Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/304

 hold its sitting, and heard soon after that Downes had sought the Speaker's advice in framing a charge of blasphemy against him. The house suspended him till he should clear himself. He sent in a written paper declaring the sacred three to be ‘equally God,’ but objecting to the terms ‘person’ and ‘subsistence.’ This was accepted as satisfactory, and Fry was restored.

Next month he published a narrative of the case (‘The Accuser Sham'd’), appending his exculpatory paper, with an offensive heading. This publication brought out several pamphlets in reply. One of them, in allusion to Fry's title-page, bore the title, ‘M. Fry his Blasphemy and Error blown up and down the Kingdome with his owne Bellowes,’ &c., 1649. Fry's most considerable opponent was Francis Cheynell [q. v.], who published his ‘Divine Trinunity,’ 1650, to meet the charge of tritheism preferred by Fry against some theological writers. Cheynell affirms that Fry was the first who had employed in English the expression ‘Trinity of the Godhead.’ His suspicion that Fry had been acquainted with ‘the deified atheists of the Family of Love’ is probably the foundation of Wood's accusation of ‘rantisme.’ Fry retorted in ‘The Clergy in their Colours,’ in which he disparaged the assembly's catechism, attacked the doctrine of free-will, argued against ‘believing things above reason,’ assumed the attitude of a critical free-lance (‘my aym is not to write positive but negative things’), and satirised the ‘wrye mouths, squint eyes, and screw'd faces’ of popular divines.

Downes brought both of Fry's books under the notice of parliament. The house on 24 Feb. 1651 voted the publication of the narrative and paper a breach of privilege, condemned certain of Fry's statements as ‘erroneous, prophane, and highly scandalous,’ ordered the books to be burned in the New Palace Yard and the Old Exchange, and disabled Fry from sitting in parliament. Soon afterwards appeared an anonymous and undated pamphlet, ‘A Discussion of Mr. Frye's Tenets lately condemned in Parliament,’ &c., which Wood assigns to Cheynell without much ground. A more temperate reply was ‘Theios. Divine Beames of Glorious Light,’ &c., 1651 (1 March). Wood says that Fry, after his expulsion, consorted with Biddle, but there is no evidence of his adoption of Biddle's views; his tendency was rather in a Sabellian direction.

He died at the end of 1656 or beginning of 1657. His will is dated 29 Dec. 1656, and was proved on 15 June 1657. He married Anna, probably daughter of Lindsay of Poole, and had five sons and three daughters, one of his sons being Stephen Fry, M.D., of Trinity College, Oxford. At the Restoration Fry's property was forfeited for the part he had taken in the trial of the king.

He published: 1. ‘The Accuser Sham'd; or, a Pair of Bellows to blow off that Dust cast … by Col. Jo. Downs,’ &c., February 1648 [i.e. 17 Feb. 1649], 8vo; prefixed is ‘A Word to the Priests, Lawyers, Royalists, Self-Seekers, and Rigid-Presbyterians;’ appended is ‘A Brief Ventilation of that chaffie and absurd opinion of three Persons or Subsistences in the Godhead,’ being his paper sent in to the house. 2. ‘The Clergy in their Colours; or, a Brief Character of them,’ &c., 1650, 8vo (published 28 or 29 Nov.)

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 705 sq.; Rushworth's Hist. Coll. (abridged), 1798, vi. 563, 574, 594, 603; Noble's Lives of the English Regicides, 1798, i. 247; Wallace's Antitrin. Biog. 1850, iii. 206; works cited above; information from E. A. Fry.] 

FRY, JOHN (1792–1822), bookseller and author, was born in 1792. He was always in bad health, and devoted his leisure hours, when connected with the bookselling firm of Thomas Fry & Co., 46 High Street, Bristol, to the study of early English literature. Some of the prefaces of his pieces are dated from Kingsdown, Somersetshire. Besides his published works he left several in manuscript, among them one he styled ‘Bibliophilia,’ editions of the writings of the Rev. William Hamilton and William Browne, and biographical sketches of eminent Bristolians. After a lingering illness he died at Bristol, 28 June 1822, at the age of thirty. He published: 1. ‘Metrical Trifles in Youth,’ Bristol, 1810, 8vo. 2. ‘The Legend of Mary Queen of Scots, and other ancient Poems, now first published from MSS. of the XVIth century, with an Introduction, Notes, &c.,’ London, 1810, 8vo. 3. ‘A Selection from the Poetical Works of Thomas Carew,’ London, 1810, sm. 8vo (commended in ‘British Critic,’ February 1810). 4. ‘Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished MSS. and Scarce Books,’ Bristol, 1814, 4to (102 copies printed). 5. ‘George Whetstone's Metrical Life of George Gascoigne, 1577,’ Bristol, 1815, 4to (100 copies). 6. ‘Bibliographical Memoranda in illustration of Old English Literature,’ Bristol, 1816, 4to.

[Gent. Mag. December, vol. xcii. pt. ii. p. 566.] 

FRY, JOSEPH (1728–1787), type-founder, was born in 1728. He was the eldest son of John Fry (d. 1775) of Sutton Benger, Wiltshire, author of ‘Select Poems,’