William Frend (social Reformer) - Associations, Influence and Views

Associations, Influence and Views

Among Frend's pupils were Edward Daniel Clarke, Ada Lovelace, John Singleton Copley, and Robert Malthus; he was himself the last of ‘the learned anti-Newtonians and a noted oppugner of all that distinguishes Algebra from Arithmetic.’ In Cambridge the leading intellectual dissenters formed a circle including George Dyer, Benjamin Flower, Robert Hall and Robert Tyrwhitt, as well as Frend and Robert Robinson.

A Unitarian and a Whig by conviction, reformers such as Francis Burdett and John Horne Tooke were his friends, and he maintained an active correspondence with the main supporters of radicalism. Francis Place acknowledged an intellectual debt to Frend. Frend's Unitarian network, as well as the group round Priestley, included James Gifford the elder and Robert Hibbert. When it came to Godwin, Frend like others had difficulties with his atheism.

He was frequently consulted by Palmer in support of his claim for a public grant for his services in improving the transmission of letters. Frend thought that the rate of postage should be reduced to a fixed charge of 2d. or 1d., and drew up a statement to that effect which reached a member of Robert Peel's cabinet, but nothing came of it at that time.