Part 51

FRITH (or FRYTH), JOHN (c. 1503-1533), English Reformer and Protestant martyr, was born at Westerham, Kent. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where Gardiner, afterwards bishop of Winchester, was his tutor. At the invitation of Cardinal Wolsey, after taking his degree he migrated (December 1525) to the newly founded college of St Frideswide or Cardinal College (now Christ Church), Oxford. The sympathetic interest which he showed in the Reformation movement in Germany caused him to be suspected as a heretic, and led to his imprisonment for some months. Subsequently he appears to have resided chiefly at the newly founded Protestant university of Marburg, where he became acquainted with several scholars and reformers of note, especially Patrick Hamilton (q.v.). Frith's first publication was a translation of Hamilton's _Places_, made shortly after the martyrdom of its author; and soon afterwards the _Revelation of Antichrist_, a translation from the German, appeared, along with _A Pistle to the Christen Reader_, by "Richard Brightwell" (supposed to be Frith), and _An Antithesis wherein are compared togeder Christes Actes and our Holye Father the Popes_, dated "at Malborow in the lande of Hesse," 12th July 1529. His _Disputacyon of Purgatorye_, a treatise in three books, against Rastell, Sir T. More and Fisher (bishop of Rochester) respectively, was published at the same place in 1531. While at Marburg, Frith also assisted Tyndale, whose acquaintance he had made at Oxford (or perhaps in London) in his literary labours. In 1532 he ventured back to England, apparently on some business in connexion with the prior of Reading. Warrants for his arrest were almost immediately issued at the instance of Sir T. More, then lord chancellor. Frith ultimately fell into the hands of the authorities at Milton Shore in Essex, as he was on the point of making his escape to Flanders. The rigour of his imprisonment in the Tower was somewhat abated when Sir T. Audley succeeded to the chancellorship, and it was understood that both Cromwell and Cranmer were disposed to show great leniency. But the treacherous circulation of a manuscript "lytle treatise" on the sacraments, which Frith had written for the information of a friend, and without any view to publication, served further to excite the hostility of his enemies. In consequence of a sermon preached before him against the "sacramentaries," the king ordered that Frith should be examined; he was afterwards tried and found guilty of having denied, with regard to the doctrines of purgatory and of transubstantiation, that they were necessary articles of faith. On the 23rd of June 1533 he was handed over to the secular arm, and at Smithfield on the 4th of July following he was burnt at the stake. During his captivity he wrote, besides several letters of interest, a reply to More's letter against Frith's "lytle treatise"; also two tracts entitled _A Mirror or Glass to know thyself_, and _A Mirror or Looking-glass wherein you may behold the Sacrament of Baptism_.

Frith is an interesting and so far important figure in English ecclesiastical history as having been the first to maintain and defend that doctrine regarding the sacrament of Christ's body and blood, which ultimately came to be incorporated in the English communion office. Twenty-three years after Frith's death as a martyr to the doctrine of that office, that "Christ's natural body and blood are in Heaven, not here," Cranmer, who had been one of his judges, went to the stake for the same belief. Within three years more, it had become the publicly professed faith of the entire English nation.

See A. a Wood, _Athenae Oxonienses_ (ed. P. Bliss, 1813), i. p. 74; John Foxe, _Acts and Monuments_ (ed. G. Townshend, 1843-1849), v. pp. 1-16 (also Index); G. Burnet, _Hist. of the Reformation of the Church of England_ (ed. N. Pocock, 1865), i. p. 273; L. Richmond, _The Fathers of the English Church_, i. (1807); _Life and Martyrdom of John Frith_ (London, 1824), published by the Church of England Tract Society; Deborah Alcock, _Six Heroic Men_ (1906).

FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL (1819-1909), English painter, was born at Aldfield, in Yorkshire, on the 9th of January 1819. His parents moved in 1826 to Harrogate, where his father became landlord of the Dragon Inn, and it was then that the boy began his general education at a school at Knaresborough. Later he went for about two years to a school at St Margaret's, near Dover, where he was placed specially under the direction of the drawing-master, as a step towards his preparation for the profession which his father had decided on as the one that he wished him to adopt. In 1835 he was entered as a student in the well-known art school kept by Henry Sass in Bloomsbury, from which he passed after two years to the Royal Academy schools. His first independent experience was gained in 1839, when he went about for some months in Lincolnshire executing several commissions for portraits; but he soon began to attempt compositions, and in 1840 his first picture, "Malvolio, cross-gartered before the Countess Olivia," appeared at the Royal Academy. During the next few years he produced several notable paintings, among them "Squire Thornhill relating his town adventures to the Vicar's family," and "The Village Pastor," which established his reputation as one of the most promising of the younger men of that time. This last work was exhibited in 1845, and in the autumn of that year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. His promotion to the rank of Academician followed in 1853, when he was chosen to fill the vacancy caused by Turner's death. The chief pictures painted by him during his tenure of Associateship were: "An English Merry-making in the Olden Time," "Old Woman accused of Witchcraft," "The Coming of Age," "Sancho and Don Quixote," "Hogarth before the Governor of Calais," and the "Scene from Goldsmith's 'Good-natured Man,'" which was commissioned in 1850 by Mr Sheepshanks, and bequeathed by him to the South Kensington Museum. Then came a succession of large compositions which gained for the artist an extraordinary popularity. "Life at the Seaside," better known as "Ramsgate Sands," was exhibited in 1854, and was bought by Queen Victoria; "The Derby Day," in 1858; "Claude Duval," in 1860; "The Railway Station," in 1862; "The Marriage of the Prince of Wales," painted for Queen Victoria, in 1865; "The Last Sunday of Charles II.," in 1867; "The Salon d'Or," in 1871; "The Road to Ruin," a series, in 1878; a similar series, "The Race for Wealth," shown at a gallery in King Street, St James's, in 1880; "The Private View," in 1883; and "John Knox at Holyrood," in 1886. Frith also painted a considerable number of portraits of well-known people. In 1889 he became an honorary retired academician. His "Derby Day" is in the National Gallery of British Art. In his youth, in common with the men by whom he was surrounded, he had leanings towards romance, and he scored many successes as a painter of imaginative subjects. In these he proved himself to be possessed of exceptional qualities as a colourist and manipulator, qualities that promised to earn for him a secure place among the best executants of the British School. But in his middle period he chose a fresh direction. Fascinated by the welcome which the public gave to his first attempts to illustrate the life of his own times, he undertook a considerable series of large canvases, in which he commented on the manners and morals of society as he found it. He became a pictorial preacher, a painter who moralized about the everyday incidents of modern existence; and he sacrificed some of his technical variety. There remained, however, a remarkable sense of characterization, and an acute appreciation of dramatic effect. Frith died on the 2nd of November 1909.

Frith published his _Autobiography and Reminiscences_ in 1887, and _Further Reminiscences_ in 1889.

FRITILLARY (_Fritillaria_: from Lat. _fritillus_, a chess-board, so called from the chequered markings on the petals), a genus of hardy bulbous plants of the natural order Liliaceae, containing about 50 species widely distributed in the northern hemisphere. The genus is represented in Britain by the fritillary or snake's head, which occurs in moist meadows in the southern half of England, especially in Oxfordshire. A much larger plant is the crown imperial (_F. imperialis_), a native of western Asia and well known in gardens. This grows to a height of about 3 ft., the lower part of the stoutish stem being furnished with leaves, while near the top is developed a crown of large pendant flowers surmounted by a tuft of bright green leaves like those of the lower part of the stem, only smaller. The flowers are bell-shaped, yellow or red, and in some of the forms double. The plant grows freely in good garden soil, preferring a deep well-drained loam, and is all the better for a top-dressing of manure as it approaches the flowering stage. Strong clumps of five or six roots of one kind have a very fine effect. It is a very suitable subject for the back row in mixed flower borders, or for recesses in the front part of shrubbery borders. It flowers in April or early in May. There are a few named varieties, but the most generally grown are the single and double yellow, and the single and double red, the single red having also two variegated varieties, with the leaves striped respectively with white and yellow.

