FREDERICK, Charles (1709-85), of Hammersmith, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1741 - 1754
1754 - 1784

Family and Education

b. 21 Dec. 1709, 3rd s. of Sir Thomas Frederick, gov. of Fort St. David, Madras and director of South Sea Co., by Mary, da. of William Moncrieff; bro. of John and Thomas Frederick. educ. Westminster 1719-20; New Coll. Oxf. 1725; M. Temple 1728; Grand Tour with his bro. John (Italy, Constantinople, Near East, France) 1737-9. m. 18 Aug. 1746, Lucy, da. of Hugh Boscawen, 1st Visct. Falmouth, 4s. 2da. K.B. 23 Mar. 1761.

Offices Held

Clerk of deliveries in the Ordnance 1746-50; surveyor gen. of the Ordnance 1750-82.

Biography

Charles Frederick, an eminent antiquary, director of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736 and 1740, succeeded his brother John as Member for Shoreham in 1741, voting consistently with the Administration. In 1746 he was appointed to a place in the Ordnance, starting a 36 years’ connexion with that office. Frances Boscawen, writing to her husband the Admiral, describes Frederick and his wife, the Admiral’s sister, in 1748:

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick are in Berkeley Square — he the busiest, she the idlest, mortal living. He is in the Green Park from 8 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, has an office built there for him. The rest of the day he gives audiences and worries his spirits and his person till ’tis reduced to a shadow.1

Horace Walpole wrote to Henry Seymour Conway, 6 Oct. 1748:

Charles Frederick has turned all his virtu into fireworks, and, by his influence at the Ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music ... I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking to himself still hoarser on the superiority that his fireworks will have over the Roman naumachia.

He died 18 Dec. 1785.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: A. N. Newman

Notes

  • 1. C. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral's Wife, 123.