Freeman's Right Protective Association" for the protection of those privileges which remain, and to secure them from further innovation." The Essex Standard reported with approval the Association's meetings at the Cross Keys, for the Municipal Corporations Act was a Whig measure; and the Burgesses were exhorted to consider "the best plan for securing their property against further Whig spoliation." in July, 1840, the Free Burgesses petitioned Parliament for the restoration of their rights, but the power to elect the master remained with the Council.
At the same Council meeting one member had suggested that the School's curriculum should be broadened, and made to embrace commercial subjects in addition to the classics. A similar suggestion had been made by the Charity Commissioners, who averred that the School was not fulfilling its original purpose—the service of the municipality. The only part of the education offered to foundation boys that was really free was instruction in the classics, and that was no longer considered to constitute a useful education for the free scholars. In earlier centuries the classics had been recognised as the key to all learning, but the then growing cult of industrialism and commercialism called for an education on broader lines. The proposal was strongly opposed at the Council meeting, but the supporters of the "new education" did not allow the matter to drop. Finally the issue was forced to a conclusion in an unexpected and unusual manner. In September, 1842, Dunningham was prosecuted by William Wire, for an assault upon his son, a foundation scholar.
William Wire was one of the most remarkable figures in Colchester in the last century, and deserves a biography, which here cannot be given. By natural bent a scientific archaeologist, far in advance of his age, his occupation was that of a watchmaker, and later a postman. Despite his excellent antiquarian work Wire was frustrated at every turn by reason of the double disqualification of his Radical and Nonconformist opinions (E. J. Rudsdale, O.C., in Essex Review, January, 1947, No. 221), and this is nowhere so obvious as in the newspaper reports of the prosecution. Into the rights and wrongs of the case we need not enter. (The story told by Wire's son was refuted by Dunningham and his paying scholars, so that the case was dismissed.) What concern us are Wire's allegations relating to the management of the School: that his son, as the only free scholar, was made to sit on a different side of the schoolroom from the paying scholars, and received different instruction. As Wire often pointed out, the Statutes and Ordinances required the master to give preferential treatment in teaching to the free scholars—an order that obviously was not being obeyed then. These revelations (they were not denied by Dunningham) aroused once more the question of the School's use to the municipality (that is, to what extent it was fulfilling the intention of its founders), and those who wished the curriculum to be revised had a formidable leader in Wire. On November 4th, 1842, the Essex Standard