"Fritillary" is also the name of a kind of butterfly.

FRITZLAR, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Cassel, on the left bank of the Eder, 16 m. S.W. from Cassel, on the railway Wabern-Wildungen. Pop. (1905) 3448. It is a prettily situated old-fashioned place, with an Evangelical and two Roman Catholic churches, one of the latter, that of St Peter, a striking medieval edifice. As early as 732 Boniface, the apostle of Germany, established the church of St Peter and a small Benedictine monastery at Frideslar, "the quiet home" or "abode of peace." Before long the school connected with the monastery became famous, and among its earlier scholars it numbered Sturm, abbot of Fulda, and Megingod, second bishop of Wurzburg. When Boniface found himself unable to continue the supervision of the society himself, he entrusted the office to Wigbert of Glastonbury, who thus became the first abbot of Fritzlar. In 774 the little settlement was taken and burnt by the Saxons; but it evidently soon recovered from the blow. For a short time after 786 it was the seat of the bishopric of Buraburg, which had been founded by Boniface in 741. At the diet of Fritzlar in 919 Henry I. was elected German king. In the beginning of the 13th century the village received municipal rights; in 1232 it was captured and burned by the landgrave Conrad of Thuringia and his allies; in 1631 it was taken by William of Hesse; in 1760 it was successfully defended by General Luckner against the French; and in 1761 it was occupied by the French and unsuccessfully bombarded by the Allies. As a principality Fritzlar continued subject to the archbishopric of Mainz till 1802, when it was incorporated with Hesse. From 1807 to 1814 it belonged to the kingdom of Westphalia; and in 1866 passed with Hesse Cassel to Prussia.

FRIULI (in the local dialect, _Furlanei_), a district at the head of the Adriatic Sea, at present divided between Italy and Austria, the Italian portion being included in the province of Udine and the district of Portogruaro, and the Austrian comprising the province of Gorz and Gradiska, and the so-called Idrian district. In the north and east Friuli includes portions of the Julian and Carnic Alps, while the south is an alluvial plain richly watered by the Isonzo, the Tagliamento, and many lesser streams which, although of small volume during the dry season, come down in enormous floods after rain or thaw. The inhabitants, known as Furlanians, are mainly Italians, but they speak a dialect of their own which contains Celtic elements. The area of the country is about 3300 sq. m.; it contains about 700,000 inhabitants.

Friuli derives its name from the Roman town of _Forum Julii_, or _Forojulium_, the modern Cividale, which is said by Paulus Diaconus to have been founded by Julius Caesar. In the 2nd century B.C. the district was subjugated by the Romans, and became part of Gallia Transpadana. During the Roman period, besides Forum Julii, its principal towns were Concordia, Aquileia and Vedinium. On the conquest of the country by the Lombards during the 6th century it was made one of their thirty-six duchies, the capital being Forum Julii or, as they called it, Civitas Austriae. It is needless to repeat the list of dukes of the Lombard line, from Gisulf (d. 611) to Hrothgaud, who fell a victim to his opposition to Charlemagne about 776; their names and exploits may be read in the _Historia Langobardorum_ of Paulus Diaconus, and they were mainly occupied in struggles with the Avars and other barbarian peoples, and in resisting the pretensions of the Lombard kings. The discovery, however, of Gisulf's grave at Cividale, in 1874, is an interesting proof of the historian's authenticity. Charlemagne filled Hrothgaud's place with one of his own followers, and the frontier position of Friuli gave the new line of counts, dukes or margraves (for they are variously designated) the opportunity of acquiring importance by exploits against the Bulgarians, Slovenians and other hostile peoples to the east. After the death of Charlemagne Friuli shared in general in the fortunes of northern Italy. In the 11th century the ducal rights over the greater part of Friuli were bestowed by the emperor Henry IV. on the patriarch of Aquileia; but towards the close of the 14th century the nobles called in the assistance of Venice, which, after defeating the archbishop, afforded a new illustration of Aesop's well-known fable, by securing possession of the country for itself. The eastern part of Friuli was held by the counts of Gorz till 1500, when on the failure of their line it was appropriated by the German king, Maximilian I., and remained in the possession of the house of Austria until the Napoleonic wars. By the peace of Campo Formio in 1797 the Venetian district also came to Austria, and on the formation of the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy in 1805 the department of Passariano was made to include the whole of Venetian and part of Austrian Friuli, and in 1809 the rest was added to the Illyrian provinces. The title of duke of Friuli was borne by Marshal Duroc. In 1815 the whole country was recovered by the emperor of Austria, who himself assumed the ducal title and coat of arms; and it was not till 1866 that the Venetian portion was again ceded to Italy by the peace of Prague. The capital of the country is Udine, and its arms are a crowned eagle on a field azure.

