Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/129

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Rogers
123
Rogers

stood to be his work: ‘Religious Movement in Germany’ (Edinburgh Review, January 1846), ‘Marriage with the Sister of a Deceased Wife’ (ib. April 1853), ‘Macaulay's Speeches’ (ib. October 1854), ‘Servetus and Calvin’ (Brit. Quarterly Review, May 1849), ‘Systematic Theology’ (ib. January 1866), ‘Nonconformity in Lancashire’ (ib. July 1869).

Rogers's portrait and a memoir by R. W. Dale are prefixed to the eighth edition of the ‘Superhuman Origin of the Bible,’ 1893, 8vo.

[Dale's Memoir above mentioned; Macvey Napier's Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, 1879; Evangel. Mag. 1877, vii. 599; Congregational Yearbook, 1878, p. 347.]

J. M. R.

ROGERS, ISAAC (1754–1839), watchmaker, son of Isaac Rogers, Levant merchant and watchmaker, was born in White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street, on 13 Aug. 1754. His father did a good trade in watches in foreign markets, and a specimen of his work is in the British Museum. Educated at Dr. Milner's school, Peckham, the son was apprenticed, and in 1776 succeeded, to his father's business at 4 White Hart Court. On 2 Sept. 1776 he was admitted to the freedom of the Clockmakers' Company by patrimony, and on 11 Jan. 1790 became a liveryman, on 9 Oct. 1809 a member of the court of assistants, in 1823 warden, and on 29 Sept. 1824 master. In 1802 he moved his business to 24 Little Bell Alley, Coleman Street. He was also a member of the Levant Company, and carried on an extensive trade with Turkey, Smyrna, Philadelphia, and the West Indies. He designed and constructed two regulators—one with a mercurial pendulum, and the other with a gridiron pendulum. One of the projectors of a society for the improvement of naval architecture, he became treasurer of the society in 1799. He was much interested in the promotion of methods of lighting the streets with gas, and on the establishment of the Imperial Gas Company in 1818 was elected one of the directors and subsequently chairman of the board. In conjunction with Henry Clarke and George Atkins, he devised a permanent accumulation fund as a means of restoring the finances of the Clockmakers' Company. He died in December 1839. His portrait is in the company's collection in the Guildhall Library.

[E. J. Wood's Curiosities of Clocks and Watches, p. 348; Britten's Former Clock and Watch Makers, p. 372; Atkins and Overall's Account of the Company of Clockmakers, pp. 83, 88, 89, 143, 173, 185, 215, 282.]

W. A. S. H.

ROGERS, JAMES EDWIN THOROLD (1823–1890), political economist, eleventh son of George Vining Rogers, was born at West Meon, Hampshire, in 1823. Educated first at Southampton and King's College, London, he matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 9 March 1843, graduated B.A. with a first class in lit. hum. in 1846, and proceeded M.A. in 1849. An ardent high-churchman, he was ordained shortly after taking his degree, and became curate of St. Paul's, Oxford. In 1856 he also acted voluntarily as assistant curate at Headington, near Oxford. He threw himself into parochial work with energy; but, losing sympathy with the tractarian movement after 1860, he resolved to abandon the clerical profession. He was subsequently instrumental in obtaining the Clerical Disabilities Relief Act, by which clergymen could resign their orders. Of this act he was the first to avail himself (10 Aug. 1870).

On graduating Rogers had settled in Oxford, and, while still engaged in clerical work, had made some reputation as a successful private tutor in classics and philosophy. In 1859 he published an ‘Introductory Lecture to the Logic of Aristotle,’ and in 1865 an edition of the Nicomachean Ethics. He was long engaged on a ‘Dictionary to Aristotle,’ which he abandoned in 1860 on the refusal of the university press to bear the expense of printing it; the manuscript is now at Worcester College, Oxford. Later contributions to classical literature were a translation of Euripides' ‘Bacchæ’ into English verse in 1872, and some ‘Verse Epistles, Satires, and Epigrams’ imitated from Horace and Juvenal in 1876. He was examiner in the final classical school in 1857 and 1858, and in classical moderations in 1861 and 1862. In the administrative work of the university he took a large share; but he severely criticised the professorial system and the distribution of endowments in ‘Education in Oxford: its Methods, its Aids, and its Rewards,’ 1861. In later life, while advocating the admission of women to the examinations and the revival of non-collegiate membership of the university, he disapproved of the official recognition by the university of English literature and other subjects of study which had previously lain outside the curriculum. From an early period Rogers devoted much of his leisure to the study of political economy, and in 1859 he was elected first Tooke professor of statistics and economic science at King's College, London. This office he held till his death, besides acting for some years as examiner in political economy at the university of London. In 1860