at Northiam in Sussex, on 14 June 1791, aged 86.
[Gent. Mag.; Giles Watts's Letter to Dr. Frewen on his behaviour in the case of Mr. Rootes, surgeon, Lond. 1755.]
FREWIN, RICHARD, M.D. (1681?–1761), physician and professor of history, son of Ralph Frewin of London, was admitted king's scholar at Westminster in 1693, and elected thence to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1698. He took the degrees of B.A. in 1702, M.A. in 1704, M.B. in 1707, and M.D. in 1711. In 1708 he is described at the foot of a Latin poem which he contributed to 'Exequiæ Georgio principi Daniæ ab Oxoniensi academia solutæ' (Oxford, 1708) as professor of chemistry; he was also in 1711 rhetoric reader in Christ Church. As a physician he had an excellent reputation; he attended Dean Aldrich on his deathbed. John Freind's 'Hippocrates de Morbis Popularibus' is dedicated to him, and contains a letter from him (dated Christ Church, 20 July 1710), giving an account of a case of variolæ cohærentes which he had been attending. In 1727 he was unanimously elected to the Camden professorship of ancient history, no other candidate offering himself. Hearne relates that soon after his election he bought a hundred pounds' worth of books on history and chronology, 'on purpose to qualify him the better to discharge' the duties of the office. He died 29 May 1761, having survived his children, who died young, and three wives, Lady Tyrell, Elizabeth Woodward, and Mrs. Graves, daughter of Peter Cranke. He bequeathed 2,000l. intrust for the king's scholars of Westminster elected to Christ Church, and another 2,000l. in trust for the physicians of the Radcliffe Infirmary, and left his house in Oxford, now known as Frewin Hall, to the regius professor of medicine for the time being. His library of history and literature, consisting of 2,300 volumes, he left to the Radcliffe Library. There is in that library a volume containing a collection of dried specimens of plants made by him, with his notes in manuscript on their medicinal uses. Portraits are in the hall and common room at Christ Church, and a bust, presented by Dr. Hawley in 1757, in the library there.
[List of Queen's Scholars of Westminster; Cat. of Oxford Grad.; Oxford Honours Register; Bliss's Remains of Thomas Hearne, i. 212, 237; Hearne's MS. Diary, lxi. 123, cviii. 136, cxv. 158, cxvii. 75, cxxx. 138, cxxxv. 99, cxliv. 98-9; epitaph in St. Peter's in the East, Oxford, which, however, like the Gent. Mag. (xxxi. 284), erroneously gives his age as eighty-four; in the matriculation register he was entered 4 July 1698 as seventeen, from which it appears he must have been born in 1680 or 1681; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 6 June 1761; Ingram's Memorials of Oxford, iii. (St. Peter le Baily) 15; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vi. 150; London Mag. for 1761, p. 332; inscription on the back of his miniature in the Radcliffe Library; catalogue of his books in the Radcliffe Library.]
FRIDEGODE (fl. 950). [See Frithegode.]
FRIDESWIDE, FRITHESWITH, or FREDESWITHA, Saint (d. 735?), was, according to the earliest account, a king's daughter, who having chosen a life of virginity, refused marriage with a king. Being persecuted by her lover she fled from him, and at last took shelter in Oxford. Her lover pursued her thither; she invoked the help of God; the king was struck blind as he drew near the gates of the city with his company; he repented, and sent messengers to Frideswide, and his sight was restored. Hence the kings of England, it was believed, feared to enter Oxford in later days. The saint preserved her virginity, established a convent at Oxford, and died there (Gesta Pontificum, p. 315). William of Malmesbury, who was alive when Oxford University was in its first infancy, also speaks in his 'Gesta Regum' (i. 279) of a record in the archives of St. Frideswide's church dated 1002. This record is probably represented in an Oseney cartulary, Cotton MS. Vitell. E. xv. f. 5, late thirteenth century, quoted by Dugdale (Monasticon, ii. 143), which says that the saint was the daughter of Didanus, king of Oxford, who built for her a monastery there, that she obtained a place then called 'Thornbirie,' and afterwards 'Binseye,' where she had a holy spring,and that she worked miracles (Parker, p. 91). There are also two twelfth-century manuscript lives, Cotton MS. Nero E. 1, and Bodl. MS. Laud. Misc. p. 114, which, taken together, though they differ from each other in several points (these differences are fully noted by Parker), make the saint the daughter of Didanus and Sefrid; she was brought up by a matron named Algiva (Ælfgifu), was given a nunnery by her father, and was persecuted by Algar (Ælfgar), king of Leicester, whose messengers were struck blind, but restored to sight at her prayer. She fled by water to Benton (?), and abode there. Meanwhile Algar entered Oxford and was struck blind for the rest of his life. Frideswide went to Binsey or Thornbury, and founded a nunnery, and had a holy spring there. She worked miracles. The circumstances of her death are part of the common property of hagiology. She was buried in the church of St. Mary at Oxford, on the south side (ib.