See Manzano, _Annali del Friuli_ (Udine, 1858-1879); and _Compendio di storia friulana_ (Udine, 1876); Antonini, _Il Friuli orientale_ (Milan, 1865); von Zahn, _Friaulische Studien_ (Vienna, 1878); Pirona, _Vocabolario friulino_ (Venice, 1869); and L. Fracassetti, _La Statistica etnografica del Friuli_ (Udine, 1903). (T. As.)

FROBEN [FROBENIUS], JOANNES (c. 1460-1527), German printer and scholar, was born at Hammelburg in Bavaria about the year 1460. After completing his university career at Basel, where he made the acquaintance of the famous printer Johannes Auerbach (1443-1513), he established a printing house in that city about 1491, and this soon attained a European reputation for accuracy and for taste. In 1500 he married the daughter of the bookseller Wolfgang Lachner, who entered into partnership with him. He was on terms of friendship with Erasmus (q.v.), who not only had his own works printed by him, but superintended Frobenius's editions of St Jerome, St Cyprian, Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers and St Ambrose. His _Neues Testament_ in Greek (1516) was used by Luther for his translation. Frobenius employed Hans Holbein to illuminate his texts. It was part of his plan to print editions of the Greek Fathers. He did not, however, live to carry out this project, but it was very creditably executed by his son Jerome and his son-in-law Nikolaus Episcopius. Frobenius died in October 1527. His work in Basel made that city in the 16th century the leading centre of the German book trade. An extant letter of Erasmus, written in the year of Frobenius's death, gives an epitome of his life and an estimate of his character; and in it Erasmus mentions that his grief for the death of his friend was far more poignant than that which he had felt for the loss of his own brother, adding that "all the apostles of science ought to wear mourning." The epistle concludes with an epitaph in Greek and Latin.

FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN (c. 1535-1594), English navigator and explorer, fourth child of Bernard Frobisher of Altofts in the parish of Normanton, Yorkshire, was born some time between 1530 and 1540. The family came originally from North Wales. At an early age he was sent to a school in London and placed under the care of a kinsman, Sir John York, who in 1544 placed him on board a ship belonging to a small fleet of merchantmen sailing to Guinea. By 1565 he is referred to as Captain Martin Frobisher, and in 1571-1572 as being in the public service at sea off the coast of Ireland. He married in 1559. As early as 1560 or 1561 Frobisher had formed a resolution to undertake a voyage in search of a North-West Passage to Cathay and India. The discovery of such a route was the motive of most of the Arctic voyages undertaken at that period and for long after, but Frobisher's special merit was in being the first to give to this enterprise a national character. For fifteen years he solicited in vain the necessary means to carry his project into execution, but in 1576, mainly by help of the earl of Warwick, he was put in command of an expedition consisting of two tiny barks, the "Gabriel" and "Michael," of about 20 to 25 tons each, and a pinnace of 10 tons, with an aggregate crew of 35.

