[1] He entered public service in the foreign office under Lord Grenville, and sat from 1796 to 1802 as Member of Parliament for the borough of West Looe in Cornwall.

He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with Spanish Prime Minister Godoy, but the ministry showed its approval of his action with a pension of £1,700 a year.

After the disastrous retreat to A Coruña, the public accused Frere of having endangered the British army; though no direct censure was passed upon his conduct by the government, he was recalled, and Marquess Wellesley was appointed in his place.

The translations of The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds, and The Frogs were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by George Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847.

In 1817, he published a mock-heroic Arthurian poem, Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work [pl], by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers,.

[3] William Tennant in Anster Fair used the ottava rima for semi-burlesque poetry five years earlier, but Frere's experiment is interesting because Byron borrowed it in Don Juan.