FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1846), English diplo mat and author, was born in London. He was educated at Eton, where he met Canning, and at Caius college, Cambridge. He en tered public service in the Foreign Office under Lord Grenville, and sat from to 1802 as M.P. for the close borough of West Looe in Cornwall. He and Canning were ardent supporters of Pitt, and contributors to the Anti-Jacobin. On Canning's removal to the Board of Trade in 1799 he succeeded him as under-secretary of State; in Oct. 1800 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Lisbon ; and in Sept. 1802 he was transferred to Madrid, where he remained for two years. He was made a member of the privy council in 1805; in 1807 he was appointed plenipotentiary at Berlin, but the mission was abandoned, and Frere was again sent to Spain in 1808 as plenipotentiary to the Central Junta. The condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and difficult one. When Napoleon began to ad vance on Madrid Frere wholeheartedly advised Sir John Moore not to retreat. After Corunna public 'opinion accused him of having endangered the army, and he was recalled Thus ended Frere's public life. In 1816 he married Elizabeth Jemima, dowager countess of Erroll, and in 1820, on account of her failing health, he went with her to the Mediterranean. There he finally settled in Malta, where he lived the rest of his life. He died at the Pieta Valetta on Jan. 7, 1846. Frere's literary reputation now rests entirely upon his spirited verse translations of Aristophanes, which remain in many ways unrivalled. The translations of The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds, and The Frogs were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847.
Frere's complete works were published in 1871, with a memoir by his nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere, and reached a second edition in 1874. See also Gabrielle Festing, J. II. Frere and his Friends (1899) .