Rector Prideaux and his College

This chapter focuses on Exeter College, its social structure, its teaching regime, and its management by Prideaux. Under his governance the number of its undergraduates rose, thanks largely to his reputation not only as an outstanding teacher but also as a sound evangelical Protestant, and for this reason a head of house with a special appeal to the sons of the leading puritan families of Devon and Cornwall. The undergraduate body was a hierarchical one headed by the sons of the nobility. Their attraction to the College and Prideaux’s skill in appointing dedicated and conscientious tutors were both marks of his success as rector. The chapter compares Exeter’s financial position with that of other colleges and concludes by exemplifying and emphasising Prideaux’s ‘hands-on’ style of management, involved, as he was, in every aspect of College life. His role as an educator, unduly neglected in the past, deserves to be given almost as much prominence as his role as a theologian and church politician.