Henry Cole's handwriting

" When I left school and for years afterwards I looked back upon it as a place where all my time had been wasted, and where I had learnt worse than nothing .... I spelt badly, read stammeringly, wrote well.    I could repeat a few Latin scraps and this certainly helped me to copy the mediaeval Latin jargon of the public records when that became my occupation. 

I took off my Tudor dress on the 9th April 1823 and on the 10th presented myself in an Oxford mixture suit with tailed coat at Mr. Cohen's office."

Henry Cole won a silver medal for his writing while at Christ's Hospital.  Mr Cohen (who became Sir Francis Palgrave) employed Henry and two fellow former pupils to copy out old documents so that they could be prepared for publication by the Record Commission.

Sir Henry Cole:  quotations sourced from King Cole by E. Bonython