Page:A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices.djvu/228

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208
Roberts—Robinson.

works, including a Life of Hannah More (1834). He was the author, also, of two legal treatises, one on Fraudulent Conveyances (1800), and the other on Wills and Codicils (1809).


ROBERTSON, JAMES BURTON.
Historian.
1800—1877.

Admitted 8 November, 1819.

Eldest son of Thomas Robertson of Grenada Island (of the Robertsons of Strowan, Perthshire). He came to England in 1809 and was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Ware. He was called to the Bar 3 June, 1825. He subsequently studied philosophy and literature on the Continent, and in 1835 published a translation of Schlegel's Philosophy of History, reprinted in Bohn's Standard Library, 1846. In 1843 he translated Dr. Möhler's Symbolism, with a sketch of the state of Protestantism and Catholicism in Germany—a work which deeply influenced the Tractarian movement in England. In 1855 he was nominated to a Professorship in the Roman Catholic University of Dublin, where he delivered several courses of Lectures, afterwards published, and wrote a Poem entitled The Prophet Enoch, published with some Lyrics, 1860. He died 14 Feb. 1877.


ROBINSON, HENRY CRABB.
Diarist.
1775—1867.

Admitted 18 February, 1808.

Third son of Henry Robinson of Bury St. Edmunds, where he was born on 13 March, 1775. On leaving school he was articled to an attorney of Colchester, but on the expiration of his articles proceeded as a student to the University of Jena. On his return he became a contributor to the Times and other periodicals. On his call to the Bar, 7 May, 1813, he went the Norfolk Circuit, of which he became the leader, amongst his contemporaries being Serjeants Blosset and Storks, Hart, Alderson (afterwards Judge), Cooper, Rolfe (afterwards Lord Cranworth), and Sir Fitzroy Kelly. But it was as a friend and associate of the literary men of his time, particularly of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Blake, Flaxman, Lamb, and Lawrence in England, and of Goethe, Wieland, Knebel and others in Germany, that Mr. Robinson is best remembered. Of these and many others, his contemporaries, he gives us many interesting particulars in his Memoirs, published two years after his decease, which occurred at his residence in Russell Square on 5 Feb. 1867.


ROBINSON, THOMAS, first BARON GRANTHAM of GRANTHAM.
Diplomatist.
1695—1770.

Admitted 4 February, 1722-3.

Fourth son of Sir William Robinson of Newby, York. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected Scholar in 1714. In the year of his admission he became Secretary to the English Embassy in Paris, and from that time onwards was engaged in important diplomatic affairs. In 1730 he went to Vienna (at first as the substitute for Lord Waldegrave) where he remained as Ambassador eighteen years, and he was one of the plenipotentiaries at the signing of the peace at Aix-la-Chapelle, 18 Oct. 1748. On his return to England he entered Parliament, and became Secretary of State and in 1754 was accepted as Leader of the House of Commons; but he had no talents that way, Pitt contemptuously remarking that the prime minister (the Duke of Newcastle) "might as well have sent his jack-boot to lead us." He subsequently held the post of Postmaster-General. He was made Baron Grantham 7 April, 1761. He died 30 Sept. 1770.