Randall Davidson - Background and Education

Background and Education

Davidson was the son of Henry Davidson, a grain merchant, of Edinburgh and Henrietta, daughter of John Campbell Swinton of Kimmerghame; his parents were Scottish Presbyterians. His education was mostly in small private schools that he later described as unsatisfactory and long lamented his lack of proficiency in Latin and Greek. Later he studied at Harrow, where Brooke Westcott was his final year housemaster, and Trinity College, Oxford. In his final year of schooling he was involved in a shooting accident that threatened the loss of his leg. According to his own account, it was only much later in his life, after the discovery and use of X-ray technology, that it was found that he had a considerable number of shot gun pellets still in his body. The accident left him with a hernia and he was a lifelong truss wearer, this caused him continuous difficulty as the hernia regularly dropped, especially when he was preaching.