nivelle and the Nive, the investment of Bayonne, and the battle of Toulouse. He soon became a great favourite with Wellington, and was largely rewarded for his services. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel by brevet on 21 June 1813, granted a gold cross and one clasp for the battles of Vittoria, San Sebastian, Nivelle, Nive, and Toulouse; made one of the first K.C.B.s on the extension of the order of the Bath: promoted lieutenant-colonel in the royal artillery on 20 Dec. 1814, and appointed to command the artillery in the eastern district. In 1815, when Napoleon escaped from Elba, Frazer at once took his old place as commanding the royal horse artillery upon the staff of the Duke of Wellington in Belgium. He was now allowed to bring nine-pounders into action instead of six-pounders, a change which certainly had a great deal to do with the effective fire of the English guns at Waterloo. When the war was over Frazer was appointed British artillery commissioner for taking over the French fortresses, and in the following year he was elected a F.R.S. For some time he commanded the royal horse artillery at Woolwich ; in October 1827 he was appointed inspector of the ordnance carriage department there, and in July 1828 director of the Royal Laboratory. He was promoted a colonel in the royal artillery in January 1825, and died at Woolwich on 4 June 1835.

[Letters of Colonel Sir Augustus S. Frazer, K.C.B., commanding the Royal Horse Artillery in the army under the Duke of Wellington, written during the Peninsula and Waterloo Campaigns, edited by General Sir Edward Sabine, R.A.; Duncan's History of the Royal Artillery.]

H. M. S.

FRAZER, WILLIAM (d. 1297), bishop of St. Andrews. [See Fraser.]


FREAKE, EDMUND (1516?–1591), bishop successively of Rochester, Norwich, and Worcester, was born in Essex about 1516, and became a canon of the order of St. Augustine in the abbey of Waltham, in his native county. He appended his signature to the surrender of that house, dated 23 March 1539-40, and obtained an annual pension of 5l. He graduated in arts in the university of Cambridge, but the dates of his degrees are not known. He was ordained priest by Bishop Bonner on 18 June 1545.

In 1564 he became archdeacon of Canterbury, and on 25 Sept. in that year he was installed a canon of Westminster. He was one of Elizabeth's chaplains, and was appointed to preach before the queen in Lent 1564-5. On 25 Oct. 1565 he was by patent constituted one of the canons of Windsor. He was instituted to the rectory of Purleigh, Essex, on 13 June 1567, on the queen's presentation; and on 29 March 1568 he was holding a canonry in the church of Canterbury. On 10 April 1570 he was installed dean of Rochester. On 10 June in that year a grace passed the senate of the university of Cambridge for conferring upon him the degree of D.D., he having studied in that faculty for twenty years after he had ruled in arts (Cooper, Athenæ, Cantabr. ii. 96). In the following month he supplicated the university of Oxford for incorporation, but the result does not appear (Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 186). On 18 Sept. 1570 he was promoted to the deanery of Sarum. Shortly before 20 Nov. 1570 he resigned the rectory of Foulmire, Cambridgeshire, to which John Freake, M.A., was then instituted on the queen's presentation.

On 15 Feb. 1571-2 he was elected bishop of Rochester, the royal assent being given on the 28th of that month. He was consecrated at Lambeth 9 May 1572, being, as Archbishop Parker remarks, a serious, learned, and pious man (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 572). He was empowered to hold the archdeaconry of Canterbury and the rectory of Purleigh incommendam. On or about 29 May 1572 he became the queen's great almoner.

On 31 July 1575 he was elected bishop of Norwich, and on 12 Nov. following he had restitution of the temporalities (Blomefield, Norfolk, ed. 1806, iii. 558). He now resigned the archdeaconry of Canterbury. Serious complaints were made of his conduct as bishop. Writing to Secretary Walsingham on 28 Aug. 1578, Sir Thomas Heneage says the queen had been brought to believe well of divers zealous and loyal gentlemen of Suffolk and Norfolk, whom the foolish bishop had complained of to her as hinderers of her proceedings and