For some years this great Parkins was a familiar friend of Henry Fauntleroy. “I have been looking out for you in town these three or four days,” the banker writes to him in May 1816, “as we have a dance this evening, and lots of pretty girls, and I know you are an admirer of them.” However, just after the arrest, the ex-Sheriff suspected his former associate unjustly of a breach of faith, and thus became his most deadly enemy, placing his intimate knowledge of his friend’s habits at the service of the hostile press. In order to exhibit the bankers depravity, he published a communication from the fair but frail Corinthian Kate, known in real life as ‘Mother Bang’ but the context chiefly serves to indicate that Parkins treasured a grudge because his friend had never introduced him to the lady. Even after the criminal had received sentence his animosity did not cease. “The penalty for forgery should be the gallows,” he declared at a meeting of the Berners Street creditors, “until the law discovered a worse punishment.” When the only son of the condemned man, a youth of fifteen, wrote to the papers, pleading that mercy should be shown to his father, the vindictive ex-Sheriff declared in the columns of the _Morning Chronicle_ (as it proved, falsely) that the boy was not the author of the appeal. Nor did he scruple to print private letters from Mrs Fauntleroy to her husband in order to show that she was an ill-used wife. Great indulgence was shown to the banker--for a forger always was treated with lenience--during his term of imprisonment at the Old Bailey. The same consideration--which aroused the ire of Parkins to boiling point--had been paid to him while he was under the care of Mr Vickery, ex-Bow Street runner, at that time the Governor of Coldbath Fields bridewell. On this account there arose a very pretty quarrel, at which, of course, the newspapers assisted, between John Edward Conant of Marlborough Street and an elderly magistrate of Hammersmith named John Hanson. The latter was accused of intruding into Fauntleroy’s room at the House of Correction, when the following conversation is said to have taken place: “You are the banker from Berners Street, aren’t you?” demanded the visitor. “Yes, I am that unfortunate person, sir,” answered the prisoner. “Oh, then you’d better look to your soul,” was the reply. “Look to your Bible. Read your Bible.” Although poor old Hanson, who was struck off the list of visiting justices in consequence of his officiousness, made many earnest protests that he had been misrepresented, and although Fauntleroy acquitted him of all intent to offend, it would appear that his observations were superfluous, whatever their precise form.