He weighed anchor at Blackwall, and, after having received a good word from Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich, set sail on the 7th of June, by way of the Shetland Islands. Stormy weather was encountered in which the pinnace was lost, and some time afterwards the "Michael" deserted; but stoutly continuing the voyage alone, on the 28th of July the "Gabriel" sighted the coast of Labrador in lat. 62 deg. 2' N. Some days later the mouth of Frobisher Bay was reached, and a farther advance northwards being prevented by ice and contrary winds, Frobisher determined to sail westward up this passage (which he conceived to be a strait) to see "whether he mighte carrie himself through the same into some open sea on the backe syde." Butcher's Island was reached on the 18th of August, and some natives being met with here, intercourse was carried on with them for some days, the result being that five of Frobisher's men were decoyed and captured, and never more seen. After vainly trying to get back his men, Frobisher turned homewards, and reached London on the 9th of October.

Among the things which had been hastily brought away by the men was some "black earth," and just as it seemed as if nothing more was to come of this expedition, it was noised abroad that the apparently valueless "black earth" was really a lump of gold ore. It is difficult to say how this rumour arose, and whether there was any truth in it, or whether Frobisher was a party to a deception, in order to obtain means to carry out the great idea of his life. The story, at any rate, was so far successful; the greatest enthusiasm was manifested by the court and the commercial and speculating world of the time; and next year a much more important expedition than the former was fitted out, the queen lending the "Aid" from the royal navy and subscribing L1000 towards the expenses of the expedition. A Company of Cathay was established, with a charter from the crown, giving the company the sole right of sailing in every direction but the east; Frobisher was appointed high admiral of all lands and waters that might be discovered by him. On the 26th of May 1577 the expedition, consisting, besides the "Aid," of the ships "Gabriel" and "Michael," with boats, pinnaces and an aggregate complement of 120 men, including miners, refiners, &c., left Blackwall, and sailing by the north of Scotland reached Hall's Island at the mouth of Frobisher Bay on the 17th of July. A few days later the country and the south side of the bay was solemnly taken possession of in the queen's name. Several weeks were now spent in collecting ore, but very little was done in the way of discovery, Frobisher being specially directed by his commission to "defer the further discovery of the passage until another time." There was much parleying and some skirmishing with the natives, and earnest but futile attempts made to recover the men captured the previous year. The return was begun on the 23rd of August, and the "Aid" reached Milford Haven on the 23rd of September; the "Gabriel" and "Michael," having separated, arrived later at Bristol and Yarmouth.

Frobisher was received and thanked by the queen at Windsor. Great preparations were made and considerable expense incurred for the assaying of the great quantity of "ore" (about 200 tons) brought home. This took up much time, and led to considerable dispute among the various parties interested. Meantime the faith of the queen and others remained strong in the productiveness of the newly discovered territory, which she herself named _Meta Incognita_, and it was resolved to send out a larger expedition than ever, with all necessaries for the establishment of a colony of 100 men. Frobisher was again received by the queen at Greenwich, and her Majesty threw a fine chain of gold around his neck. On the 31st of May 1578 the expedition, consisting in all of fifteen vessels, left Harwich, and sailing by the English Channel on the 20th of June reached the south of Greenland, where Frobisher and some of his men managed to land. On the 2nd of July the foreland of Frobisher Bay was sighted, but stormy weather and dangerous ice prevented the rendezvous from being gained, and, besides causing the wreck of the barque "Dennis" of 100 tons, drove the fleet unwittingly up a new (Hudson) strait. After proceeding about 60 m. up this "mistaken strait," Frobisher with apparent reluctance turned back, and after many bufferings and separations the fleet at last came to anchor in Frobisher Bay. Some attempt was made at founding a settlement, and a large quantity of ore was shipped; but, as might be expected, there was much dissension and not a little discontent among so heterogeneous a company, and on the last day of August the fleet set out on its return to England, which was reached in the beginning of October. Thus ended what was little better than a fiasco, though Frobisher himself cannot be held to blame for the result; the scheme was altogether chimerical, and the "ore" seems to have been not worth smelting.