There is an absurd mistake in Gunning's[446] _Reminiscences of Cambridge_. In quoting a passage of Mr. Frend's pamphlet, which was very obnoxious to the existing Government, it is printed that the poor market-women complained that they were to be _scotched_ a quarter of their wages by taxation; and attention is called to the word by its being three times printed in italics. In the pamphlet it is "sconced"; that very common old word for fined or mulcted.
Lord Lyndhurst,[447] who has [1863] just passed away under a load of years and honors, was Mr. Frend's private pupil at Cambridge. At the time of the celebrated trial, he and two others amused themselves, and vented the feeling which was very strong among the undergraduates, by chalking the walls of Cambridge with "Frend for ever!" While thus engaged in what, using the term legally, we are probably to call his first publication, he and his friends were surprised by the proctors. Flight and chase followed of course: Copley and one of the others, Serjeant Rough,[448] escaped: the { 199} third, whose name I forget, but who afterwards, I have been told was a bishop,[449] being lame, was captured and impositioned. Looking at the Cambridge Calendar to verify the fact that Copley was an undergraduate at the time, I find that there are but two other men in the list of honors of his year whose names are now widely remembered. And they were both celebrated schoolmasters; Butler[450] of Harrow, and Tate[451] of Richmond.
But Mr. Frend had another noted pupil. I once had a conversation with a very remarkable man, who was generally called "Place,[452] the tailor," but who was politician, political economist, etc., etc. He sat in the room above his shop--he was then a thriving master tailor at Charing Cross--surrounded by books enough for nine, to shame a proverb. The blue books alone, cut up into strips, would have measured Great Britain for oh-no-we-never-mention-'ems, the Highlands included. I cannot find a biography of this worthy and able man. I happened to mention William Frend, and he said, "Ah! my old master, as I always call him. Many and many a time, and year after year, did he come in every { 200} now and then to give me instruction, while I was sitting on the board, working for my living, you know."