FRESCHEVILLE, John (1606-1682), of Staveley, Derbys. and the Middle Temple

It was doubtless Sir William Cavendish I* who arranged Frescheville’s first marriage to a cousin of his wife’s and, as 2nd earl of Devonshire and lord lieutenant, approved his return for Derbyshire to the third Caroline Parliament while Frescheville was still at the Middle Temple. MTR, 748. On 21 Apr. 1628 Frescheville was appointed to the committee for Devonshire’s land bill, CD 1628, iii. 3. but he received no further mentions in the parliamentary records. His second marriage was to a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. On 27 Apr. 1630 the king wrote to Sir Peter Frescheville to inform him of his son’s marriage, suggesting it had been contracted without his father’s consent. Charles I paid tribute to the bride’s ‘duty, modesty, and virtue ... as she may rightly be esteemed an example to others’. Madan, 217. However, Frescheville’s kinsman Gervase Holles said she ‘brought him no portion but Court legacies: pride, passion and prodigalities ... she has lost him £500 in cards in one night. But now they say she gains by it, having got the knack of game (as gamesters call it) but others call it cheating’. G. Holles, Mems. of Holles Fam. ed. A.C Wood (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lv), 162. Nevertheless the marriage strengthened his Court connections and eventually brought him office. He was one of the first to raise forces for the king in 1642 and was wounded at the first battle of Newbury, although Holles says he was only bruised by a spent bullet. Madan, 215; Holles, 161. He was able to compound for the relatively modest sum of £287 10s.4d. by surrendering the tithes of Holmesfield chapel valued at £30 per annum. CCC, 1048. He resumed the representation of Derbyshire in the Cavalier Parliament until a long-awaited peerage ended his Commons career. The last of his family, he made his will on 9 Jan. 1682, adding codicils a day latter and three days before he died. PROB 11/371, f. 351. He died at London at four in the morning and was buried at Staveley on 9 Apr. 1682 where a ‘handsome’ monument was erected to his memory. ‘He was a great courtier, an expert soldier, and a good commonwealth’s man, to which may be added his hospitality and charity.’ Madan, 213, 217-16.