From the preface: "With the approach of the tercentenary of Blundell's School it was suggested that the Lives of certain Worthies collected in a volume would prove of more than local interest. The work grew under my hands. And then misgivings arose. I remembered a saying of Ruskin to the effect that the gathering of one man's work into a mass enforces his failings in sickening reiteration, while it levels his merits (if any) in monotony. But the idea was not to be dropped; variety was gained by enlisting the kind and ready help of a few friends; subjects were assigned to them on which each could be trusted to write with special interest and authority, and to all of them I tender my most sincere thanks.

'Your promises were like Adonis' gardens, That one day bloomed, and fruitful were the next.'

There are many names whose connection with Blundell's rests on rumour, or legend; the Impeys, for instance, and Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats, a son of the irascible pedagogue of that name. Down to the middle of the last century there had floated a story that Sir Richard was a home boarder in his fathers house; unluckily, facts were too strong for this theory, as the boy was already at sea when Dr. Keats came to Tiverton".