grandson, Sir Robert Rothe, was extensively used by Carte in his ‘Life of Ormond.’ A copy is in the possession of The O'Conor Don (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. p. 224). 2. ‘A Register or Breviat of the Antiquities and Statuts of the towne of Kilkenny, with other antiquities collected by me, Robert Rothe, esquier, as well out of severall books, charters, evidences, and rolls,’ &c., the earliest compilation extant in connection with local Irish history. It is fully described by Mr. J. T. Gilbert, of the Public Record Office, Dublin, in the Second Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1871, pp. 257–263. It is at present in the library of the Royal Irish Academy.
A third evidence of Rothe's antiquarian and genealogical learning is his will, which covers twenty-nine sheets of parchment, and sets out the limitations in descent of his estate to the sixteenth degree. In it he directs the building of a chapel at Tullaghmaine, the maintenance of the Rothe chapel at St. Mary's Church, Kilkenny, and the enlargement of the poorhouse built by his grandfather, Robert Rothe (d. 1543), in the city of Kilkenny.
Rothe was twice married: first, to Margaret, daughter of Fowke Comerford of Callan, and sister of Gerald Comerford, M.P. for Callan in 1584, attorney-general, and baron of the court of exchequer 1604, by whom he had three sons—David, Richard, and Piers—and four daughters. By his second wife, Margaret Archer, he had no issue.
Rothe's eldest son, David, was father of Sir Robert Rothe (d. 1664), who was knighted by the lord-lieutenant, Ormonde, in 1648–9, and forfeited his estates in Kilkenny on Cromwell's reduction of Ireland, but was restored by Charles II in 1663. Sir Robert's grandson, Robert Rothe of Tullaghmaine, became lieutenant-colonel in Lord Mountcashel's regiment; he afterwards entered the French service, and was killed in Flanders in 1709, when the senior branch of the Rothe family became extinct.
Rothe's second son, Richard, was grandfather of William Rothe or Routh, a captain in the French service, who was killed in Flanders in August 1710. This Captain Rothe was father of Bernard Routh (1695–1768) [q. v.], the jesuit.
[The Family of Rothe of Kilkenny, by G. D. Burtchaell, LL.B., in the Journal of the Roy. Hist. and Archæol. Association, Ireland (originally the Kilkenny Archæol. Soc.), vii. 501–37, 620–54, with a pedigree; Cal. of Fiants, ed. Morrin, also in Rep. of Deputy-Keeper of Records in Ireland; Ware's Ireland, ii. 101, 102; Carte's Life of Ormond, introduction, passim; Cal. of the Carew MSS.; Book of Howth; Russell and Prendergast's Cal. of Irish State Papers, 1606–8; O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees, ii. 379, and his Landed Gentry, pp. 263, 356; O'Callaghan's Irish Brigades in the Service of France, p. 91; Gilbert's Hist. Manuscripts of Ireland, p. 308; information from the Rev. J. K. Abbott, librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, and from J. T. Gilbert, LL.D., librarian of the Royal Irish Academy.]
ROTHERAM, CALEB, D.D. (1694–1752), dissenting minister and tutor, was born on 7 March 1694 at Great Salkeld, Cumberland. He was educated at the grammar school of Great Blencow, Cumberland, under Anthony Ireland, and prepared for the ministry in the academy of Thomas Dixon, M.D. [q. v.] at Whitehaven. In 1716 he became minister of the dissenting congregation at Kendal, Westmoreland. After Dixon's death (1729) he took up the work of a dissenting academy (1733) at Kendal, where he educated about one hundred and twenty laymen, including Jeremiah Dyson [q. v.], and fifty-six divinity students, of whom the most distinguished was George Walker (1735?–1807) [q. v.] In 1743 he visited Edinburgh, where he was admitted M.A., and gained the degree of D.D. by public disputation on 27 May. His theology, and that of most of his divinity pupils, was Arian. In 1751 his health failed; leaving his congregation and academy in charge of Richard Simpson, he went to Hexham, Northumberland, to stay with his eldest son, a physician. He died at Hexham on 8 June 1752, and was buried in the south aisle of the abbey church, where is a mural monument to his memory. His second son was in the army. His third son, Caleb (1738–1796), educated at Kendal (the academy ceased in 1753) and Daventry, was ordained minister of Kendal on 21 April 1756; he was a friend and correspondent of Priestley, and was apparently the first unitarian minister who officiated (1781) in Scotland [see Christie, William]. The elder Rotheram published ‘Dissertatio … de Religionis Christianæ Evidentia,’ &c., Edinburgh, 1743, 4to.
[Funeral Sermon by James Daye, 1752; Memoir, with biographical list of divinity students [by William Turner], in Monthly Repository, 1810, pp. 217 sq.; Turner's Lives of Eminent Unitarians, 1840, i. 359 sq.; manuscript records of Provincial Meeting of Cumberland and Westmoreland.
ROTHERAM, EDWARD (1753?–1830), captain in the navy, son of John Rotheram, M.D., was born at Hexham in Northumberland, probably in 1753. His father shortly afterwards moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne,
