via France. On 12 October 1703 he registered as a student at The Scots College. He would have been studying for the Catholic priesthood but had second thoughts. By the end of 1704 he was studying architecture under Carlo Fontana; he was also taught by Pietro Francesco Garroli, professor of perspective at the Accademia di San Luca. While in Rome Gibbs met John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont who attempted to persuade him to move to Ireland. He moved to London in November 1708; his return to Britain was probably due to the terminal illness of his half-brother William, who died before James reached Britain. Career Still intending to take up the offer of work in Ireland, he had been befriended by John Erskine, Earl of Mar, while abroad. The Earl persuaded Gibbs to remain in London, offering him his first commission, alterations to his house in Whitehall. Around this time he met Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, who would be a powerful patron and friend (Gibbs would later remodel the Earl's house Wimpole Hall) and James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (for whom he would be one of the architects to work at Cannons from 1715 to 1719). Gibbs was one of the sixty founder members of Godfrey Kneller's Academy of Painting, founded in 1711. In August 1713 Gibbs discovered that William Dickinson was resigning as architect from the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches; the commissioners included Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Thomas Archer. With the backing of, amongst others, the Earl of Mar and Sir Christopher Wren, Gibbs was appointed architect to the commission on 18 November 1713, where he would have worked with Nicholas Hawksmoor, his fellow architect to the commission. But a combination of events would ensure Gibbs was deprived of his place as architect to the commission by December 1715: Queen Anne had died and a Whig government had replaced the Tories; and the failure of the 1715 Jacobite rising that was supported by the Earl of Mar were all factors. Still he was able to complete one church, St Mary-le-Strand, that he described as "the first publick (sic) building I was employed in after my arrival from Italy; which being situated in a very publick place, the Commissioners... spar'd no cost to beautify". On 18 December 1716 Gibbs joined the "Vandykes clubb" (sic), also called the Club