Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/22

 2 a country where in the words of Sir James Mackintosh "anybody might be anything."

This heretic bishop Thomas Rundle, the diocesan of Derry, came from Devonshire, and is said to have been born at Milton Abbot about 1686. Members of his family had lived there and in the adjoining parish of Lamerton for several generations, but his father, also Thomas Rundle, was the son of a resident in Tavistock, the county town of those parishes. In 1691 he succeeded to the rectory of Whimple, a few miles from Exeter, and in 1697 was installed as prebendary of Exeter. The boy naturally went to the grammar-school of that city where the head-master was John Reynolds, whose portrait by his nephew Sir Joshua Reynolds hangs in the provost's lodge at Eton. When over 50 years old (1740) Rundle wrote to Alured Clarke, who had just been elevated to the deanery, that Exeter still continued the delight of his imagination. It was "by far the finest climate and most agreeable place of residence in England." He dwelt on "the variety of public walks round the town, the beauty of the landscapes, and the warmth of the air. The trees there shoot with a more luxuriant verdure, the flowers glow with warmer colours and the fruits ripen to a richer flavour . . . the fig and the grape scarce desire better skies." Had he lived in the twentieth century, he would have added to these praises the ease with which a resident within its walls can escape by rail or motor to sea or moor.

Like most other west-country youths, Rundle entered at Exeter college, Oxford, matriculating on 5 April, 1704. His technical description in the college was that of sojourner, and he remained there until 3 Dec. 1712 when he left with the degree of B.C.L. On 5th of July, 1723 he proceeded to the degree of LL.D. Thomas Rennell, another Devonian, and the bearer of a name which became famous among the leading preachers in the English church a