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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Frost, John (1626?-1656)

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1047941Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 20 — Frost, John (1626?-1656)1889Gordon Goodwin

FROST, JOHN (1626?–1656), nonconformist divine, born at Langham, Suffolk, in or about 1626, was the eldest son of John Frost, rector of Fakenham in the same county. After attending schools at Thetford, Norfolk, and Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, he was admitted pensioner of St. John's College, Cambridge, 21 Feb. 1641–2, and fellow soon after taking his B.A. degree (Mayor, Admissions to St. John's Coll. Cambr. pt. i. p. 62). He bore an active part in the educational work of the college as lecturer on logic and philosophy. In 1654 he began to preach regularly at St. Benedict's, Cambridge, and elsewhere in the town and county. He proceeded B.D. in the summer of 1656. A few months later he was invited to become ‘pastor’ of St. Olave's, Hart Street, London, but was cut off by small-pox, 2 Nov. 1656 (Zachary Crofton, Funeral Sermon, 1657). To his ‘Select Sermons,’ fol., Cambridge, 1657 (with a new title-page, 1658), is prefixed his portrait at the age of thirty-one, by R. Vaughan.

[Brook's Puritans, iii. 291–3; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd ed., iii. 46.]