Editing Thomas Secker (section)

==Early life and studies==
Secker was born in [[Sibthorpe]], Nottinghamshire. In 1699, he went to Richard Brown's [[Free education|free school]] in [[Chesterfield, Derbyshire|Chesterfield]], [[Derbyshire]], staying with his half-sister and her husband, Elizabeth and Richard Milnes. According to a story in the ''[[Gentleman's Magazine]]'' for 1768, Brown congratulated Secker for his successful studies by remarking, "If thou wouldst but come over to the Church, I am sure thou wouldst be a bishop."<ref>{{cite magazine |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=An Authentic Account of the Life of the late Archbishop of Canterbury |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015020066547 |magazine=[[Gentleman's Magazine]] |volume=38 |page=451 |date=October 1768 |access-date=30 April 2023}}</ref> Under Brown's teaching, Secker believed that he had attained a competency in Greek and Latin.

He attended [[Timothy Jollie]]'s [[dissenting academies|dissenting academy]] at [[Attercliffe]] in [[Sheffield]] from 1708, but was frustrated by Jollie's poor teaching, famously remarking that he lost his knowledge of languages and that "only the old Philosophy of the Schools was taught there: and that neither ably nor diligently. The morals also of many of the young Men were bad. I spent my time there idly & ill".<ref>Manuscript autobiography</ref> He left after one and a half years.

In 1710, he moved to London, staying in the house of the father of [[John Bowes, 1st Baron Bowes|John Bowes]], who had been one of Jollie's students and would one day become [[Lord Chancellor of Ireland]]. Whilst here, he studied geometry, conic sections, algebra, French, and [[John Locke]]'s ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]''.