Richard Roundell, son of Danson Roundell, was baptized at Manton in Yorkshire on 5th March, 1740, and matriculated from University College, Oxford, on 26th March, 1760 - according to records he was aged eighteen - and was Batchelor of Arts in 1763. A painting by John Hamilton Mortimer shows Roundell with three of his undergraduate friends. College spires on the horizon, they sit near the Thames beside a folly overgrown with vine; two glasses lie empty on a table beside a half-full decanter of wine ...

Richard Roundell enroled as a student of Lincoln's Inn on 16th November, 1765, but was not called to the Bar, dying unmarried in Manton on 11th February, 1772