Thomas Secker - Tewkesbury Academy and Samuel Jones

Tewkesbury Academy and Samuel Jones

Also boarding at Bowes's house was Isaac Watts, who encouraged Secker to attend the dissenting academy at Gloucester, set up by Samuel Jones. There Secker recovered his ability at languages, supplementing his understanding of Greek and Latin with studies in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. Jones's course was also famous for his systems of Jewish antiquities and logic; maths was similarly studied to a higher than usual level.

Also at Jones's academy contemporaneously with Secker were the later Church of England bishops Joseph Butler and Isaac Maddox, and John Bowes; other luminaries included the future dissenting leaders Samuel Chandler, Jeremiah Jones, and Vavasour Griffiths. In 1713, Jones moved his academy to larger premises in Tewkesbury, partly financed by £200 from Secker. But Secker soon became involved with the clandestine correspondence between Butler and Church of England minister Samuel Clarke concerning Clarke's A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705). Secker's role was to deliver Butler's letters personally to Gloucester post office and to pick up Clarke's replies. Meanwhile, Jones had acquired a reputation as a heavy drinker, and the standard of his teaching may have decreased. Both Butler and Secker left his academy shortly afterwards, Butler in February 1714 and Secker in June of the same year.

He studied medicine in London, Paris and Leiden, receiving his MD degree at Leiden in 1721. Having decided to take orders he graduated, by special letters from the chancellor, at Exeter College, Oxford, and was ordained in 1722.