Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/287

 she was buried 10 Aug. 1659. Particular care was bestowed on her education, but she would not submit to discipline. ‘A very tomrig or rumpscuttle she was.’ says her anonymous biographer, ‘and delighted and sported only in boys' play and pastime, not minding or companying with the girls.’ When she had grown to be a ‘lusty and sturdy wench’ she was put out to service; but she disliked household work of any kind, and ‘had a natural abhorrence to the tending of children.’ Abandoning domestic service she donned man's attire, and gained great notoriety as a bully, pickpurse, fortune-teller, receiver, and forger. Chamberlain, in one of his letters to Carleton (dated 11 Feb. 1611–1612), tells how she did penance at Paul's Cross. She made a show of penitence on that occasion, but it was afterwards discovered that she had consumed three quarts of sack (and was maudlin-drunk) before she went to her penance. The highwaymen, Captain Hind and Richard Hannam, were among her familiar friends. In Smith's ‘Lives of Highwaymen’ it is related that she once robbed General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath, shot him through the arm, and killed two horses on which his servants were riding; for which offence she was sent to Newgate, but procured her release by paying Fairfax two thousand pounds. On her expeditions she was usually accompanied by a dog, which had been carefully trained for the purpose. She is also said to have kept a gang of thieves in her service. Her constant practice of smoking is supposed to have lengthened her life, for she suffered from a dropsy, to which she ultimately succumbed.

There are numerous references to Moll Cutpurse in the writings of her contemporaries; but it is very doubtful whether Sir Toby Belch refers to her when he speaks of ‘Mistress Moll's picture’ (Twelfth Night, i. 3), for she was too young to have come into notoriety when Shakespeare's play was written. In August 1610 there was entered in the Stationers' Register: ‘A Booke called the Madde Prancks of Merry Moll of the Bankside, with her walks in Man's Apparel and to what Purpose. Written by John Day;’ but it is not known to have been printed. She is the heroine of an excellent comedy, ‘The Roaring Girle,’ 1611, by Middleton and Dekker, who have presented her in a very attractive light. Field introduces her in ‘Amends for Ladies,’ 1618.

[The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith, 1662; Dyce's Middleton, ii. 427, &c.; Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary; Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, xi. 90–1; Bullen's Middleton, iv. 3–5.] 

FRITHEGODE or FRIDEGODE (fl. 950), hagiographer, a monk of Canterbury, of great learning in the Scriptures, is said to have been the tutor of Oswald, afterwards archbishop of York. At the request of Archbishop Oda he wrote a metrical ‘Life of Wilfrith.’ This ‘Life’ is simply a version in hexameters of the Life by Hæddi; it is written in an obscure and turgid style, many words not being Latin at all. Oda wrote a preface to it in prose, and Frithegode's work has therefore sometimes been attributed to him. The poem has been printed by Mabillon, ‘Acta SS. O. S. B.,’ iii. i. 150, from an incomplete manuscript at Corbie, and completed by him in v. 679, from manuscript Cotton. Claud. A. 1; also in Migne's ‘Patrologia,’ cxxxiii. 979, and in ‘Historians of York’ (Rolls Ser.), i. 105; the preface is printed by itself in the ‘Patrologia,’ cxxxiii. 946, and in Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra,’ ii. 50.

[Eadmer, Vita S. Oswaldi, Hist. of York, ii. 5 (Rolls Ser.); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 20 (Rolls Ser.); Raine's Pref. to Hist. of York, i.; Hardy's Cat. i. 399; Wright's Biog. Lit. i. 433.] 

FROBISHER, MARTIN (1535?–1594), navigator, belonged to a family of Welsh origin, which removed from Chirk in Denbighshire, and settled at Altofts in the parish of Normanton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the middle of the fourteenth century. His father, Bernard Frobisher, of Altofts, died during his infancy, and he was sent to London, and placed under the care of Sir John York, a kinsman, who perceiving the boy to be of great spirit, courage, and hardiness of body, sent him on his first voyage to Guinea in the autumn of 1554. During the following ten years he doubtless acquired his knowledge of seamanship in the yearly expeditions which were despatched by Sir John Lock and his brother, Thomas Lock, either to the northern shores of Africa or the Levant. The earliest direct notice of Frobisher appears to be an account of two examinations before Dr. Lewis on 30 May and 11 June 1566, ‘on suspicion of his having fitted out a vessel as a pirate’ (State Papers, Dom. series, xl. 7). On 21 Aug. 1571 Captain E. Horsey writes to Lord Burghley from Portsmouth that he ‘has expedited the fitting out of a hulk for M. Frobisher’ (ib. lxxx. 31). This gives the earliest indication of Frobisher's public employment, which shortly afterwards took the form of service at sea off the coast of Ireland. 4 Dec. 1572 is the date of a ‘declaration of Martin Frobisher to the commissioners concerning the Earl of Desmond having employed him to