James Frey (priest)
The books formed one of the foundations for the Frey-Grynaeum library in Basel, a building and collection established by the theology professor Johann Ludwig Frey, a great-grandson (1682-1759).These volumes include a Bible in Hebrew and Greek but also some quite surprising items for a Protestant minister: Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in a critical English edition, the early Latin epigrams of the Anglo-Catholic poet Richard Crashaw, John Selden's Marmora Arundelliana and Plato’s Menexenos with several pages of notes.He was longing to return to Britain but turned down a pressing offer to tutor the young semi-orphaned sons of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.In 1653, James Ussher fondly remembered the intellectual exchanges he enjoyed when “our Frey” was among the living (“commercium literarum, dum Freius noster in vivis versaretur”).Frey’s correspondence (University Library of Basel and Chatsworth House) shows that his linguistic skills included - beyond the usual theologian’s tools of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and possibly Arabic – fluent and idiomatic French, Italian and English.