Author: Frere, John Hookham
Biography:
FRERE, John Hookham, pseudonym William and Robert Whistlecraft (1769-1846: ODNB)
He was the eldest of eight children, six of whom grew to maturity, of John Frere (1740-1807), a landholder in Suffolk and Norfolk, and his wife Jane Hookham (1746-1813), only child of a London merchant. Born in London, he was educated at a prep school at Putney followed by Eton College--where he formed a lifelong friendship with George Canning (q.v.)--and Gonville and Cauis College, Cambridge (BA 1792, MA 1795, Fellow 1793-1816). Like Canning he joined the Foreign Office. He also served as MP 1796-1802. Under the editorship of William Gifford (q.v.), they were both major contributors to the influential pro-government Antijacobin Magazine(1797-8). Between 1800 and 1804 he held diplomatic posts in Portugal and Spain, accompanied by his mistress the widowed Countess of Erroll, Elizabeth Jemima (Blake) Hay (1770-1831), whom he married at St. James, Piccadilly, on 12 Sept. 1816; they had no children. Recalled in 1804, he was granted a handsome pension and made a member of the privy council. After a second unsuccessful mission to Spain 1808-9 he was recalled once more and declined further postings. In 1807 he had inherited his father's estate in Norfolk. He picked up his Tory satirist's pen again as "William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stow-Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar-Maker" in 1817-18 for his "Prospectus" of a long narrative poem in ottava rima which he took no further, but which was a direct influence on Byron. When his wife became ill in 1818 they moved to Malta and settled permanently. She died on 17 Jan. 1831; later that year, Walter Scott paid Frere a visit. Frere had his acclaimed verse translations of Aristophanes printed at Malta in 1839 for publication in London in 1840. He died in Valletta on 7 Jan. 1846 and was buried alongside his wife in the English burial-ground there. (ODNB 20 Nov. 2021; findmypast.com 20 Nov. 2021; Debrett's Genealogical Peerage of Great Britain and Ireland [1847] 300)
Other Names:
- Frere
- J. H. Frere