John Frere
Encyclopedia
John Frere was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 antiquary and a pioneering discoverer of Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic tools in association with large extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 animals at Hoxne
Hoxne
Hoxne is an anciently established village in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk, England, about five miles east-southeast of Diss, Norfolk and one-half mile south of the River Waveney...

, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

 in 1797.

Life

Frere was born in Roydon Hall, Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, the son of Sheppard Frere and Susanna Hatley. Ellenor Fenn
Ellenor Fenn
Ellenor Fenn was a prolific 18th-century writer of children's books.-Early life:Fenn was born on 12 March 1743/44 in Westhorpe, Suffolk to Sheppard and Susanna Frere. John Frere was her elder brother and John Hookham Frere her nephew. In 1766 she married the antiquarian John Fenn and moved with...

 was his sister. In 1766, Frere received his MA from Gonville and Caius College, where he was Second Wrangler, Cambridge, and was elected to a fellowship. He subsequently held several political offices, and was a Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 from 1799 to 1802.

Antiquary

An interest in the past, instigated by observing worked stone tools in a clay mining pit, led him to become a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

 and the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 and to conduct excavations at a site just south of Hoxne, not far east, and across the River Waveny, from his home in Diss. Frere wrote a letter to the Society of Antiquaries about flint tools and large bones of extinct animals that he had found at a depth of approximately twelve feet (four meters) in a hole dug by local bricklayers. He described the worked flints as ...weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals... The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present world.... In addition, Frere carefully described the stratigraphy of the find, with the tools lying below an apparent ancient sea floor. The letter was officially read at the Society on 22 June 1797 and published in 1800, but Frere's interpretation was so radical by the standards of his day that it was overlooked for six decades.

Frere's is presently considered one of the important middle Pleistocene sites in Europe, because of what he observed in his letter: juxtaposition of artifacts, animal remains and stratigraphic evidence.

Family

Frere married Jane Hookham, daughter of John Hookham, on 12 June 1768. John Hookham Frere
John Hookham Frere
John Hookham Frere PC was an English diplomat and author.Frere was born in London. His father, John Frere, the member of a Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the competition of William Paley; his mother, Jane,...

 was their eldest son. Their second son Edward was the father of Sir Henry Bartle Frere, 1st Baronet. The fourth, fifth and sixth sons were William Frere
William Frere
William Frere , was an English lawyer and academic, a law-serjeant and Master of Downing College, Cambridge.-Life:Frere was the fourth son of John Frere of Roydon, Norfolk, and younger brother of John Hookham Frere. He was born 28 November 1775. He was sent to Felsted School and Eton College, and...

, Bartholomew Frere
Bartholomew Frere
-Life:Frere was born in 1776, the fifth son of John Frere, F.R.S., M.P. for Norwich, and a younger brother of John Hookham Frere and William Frere. He proceeded B.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1799, and M.A. in 1806...

, and James Hatley Frere
James Hatley Frere
-Life:Frere was the sixth son of John Frere, of Roydon, South Norfolk, and Beddington, Surrey, by Jane, daughter and heiress of John Hookham of London. He married, 15 June 1809, Merian, second daughter of Matthew Martin, F.R.S., of Poets' Corner, Westminster, by whom he had five sons.Frere met...

. In all they had seven sons and two daughters.

External links

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