Some Account iv
Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton,
in Devonshire, 16th July 1723, the son of
Samuel Reynolds and Theophila Potter.
He was on every side connected with the
Church, for both his father and grandfather
were in holy orders, his mother was the
daughter of a clergyman, and his maternal
grandmother the daughter of the Rev. Mr.
Baker, an eminent mathematician in the last
century, of whom we have an account in the
Biographia Britannica. His father's
elder brother, John, was also a clergyman,
a Fellow of Eton College, and Canon of St.
Peter's, Exeter.1
Mr. Samuel Reynolds taught the grammar-
school of Plympton, which could have
1 This gentleman, who died in 1738, left his library, and the greater part of his fortune, to Exeter College in Oxford. — There ; is amezzotinto print of him, scraped by M’Ardell, (from a portrait painted by his nephew, now in Eton College,) which has erroneously been supposed to represent the father of the painter. See Bromley’s Cata- logue of Engraved British Portraits, 4to. 1792, p. 280.