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 mount influence over his parishioners, and was equally beloved and respected by them. He died at Mixbury on 28 Sept. 1853, aged 75. He had five sons besides Roundell, and five daughters. The eldest son, William, eventually seceded to the Roman church [see ,1811–1879)]; the fourth son, Henry Roundell, entered the East India Company's marine service, and was lost at sea in 1835; the fifth, George Horsley, succeeded his father as rector of Mixbury; while Edwin, the youngest, became archdeacon of Oxford in 1878.

After two years (1824–5) at Rugby, Roundell was transferred to Winchester College, of which Dr. Gabell was then headmaster, in the autumn of 1825. There he had for contemporaries Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) [q. v.]; Edward (afterwards Lord) Cardwell [q. v.]; Anthony Trollope [q. v.]; William Monsell (now Lord Emly); and William George Ward [q. v.] After gaining his full share of school laurels, he matriculated on 3 May 1830 from Christ Church, Oxford. His academic course was brilliant in the extreme. Besides an open scholarship at Trinity College (1830), he gained in 1831 the chancellor's prize for Latin verse (subject, ‘Numantia’), and in 1832 both the Ireland Greek scholarship and the Newdigate prize, with a poem on ‘Staffa.’ The latter, written, as the conditions required, in the metre of Pope, exhibited occasionally the influence of Wordsworth. In 1834 Palmer won a first-class in the classical schools and the Eldon law scholarship, and in 1835 a Magdalen fellowship and the chancellor's Latin essay prize (subject, ‘De Jure Clientelæ apud Romanos’). He graduated B.A. in 1834 and M.A. in 1836. He also distinguished himself on the tory side in the debates of the Union Society, and in the autumn of 1833 formed, with several friends, including W. G. Ward, Archibald Campbell Tait [q. v.] afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, John Wickens [q. v.] and George Mellish [q. v.] (both subsequently judges), a separate society called the ‘Rambler’ club. This society came into being as a protest against the election of Edward Massie (1806–1893), a graduate of Wadham and Ireland scholar, as president of the Union. An animated debate followed in the Union on the momentous question whether the Ramblers should be permitted to retain their membership of the parent society, and that oratorical contest was the occasion of the spirited mock Homeric Greek poem, ‘Uniomachia’ [see, 1812–1886]. With Tait and three other undergraduates, Palmer spent the long vacation of 1833 at Seaton in Devonshire. The young visitors impressed the imagination of a local bard (the Rev. J. B. Smith, a dissenting minister), who referred to them in a published effusion entitled ‘Seaton Beach’ (London and Exeter, 1835), auguring, with singularly happy presage, that Tait ‘a mitred prelate’ might ‘hereafter shine,’ while Palmer might ‘win deserved applause’ as ‘an ermined judge.’ The poet, who had noticed Palmer's zeal in collecting rare pebbles on the seashore, also credited him with an ambition to explore ‘nature's laws.’ This estimate was fully justified by Palmer's habit through life of seeking relaxation from professional work in a study of many branches of natural history, and especially of botany.

A high-churchman from the first, he took at this time a keen interest, but no active part, in the ecclesiastical controversies which had already begun to agitate the university. Of the friends whom he had made as an undergraduate, those with whom he was most closely associated in after years were Thomas Legh Claughton (afterwards bishop of St. Albans), Charles Wordsworth (afterwards bishop of St. Andrews), and John Wickens. During his later career at the university he formed intimate relations with Frederick William Faber [q. v.] (afterwards superior of the London Oratory), and his early predilections for theological discussion were thereby stimulated. But science and literature always shared with theology his intellectual interests. From Charles Wordsworth he learned—and Faber learned from him—to study and appreciate the poetry of William Wordsworth, and he watched with admiration the development of Tennyson, who was his friend and neighbour when he subsequently settled at Blackmoor, and who dedicated ‘Becket’ to him in 1884.

But the study and practice of law were to be the business of Palmer's life. In November 1834 he entered the chambers of the eminent conveyancer William Henry Booth; and on 9 June 1837 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, of which on 23 April 1849 he was elected a bencher, and in 1864 treasurer. While waiting for briefs he contributed to the ‘British Critic,’ but only on colourless topics, such as Greek grammar (see British Critic, October 1840), and he maintained his connection with the university in other ways. In the contest for the poetry chair in 1842, which the narrow ecclesiastical spirit of the time converted into a party question, he actively supported the ‘Tractarian’ candidate, Isaac Williams; and on the suspension of Dr. Pusey, on 2 June 1843, for preaching a sermon on the mystery of the holy eucharist, which was censured