Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/252

Freke Graduates, 1851, p. 245). In 1755 he published 'A Sermon [on 1 Pet. ii. 16] preached before the House of Commons ... 30 Jan. 1755, being the day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I.' He resigned his prebend of Westminster on being promoted to a canonry of Christ Church in succession to David Gregory, 15 May 1756: and it is said to have been his unconditional surrender of this preferment which obtained for him the deanery of Canterbury, in which he was installed 14 June 1760. In the following year he was elected prolocutor of the lower house of convocation, in which capacity he delivered an elegant 'Concio ad Clerum' [on Galat. v. 1], published the same year. He died at Canterbury, 26 Nov. 1766 (''Gent. Mag''. xxxvi. 399), but was buried at Witney, and a short inscription to his memory placed upon the monument of his father and mother in that church. By his biographers Freind is described as a model of integrity, modesty, and benevolence. He is also said to have had a fine taste in music. He died extremely well off, having inherited the greater part of the fortune of his uncle, John Freind, M.D. (1675-1728) [q. v.] In April 1739 he married Grace, second daughter of William Robinson of Rokeby Park, Yorkshire, who died 28 Dec. 1776, and was also buried at Witney (, Baronetage, 1882, p. 538). He left issue three sons, Robert, William Maximilian, and John, and a daughter, Elizabeth, married to Duncan Campbell, a captain in the marines. The youngest son, John Freind, or, as he afterwards became, Sir John Robinson, succeeded to the estates of his maternal uncle, Richard Robinson, baron Rokeby, archbishop of Armagh. Freind's valuable collection of books, pictures, and prints were sold by auction in 1767. He gave a bust of his father by Rysbrach to Christ Church Library. His own portrait has been engraved by Worlidge.

[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. v. 89, 104-5; Welch's Alumni Westmon. (1852), pp. 296, 302-3; Foster's Alumni Oxon. (1715-1886), p. 495; Atterbury's Correspondence, ii. 401; Wotton's Baronetage (Kimber and Johnson), iii. 96-7; Wood's Colleges and Halls (Gutch), p. 461; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 130, ii. 161.]  FREKE, JOHN (1688–1756), surgeon, son of John Freke, also a surgeon, who died 28 July 1717, was born in London in 1688. A portrait of the father was engraved by Vertue in 1708. The son (, Biog. Hist. ii. 236) was apprenticed to Mr. Blundell and was elected assistant-surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1726. Soon after he was appointed the first curator of the hospital museum, which was then located in a single room under the cutting ward. The calculi which the surgeons had before been accustomed to place in the counting-house when they received payment of their bills for operations were placed in this room, and probably arranged by Freke. In 1727 a minute records that 'through a tender regard for the deplorable state of blind people the governors think it proper to appoint Mr. John Freke one of the assistant-surgeons of this house to couch and take care of the diseases of the eyes of such poor persons as shall be thought by him fitt for the operation, and for no other reward than the six shillings and eightpence for each person so couched as is paid on other operations.' He was elected surgeon 24 July 1729, and held office till 1755, when gout and infirmity compelled him to resign. Besides being one of the chief surgeons within the city of London he was reputed in his day a man of parts, learned in science, a judge of painting and of music. He thought Hogarth superior to Vandyck, but was adversely criticised by Hogarth when he put Dr. Maurice Greene, organist of St. Paul's, above Handel as a composer. He was elected F.R.S. 6 Nov. 1729, and in the 'Philosophical Transactions' 1736, he described a case of bony growth seen in a boy aged 14 years at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and on 23 June 1743 read before the Royal Society a description of an instrument he had invented for the reduction of dislocations of the shoulder joint. He was dexterous with his hands and carved a chandelier of oak, gilt, which at present hangs in the steward's office of the hospital, bearing the inscription 'Johannis Freke hujusce nosocomii chirurgi, 1735.' He made experiments in electricity and published in 1748 ' An Essay to show the Cause of Electricity and why some things are Non-Electricable, in which is also considered its Influence in the Blasts on Human Bodies, in the Blights on Trees, in the Damps in Mines, and as it may affect the Sensitive Plant.' Freke supposed that the cause of the closing of the leaves of the sensitive plant when touched was that it discharged electricity, and he devised an experiment to illustrate this, in which a small tree was placed in a pot upon a cake of resin and then electrified. He found that the leaves stood erect, falling down as soon as the electricity was discharged by touching the plant. He further conjectured that pollen was attracted from the stamen of one plant to the stigma of another by electricity. The phosphorescence of the sea which he had observed himself he attributed to the same cause, and went on to the still wilder suppositions that 