he was sent from France on a secret mission to the lords of Galloway. In 1175 he again appears as a negotiator between the king and a number of English religious houses. The interest which Hoveden shows in ecclesiastical affairs and miracles may justify the supposition that he was a clerk in orders. This, however, did not prevent him from acting, in 1189, as a justice of the forests in the shires of Yorkshire, Cumberland and Northumberland. After the death of Henry II., it would seem that Hoveden retired from the public service, though not so completely as to prevent him from drawing on the royal archives for the history of contemporary events. About the year 1192 he began to compile his Chronica, a general history of England from 732 to his own time. Up to the year 1192 his narrative adds little to our knowledge. For the period 732–1148 he chiefly drew upon an extant, but unpublished chronicle, the Historia Saxonum sive Anglorum post obitum Bedae (British Museum MS. Reg. 13 A. 6), which was composed about 1150. From 1148 to 1170 he used the Melrose Chronicle (edited for the Bannatyne Club in 1835 by Joseph Stevenson) and a collection of letters bearing upon the Becket controversy. From 1170 to 1192 his authority is the chronicle ascribed to Benedictus Abbas (q.v.), the author of which must have been in the royal household at about the same time as Hoveden. Although this period was one in which Hoveden had many opportunities of making independent observations, he adds little to the text which he uses; except that he inserts some additional documents. Either his predecessor had exhausted the royal archives, or the supplementary searches of Hoveden were languidly pursued. From 1192, however, Hoveden is an independent and copious authority. Like “Benedictus,” he is sedulously impersonal, and makes no pretence to literary style, quotes documents in full and adheres to the annalistic method. His chronology is tolerably exact, but there are mistakes enough to prove that he recorded events at a certain' distance of time. Both on foreign affairs and on questions of domestic policy he is unusually well informed. His practical experience as an administrator and his official connexions stood him in good stead. He is particularly useful on points of constitutional history. His work breaks oil abruptly in 1201, though he certainly intended to carry it further. Probably his death should be placed in that year.
See W. Stubbs's edition of the Chronica (Rolls Series) and the introductions to vols. i. and iv. This edition supersedes that of Sir H. Savile in his Scriptores post Bedam (1596). (H. W. C. D.)
ROGER OF WENDOVER (d. 1236), English chronicler, was probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire. At some uncertain date he became a monk of St Albans; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III., having been
found guilty of wasting the endowments. His latter years
were passed at St Albans, where he died on the 6th of May
1236. He is the first of the important chroniclers who worked
in the scriptorium of this house. His great work, the Flores
Historiarum, begins at the creation and extends to 1235. It
is of original value from 1202. Some critics have supposed,
but on inconclusive evidence, that Wendover copied, up to
1189, an earlier compilation, the work of John de Cella, the
twenty-first abbot of St Albans (1195–1214). Wendover’s
work is known to us through one 13th-century manuscript
in the Bodleian library (Douce MS. 207), a mutilated 14th-century
copy in the British Museum (Cotton MS. Otho B. v.),
and the edition prepared by Matthew Paris which forms the
first part of that writer’s Chronica Majora (ed. H. R. Luard,
Rolls Series, 7 vols.). The best edition of Wendover is that
of H. O. Coxe (4 vols., London, 1841-42); there is another
(from 1154) in the Rolls Series by H. G. Hewlett (3 vols.,
1886–89). Wendover is a copious but inaccurate writer, less
prejudiced but also less graphic than Matthew Paris. Where he
is the sole authority for an event, he is to be used with caution.
See Luard’s prefaces to vols. i., ii., iii. and vii. of the Chronica Majora; and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, Band xxviix. pp. 3–20. (H. W. C. D.)
ROGERS, HENRY (1806–1877), English Nonconformist
divine, was born at St Albans on the 18th of October 1806, and was educated privately and by his father, a surgeon of considerable culture. Rogers was meant to follow his father's profession, but the reading of John Howe turned him to theology, and after qualifying at Highbury College he accepted a call to the Congregational Church at Poole in 1829. In 1832 he was appointed lecturer in logic at Highbury, in 1836 professor of English at University College, London, and in 1839 professor of English, mathematics and mental philosophy at Spring Hill College, Birmingham.
In 1836 appeared his Life and Character of John Howe, and in 1837 The Christian Correspondent, a collection of some 400 religious letters “by eminent persons of both sexes.” His contributions to the Edinburgh Review began in 1839
and were collected in
volume form in 1880, 1855 and 1874. His most famous
book, The Eclipse of Faith, or a Visit to a Religious Sceptic,
was published anonymously in 1852 and went through six
editions in three years. It drew a Reply from F. W. Newman,
which Rogers answered in a Defence (1854). Two volumes
of imaginary letters, Selections from the Correspondence of
R. E. H. Greyson (an anagram for his own name), appeared in
1857 and show his style at its best. In 1858 'he became
principal and professor of theology at the Lancashire Independent
College, where he edited the works of John Howe
(6 vols., 1862–63) and wrote for the British Quarterly. He
retired in 1871, and died at Machynlleth on the 21st of
August 1877. Rogers was widely read, and as a Christian
apologist carried on the traditions of the 18th century as illustrated by Butler.
See Memoir by Dr R. W. Dale, prefixed to the 8th edition of The Supernatural Origin of the Bible Inferred from Itself (the Congregational Lecture for 1873, delivered by Rogers).
ROGERS, HENRY DARWIN (1808–1866), American geologist,
was born at Philadelphia on the 1st of August 1808. At the
age of twenty-one he' was chosen professor of chemistry and
natural philosophy at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. After
holding this post for three years, he went to Europe and took
up the study of geology. Subsequently he was engaged for
twenty-two years in the State surveys of Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, his Reports on which were published during
the years 1836–41. In 1842 he and his brother William Barton
Rogers (1805–1882), who had' been similarly occupied in
Virginia (his Reports were published in 1838-41, and he
wrote also on the connexion between thermal springs and
anticlinal axes and faults), brought before the Association of
American Geologists and Naturalists their conclusions on the
physical structure of the Appalachian chain, and on the elevation
of great mountain chains. The researches of H. D.
Rogers were elaborated in his final Report on Pennsylvania
(1858), in which he included a general account of the geology
of the United States and of the coal-fields of North America
and Great Britain. In this important work he dealt also
with the structure of the great coal-fields, the method of formation of the strata, and the changes in the character of the coal from the bituminous type to anthracite. In 1857
he was appointed professor of natural history and geology at Glasgow. One of his later essays (1861) was on the parallel roads of Lochaber (Glen Roy), the origin of which he attributed to a vast inundation. He died at Glasgow on the 29th of May 1866.
ROGERS, JAMES EDWIN THOROLD (1823~1890), English economist, was born at West Meon, Hampshire, in 1823. He was educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After taking a first-class degree in 1846, he was ordained, and was for a few years a curate in Oxford. Subsequently, however, he resigned his orders. For some time the classics were the chief field of his activity. He devoted himself a good deal to classical and philosophical tuition in Oxford with success, and his publications included an edition of Aristotle's Ethics (in 1865). simu1tane0uS1y' with these occupations he had been diligently studying economics, with
