Sir John Fryer, 1st Baronet (14 September 1671 – 11 September 1726) was a prominent Presbyterian layman, London pewterer, merchant and Lord Mayor of London. The baronetcy became extinct on his death in 1726. He was created a baronet on 13 December 1714.
"The King was pleased to make me a Barronett & my patent was ordered accordingly it bears date
This favour was conferred on me for my fidelity to the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover & not laying down my Gown(?) when the Torie Ministry had made the Law against Occasional Conformity contrived on purpose to throw & exclude Dissenters out of Publick places."
Contents
Biography
Born in Buckinghamshire, the son of Francis Fryer, he believed his family came from Oxfordshire and his grandfather (known as Francis Freer) settled in Little Marlow settling in the dissolved nunnery there called The Abbey and renting a farm of 50 acres. John was the only surviving child of his father's third wife, Susannah, daughter of maltster John Boulter, twice mayor of Abingdon, county town of Berkshire. Susannah's marriage portion had been £100 but her mother's brother was rich London merchant and baronet Sir John Cutler and when Cutler's heirs died young his estates fell back to his sister's numerous Boulter children.
These estates included Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and Gawthorpe Hall and Harewood Castle near Leeds in Yorkshire, Little Haseley Oxfordshire, estates in Lincolnshire, the manor of Deptford near London, and estates in Hampshire Wherwell and Goodworth Clatford. Fryer was to receive Wherwell through his uncle Edmund Boulter, build a mansion there, Wherwell Priory, and make it his home. He was succeeded there by his Iremonger descendants.
John Fryer was a Pewterer by trade and (in his last few years so as to be eligible for the mayoralty) a member of the Fishmongers. He obtained election to Alderman of Queenhithe from 7 February 1710 retaining it until his death, and was created a baronet on 21 December 1714. He was a Sheriff of the City of London for 1715–16, and 386th Lord Mayor for 1720–21. The next year, he was Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. He was elected a director of the East India Company and the South Sea Company and inherited an estate at Wherwell, Hampshire.
He married three times. Katherine née Weedon died 12 November 1718 and Dorcas née Roberts 17 August 1723. He married thirdly Isabella Gerard on 11 March 1725 and she survived him.
In 1715 he began to enter in a small leather-bound ledger a note of the major events of his life making additions from time to time and he maintained this until near his end.
His only son who survived to adulthood, John Fryer by Katherine Weedon, died at Wherwell two years before him on 16 August 1724 aged 24. His daughter Delicia, by Dorcas Roberts, was adopted by Obadiah Hughes husband of her mother's sister, Delicia Roberts.
Sir John died in his 55th year of gout in the stomach at his seat at Wherwell on 11 September 1726 when the baronetcy became extinct. Presbyterian John Ball preached the funeral sermon. His widow married as his second wife, Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston, on 11 May 1738 at St Antholin, Budge Row.
Timeline
14 September 1671, "on a Thursday at 4 in the afternoon" – birth at Well End, Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Nephew of Edmund Boulter. "The house being the second from the lane which goeth up to a place called Flackwell Heath".
attended the Grammar School in the parish taught by Minister Mr Thomas Beesly. "a very solid preacher and a good liver".
10 June 1685, Whitsuntide – sent to London to be improved in writing and accounts so might be fitted to be apprenticed to some trade.
1 March 1686 – bound to Mr Harford a pewterer in Bishopsgate (next house to corner house of Cornhill) for seven years.
"naturally of a weak constitution & being the only surviving child my dear mother had not inured me to any hard labour &, which was worse, in my infancy I had been cured of a rupture & I found such carrying or burdens strained which part and did me much hurt . . . my master put me on doing the servile part of the trade . . . not commonly done by other apprentices."
1 March 1692/1693 – "my time expired". 21 March made free, (yeoman), of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers, and soon after of the Citty of London.
1 April 1693 – uncle Edmund Boulter lends him money to purchase some £300 worth of goods on his own account.
15 April 1693 – great-uncle Sir John Cutler dies.
7 April 1696 – first marriage by Mr Meriton at St Nicholas Acons, London to Katherine Weedon 1677–1718, daughter of Nathaniel Weedon, gentleman, previously tanner, of Denham Buckinghamshire.
18 June 1696 – liveryman of the Pewterers' Guild.
1703 – steward of the Pewterers' Guild.
Arms and crest
His coat of arms was Sable a chevron between three dolphins naiant Argent, a canton Ermine.
His crest was from a coronet Or, an heraldic antelope's head Argent, antlered and tusked, and tufted of the same.