FRITH or FRYTH, John (cir. 1503-1533), an eminent pioneer of the Reformation in England, was born about the beginning of the 16th century at Westerham, Kent, where his father kept an inn. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards at King’s College, Cambridge, where Gardiner, who subsequently became bishop of Winchester, was his tutor. Immediately after taking his B.A. degree, he transferred his residence (December 1525) to the newly founded college of St Frideswide or Cardinal College (now Christ Church), Oxford, whither, along with other young men of distinguished talent, he had been invited by Wolsey. At Oxford the sympathetic interest which he showed in the Reformation movement in Germany soon caused him to be suspected as a heretic, and led to his imprisonment for some months. On being at the instance of Wolsey released from confinement, towards the close of 1526 or early in 1527, ho fled to the Continent, where he appears to have resided chiefly at the newly founded Protestant university of Marburg, and to have been associated with Tyndal in many of the literary labours of the latter. At Marburg he became acquainted with several scholars and Reformers of note, and particularly with the famous Patrick Hamilton. Frith’s first publication in fact was a translation of Hamilton’s Places, made shortly after the martyrdom of their author; and soon afterwards the Revelation of Antichrist, a translation from the German, appeared, along with A Pistle to the Christen Reader, by “Richard Bright wall” (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 ...

FRITZLAR, a town formerly of Electoral Hesse and now of Prussia, at the head of a circle in the district of Cassel, about 16 miles S.S.W. of Cassel, on the left bank of the Eder, a left-hand sub-tributary of the Weser. It is an old-fashioned place still surrounded with watchtowers, and it possesses a large number of churches, an Ursuline nunnery, and an old Franciscan monastery, now partly used as a Protestant church and partly as a poorhouse. Its inhabitants, who according to the census of 1875 numbered 2965, are mainly engaged in agriculture, but also manufacture considerable quantities of earthenware. As early as 732 Boniface, the apostle of Germany, established the church of St Peter’s 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 Megingoz, bishop of Würzburg. 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, or Bürberge, which had been founded by Boniface in 741. At the diet of Fritzlar in 919 Henry I. was elected by the Franks and Saxons. 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 storm 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 ...