William Frend (social Reformer) - at Cambridge

At Cambridge

On his return home he expressed a wish to enter the church, and on the recommendation of Archbishop John Moore he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, on 18 December 1775, where William Paley was one of the college tutors. After gaining various college prizes he took the degree of B.A. in 1780, being second wrangler and Smith's prizeman. Having gained the notice of Lynford Caryl, he migrated to Jesus College where Caryl was Master, becoming a Fellow and tutor there in 1781.

At the end of 1780 he was admitted deacon in the church of England, and advanced to the priesthood in 1783, when he was presented to the living of Madingley, near Cambridge, where he officiated zealously until June 1787. During this period of his life the post of tutor to the Archduke Alexander of Russia was offered to him, but he declined it.

In 1787 Frend left the Church of England, in which he had been ordained, to become a Unitarian. He published his ‘Address to the Inhabitants of Cambridge’ in favour of his new creed, and he supported vigorously in the grace introduced into the senate house on 11 December 1787 for doing away with subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles on taking the degree of M.A. He was removed by Richard Beadon from the office of tutor by an order dated 27 September 1788, and his appeal was dismissed by the visitor, the Bishop of Ely, by a decree dated 29 December 1788.

He took, in company with an old schoolfellow called Richard Tylden, a lengthy tour in France, the Low Countries, Germany, and Switzerland. When he returned home he resumed the study of Hebrew. Joseph Priestley devised in 1789 a plan for a new translation of the scriptures, with Frend, Michael Dodson and Theophilus Lindsey; and through 1790 Frend was engaged on translating the historical books of the Old Testament. He also became close to the Baptist Robert Robinson, who died in 1790, and he corrected Robinson's posthumous volume of Ecclesiastical Researches.