Abraham Fraunce - Life

Life

A native of Shropshire, he was born between 1558 and 1560. His name appears in a list of pupils of Shrewsbury School in January 1571, and he joined St John's College, Cambridge, in 1576, becoming a fellow in 1580/1. His Latin comedy, Victoria, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, was probably written at Cambridge, where he remained until he had taken his M.A. degree in 1583. He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1588, and then apparently practiced as a barrister in the court of the Welsh marches.

After the death of his patron, Sidney, Fraunce was protected by Sidney's sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. His last work was published in 1592. According to the 19th-century antiquary Joseph Hunter in his Chorus Vatum, in 1633 Fraunce wrote an Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of Lady Magdalen Egerton, seventh daughter of the Earl of Bridgwater, in whose service he may have been; thus, it was long assumed that Fraunce died in or after 1633. More recent scholarship, however, places Fraunce's death in 1592 or 1593 and attributes the Cutler-Egerton epithalamium to Abraham Darcie.

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