Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/309

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completion of the schools, which had been proceeding slowly for several years, was due to his munificence. The eastern front, with its noble gateway, and the library on its first floor, enriched by him with two hundred volumes, were his special work. His arms also are still visible on the tower of St. Mary's, which he helped to repair (Guest, Rotherham, p. 94; Robert Willis, Architectural Hist. of Cambridge, ed. Clark, iii. 13–15). He was elected also master of Pembroke Hall (1480), and held the office for six years, and perhaps longer (Wrenn MS.)

During his tenure of the see of York, Rotherham's affection turned strongly to his Yorkshire birthplace. Tradition ascribes to him the stately spire and the splendid development of the spacious cruciform church at Rotherham. The ‘very fair college’ of Jesus, ‘sumptuously builded of brike’ (Leland), which he founded at Rotherham in 1482, and endowed by impropriation of the benefices of Laxton and Almondbury and by his own bounty, is a good illustration of his love of learning as well as piety. The provost and the three fellows were not only to say masses for him, and attend in the choir of the church at festivals, but to preach the word of God in Rotherham and Ecclesfield, and in Laxton and Almondbury; to teach grammar as a memorial of the grammar teacher of his boyhood; to train six choristers in music, that the parishioners and people from the hills might love the church worship; and teach writing and reckoning to lads following mechanical and worldly callings. The college fell with the Chantries Act of Edward VI, but part of the endowment was saved for the grammar school at Rotherham.

Rotherham died (according to most authorities, of the plague) at Cawood in 1500, and was buried in York Minster. The present monument there is a restoration (at the cost of Lincoln College, Oxford) of the original one erected by Rotherham himself, which had been much damaged by fire. His elaborate will, filled with bequests not only to his family and domestics, but to his college at Rotherham, and the benefices and bishoprics he had filled (a mitre worth five hundred marks being his legacy to York), is said by Canon Raine to be ‘probably the most noble and striking will of a mediæval English bishop in existence’ (Testamenta Eboracensia, iv. 138 ss.). Most of its provisions are given in Scott's ‘Scott of Scot's Hall.’ The most touching trait in it is his deep sense of his own unworthiness.

[Wrenn MSS. Pembroke Coll. Cambridge; Hatcher and Allen MSS. King's Coll. Cambridge; Godwin, De Præsulibus; Guest's Hist. of Rotherham; Scott's Scott of Scot's Hall, 1876, passim.]

H. L. B.

ROTHERY, HENRY CADOGAN (1817–1888), wreck commissioner, was born in London in 1817. His father, William Rothery (1775–1864), was chief of the office of the king's proctor in Doctors' Commons. In 1821 he was appointed by the treasury the admiralty referee on slave-trade matters, and held the appointment until his retirement in 1860. In 1830–2 he was engaged with some eminent lawyers and civilians in framing rules for the guidance of the vice-admiralty courts in the colonies, the excesses of which had become notorious. In 1840 he was associated with Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer in settling, with two French commissioners, the amount of compensation to be paid to some British subjects for the forcible interruption of their trade by the French at Portendic on the coast of Africa; and in 1844, in conjunction with the judge of the court of admiralty, Admiral Joseph Denman, and James Bandinel, he prepared a code of instructions for the guidance of naval officers employed in the suppression of the slave trade. He married Frances, daughter of Dr. Cadogan of Cowbridge, Glamorganshire (cf. Gent. Mag. 1864, i. 798–9).

The son Henry was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1840, as nineteenth wrangler in the mathematical tripos, and M.A. in 1845. After leaving the university he entered at Doctors' Commons, and from 1842 was employed in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. On 26 Nov. 1853 he was appointed, by Dr. Stephen Lushington [q. v.], registrar of the old admiralty court, and not long after he became registrar of the privy council in ecclesiastical and maritime causes. In 1860 he was made legal adviser to the treasury in questions and proceedings arising out of the slave trade. On account of his large experience gathered in the court of admiralty, he was in 1876 appointed by her majesty's government their commissioner to inquire into the causes and circumstances of wrecks, and to conduct investigations into casualties at sea. He entered on his duties towards the close of 1876. His inquiries indicated many preventible causes of maritime losses (Times, 3 Aug. 1888 p. 10, 6 Aug. p. 9, 8 Aug. p. 9). His judgments on fire at sea in coal-laden vessels, on certain modes of stowing grain, on stability, and on overloading were especially valuable. He retired in the early summer of 1888, and died at Ribsden, Bagshot, Surrey, on 2 Aug. 1888. He