Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/151

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cluding funeral sermons for Robert Linager (1682), Anthony Dunswell (1692), Edmund Hill (1692), Edward Rede (1694), M. Hasselborn (1696), and Elizabeth Dunton (1697): 1. ‘Practical Discourses on Sickness and Recovery,’ &c., 1690, 8vo. 2. ‘A Discourse concerning … the Disease of Melancholy; in three parts,’ &c., 1691, 8vo; 2nd ed. 1706, 8vo; 3rd ed. 1808, 12mo (with life by Walter Wilson). He prefaced the ‘Works’ of Thomas Gouge (1665?–1700) [q. v.]

[Life by Wilson, 1808; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 321; Dunton's Life and Errors, ed. Nichols; information from W. Innes Addison, esq., assistant clerk of Senate, Glasgow; extract from burial register of Wantage parish.]

A. G.

ROGERS, WILLIAM (fl. 1580–1610), engraver, was the first Englishman who is known to have practised copperplate engraving. It is not known where he studied the art, but it was probably in the school of the Wierix family at Antwerp. That Rogers was an Englishman is shown by his signing one of his engravings ‘Anglus et Civis Lond.’ He engraved some portraits of Queen Elizabeth, which are very scarce. Of one of them, a full-length portrait in royal robes, only one impression in its complete state is known; this is now in the print-room at the British Museum. Another portrait, with allegorical figures, is signed and dated 1589, and another bears the inscription ‘Rosa Electa.’ Rogers also engraved the large picture of Henry VIII and his family attributed to Lucas de Heere, now at Sudeley Castle. Of this print only three impressions are known. Rogers engraved numerous portraits, title-pages, and illustrations for books, among these being the titles to Linschoten's ‘Discours of Voyages into ye Easte and West Indies,’ 1596, and to Sir John Harington's translation of Ariosto's ‘Orlando Furioso’ (1591), the cuts in Broughton's ‘Concert of Scripture,’ 1596, and the portraits in Segar's ‘Honor, Military and Civile’ (1602), and Milles's ‘Catalogue of Honour, or Treasury of True Nobility’ (1610).

Rogers's work shows him to have been a trained artist in the art of engraving. He is mentioned by Francis Meres [q. v.] in his ‘Palladis Tamia,’ 1598: ‘As Lysippus, Praxiteles, and Pyrgoteles were excellent engravers, so have we these engravers: Rogers, Christopher Switzer, and Cure.’

[Walpole's Anecd. of Painting (ed. Wornum); O'Donoghue's Cat. of Portraits of Queen Elizabeth; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved British Portraits; Lowndes's Bibl. Man.; Strutt's Dict. of Engravers; Caulfield's Calcographiana.]

L. C.

ROGERS, WILLIAM (1819–1896), educational reformer, born in Bloomsbury on 24 Nov. 1819, was the son of William Lorance Rogers (d. 1838), a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and a London police magistrate, by Georgiana Louisa, daughter of George Daniell, Q.C. His father, who owed his appointment as magistrate to Sir Thomas Plumer [q. v.], was the second son of Captain John Rogers, by Eleanor, a niece of Sir Horace Mann [q. v.], and was a direct descendant of Captain Thomas Rogers, who distinguished himself by repelling the assault of a Biscay privateer upon a transport ship under his command in 1704 (London Gazette, 8 Feb. s.a.)

William was sent to Eton in September 1830, and was four years under the sway of Dr. Keate (Reminiscences, pp. 8–15). From Eton he went to Oxford, matriculating from Balliol College on 8 March 1837, and graduating B.A. in 1842 and M.A. in 1844. While at Oxford he obtained no academical distinction, but became well known on the river. He had in May 1837 rowed in the Eton boat against Westminster. He took an active part in founding the Oxford University Boat Club, and rowed number four in the fourth contest between Oxford and Cambridge in 1840. On leaving Oxford he went with his mother and sisters on an interesting tour abroad, staying mainly in Florence, and on his return entered the university of Durham (October 1842) for theological training. Though he had often said that nothing would induce him to become a London clergyman, he was ordained to his first curacy—at Fulham—on Trinity Sunday 1843. Rogers, by his independence, soon displeased his vicar, who, in the summer of 1845, induced Bishop Blomfield to appoint him to the perpetual curacy of St. Thomas's, Charterhouse, a parish containing ten thousand people, with an income of 150l. In this district, which he denominated ‘Costermongria,’ Rogers remained for eighteen years, and devoted himself earnestly to the work of ameliorating the social condition of his parishioners by means of education. At Balliol he had formed intimacies with many who subsequently rose to high places in church and state, including Lord Coleridge, Stafford Northcote, Lord Hobhouse, Dean Stanley, Jowett, Archbishop Temple, and many others, and he ‘eternally dunned’ his friends, as he admits, for his great educational work, but never for his own advancement. Within two months of his arrival he opened a school for ragamuffins in a blacksmith's shed. In January 1847 he opened a large school building, erected at a cost of 1,750l., ‘which,’ he says, ‘I soon put together.’ In five years' time he was educating eight hundred parish children at the new school, but was determined to extend his operations. He was encouraged by the sympathy of the Marquis of Lansdowne, president of the council, who in 1852 laid the foundation of new buildings in Goswell Street, completed in the following year at a cost