Murray as provost of Eton, but the appointment was given to Sir Henry Wotton. Freeman unsuccessfully applied to Buckingham to be allowed to succeed Wotton at Venice. In 1626 and 1627 he was on a commission for the arrest of French ships and goods in England. In 1629 he held the office of auditor of imprests, after a dispute as to its possession with Sir Giles Monpesson, and soon afterwards became master worker of the mint at a salary of 500l. per annum. He was one of the first appointed in February 1635 to the newly created office of 'searcher and sealer' of all foreign hops imported into England. On the death of Sir Dudley Digges, Freeman bid high for the mastership of the rolls, which was taken by Sir Charles Cæsar. He appears to have retired into private life shortly afterwards, and to have lived to an advanced age. In 1655 he published 'Imperiale,' a tragedy which he had written many years before, and had 'never designed to the open world;' he was induced to publish it by ' the importunity of his friends, and to prevent a surreptitious publication intended from an erroneous copy.' This unauthorised edition to which he refers had appeared so far back as 1639. The tragedy met with the approval of Langbaine. Freeman also published two verse translations from Seneca, both of which are above the average, the first being the 'Booke of Consolation to Marcia' (1635), and the other the 'Booke of the Shortnes of Life' (2nd ed. 1663). At the last-given date Freeman was still alive, and must have been an old man. He has been erroneously confounded with another Sir Ralph Freeman who was lord mayor of London, and died on 16 March 1633–4.
[Rolls Ser. (Dom.) 1603–10, p. 475, 1611–18, pp. 197, 511, 1619–23, pp. 53, 93, 335, 569, 1623–5, pp. 56, 70, 1627–8, pp. 32, 181, 1628–9, pp. 141, 590, 1634–5, p. 524, 1636–7, p. 445, 1638–9, p. 622; Baker's Biographia Dramatica.]
FREEMAN, SAMUEL (1773–1857), engraver, worked chiefly in stipple, and is principally known as an engraver of portraits. Among these may be noted Samuel Johnson, after Bartolozzi, Garrick, and Henry Tresham, R.A., after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir R. K. Porter, and Miss L. E. Landon, after J. Wright (Freeman's original drawing from the portrait of Miss Landon is in the print room at the British Museum), Thomas Campbell, after Lawrence, Queen Victoria, after Miss Costello, and others. He engraved numerous portraits and other illustrations to the Rev. T. F. Dibdin's 'Northern Gallery,' &c. For Tresham's 'British Gallery' (1815) Freeman engraved the Stafford Gallery replica of Raphael's 'Vierge au Diademe.' He also engraved some of the plates for Jones's 'National Gallery,' and numerous portraits for Fisher's 'National Portrait Gallery.' For Dallaway's edition of Walpole's 'Anecdotes of Painting' he engraved 'The Marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou' from an ancient painting. He died on 27 Feb. 1857, aged 84.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Catalogue of Dyce Collection, South Kens. Mus.]
FREEMAN, THOMAS (fl. 1614), epigrammatist, a Gloucestershire man, 'of the same family of those of Batsford and Todenham, near to Morton-in-Marsh' (Wood, Athenæ) became a student of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1607, and took his degree of B.A. 10 June 1611 (Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 341). 'Retiring to the great city and setting up for a poet,' he published in 1614 a collection of epigrams in two parts, 4to, dedicated to Thomas, lord Windsor. 'Rvbbe and a Great Cast' is the title of the first part, and 'Rvnne and a Great Cast. The Second Bowle' of the second. It is a scarce and interesting volume. There are epigrams on Shakespeare, Daniel, Donne, Chapman, Thomas Heywood, and Owen, the epigrammatist; also an epitaph on Nashe. One of the pieces, 'Encomion Cornubiæ,' is reprinted in Ellis's 'Specimens,' 1811, iii. 113.
[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, ii. 155–7.]
FREEMAN, WILLIAM PEERE WILLIAMS (1742–1832), admiral. [See Williams-Freeman.]
FREIND, Sir JOHN (d. 1696), conspirator. [See Friend.]
FREIND, JOHN, M.D. (1675–1728), physician and politician, a younger brother of Robert Freind [q. v.], was born at Croton (or Croughton), near Brackley in Northamptonshire, of which place his father, William Freind, was rector. He was educated under Dr. Busby [q. v.] at Westminster, and thence, in 1694, was elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford. Here he attracted the special notice of Dean Aldrich [q. v.], who had so high an opinion of his scholarship that he appointed him one of the editors of a Greek and Latin edition of the two antagonistic orations of Æschines and Demosthenes (8vo, Oxford, 1696), which has been several times republished; and also to superintend a reprint of the Delphin edition of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' While at Christ Church he became acquainted with Atterbury [q. v.], who was then one of the tutors, and
