Robinson's sermons are said to have been ‘excellent in style and doctrine,’ though his voice was low (cf. Boswell, Johnson, ed. Croker, p. 220). Cumberland, who knew him well, said Robinson was ‘publickly ambitious of great deeds and privately capable of good ones,’ and that he ‘supported the first station in the Irish hierarchy with all the magnificence of a prince palatine.’ His private fortune was not large, but his business capacity was excellent. Churchill condemned Robinson's manners in his ‘Letter to Hogarth:’
In lawn sleeves whisper to a sleeping crowd,
As dull as R——n, and half as proud.
Horace Walpole thought ‘the primate a proud, but superficial man,’ without talents for political intrigue.
Robinson was named vice-chancellor of Dublin University by the Duke of Cumberland, and enthroned by the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester. He left a bequest of 5,000l. for the establishment of a university in Ulster, but the condition that it should be carried out within five years of his death was not fulfilled.
On 26 Feb. 1777 he was created Baron Rokeby of Armagh in the peerage of Ireland, with remainder to his cousin, Matthew Robinson-Morris, second baron Rokeby [q. v.], of West Layton, Yorkshire. On the creation of the order of St. Patrick, he became its first prelate. In 1785 he succeeded to the English baronetcy on the death of his brother William. In 1787 he was appointed one of the lords justices for Ireland. His later years were spent chiefly at Bath and London, where he kept a hospitable table. He died at Clifton on 10 Oct. 1794, aged 86, and was buried in a vault under Armagh Cathedral. He was the last male survivor in direct line of the family of Robinson of Rokeby. By his will he left 12,000l. to charitable institutions. The Canterbury Gate, Christ Church, Oxford, is one monument of his munificence. A bust of him is in the college library, and a portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as bishop of Kildare, is in the hall. A duplicate is in the archiepiscopal palace, Armagh. It was engraved by Houston. A bust, said to be ‘altogether unworthy of him,’ was placed in the north aisle of Armagh Cathedral by Archdeacon Robinson, who inherited his Irish estate. A later portrait of the primate, engraved by J. R. Smith, was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the ‘Anthologia Hibernica’ (vol. i.) there is an engraving of a medal struck by Mossop of Dublin. The obverse bears Rokeby's head, and the reverse shows the south front of Armagh Observatory.
Rokeby's youngest brother, Sir Septimus Robinson (1710–1765), born on 30 Jan. 1710, was educated at Westminster, whence he was elected to Cambridge in 1726. He, however, preferred Oxford, and matriculated at Christ Church on 14 May 1730. In his twenty-first year he entered the French army, and served under Galleronde in Flanders. He afterwards joined the English army, and served under Wade in the '45, and subsequently in two campaigns in Flanders under Wade and Ligonier. He left the army in 1754 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the guards. From 1751 to 1760 he was governor of the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, brothers of George III. On the accession of the latter he was knighted and named gentleman usher of the black rod. He died at Brough, Westmoreland, on 6 Sept. 1765, and was buried in the family vault at Rokeby. On the north side of the altar in the church is a monument, with a medallion of his profile by Nollekens, bearing a Latin inscription from the pen of his brother, the archbishop.
[Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall, vol. vii.; Biogr. Peerage of Ireland, 1817; Welch's Alumni Westmon.; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Whitaker's Richmondshire, i. 154–5, 184; Cotton's Fasti, Eccles. Hibern. ii. 47, 235, 341, iii. 26, iv. 76; Stuart's Hist. Memoirs of Armagh, pp. 445–57; Mant's Hist. of the Irish Church, ii. 606, 611, 631–3, 651, 727–32; Gent. Mag. 1765 p. 443, 1785 ii. 751, 772, 1794 ii. 965; Walpole's Memoirs of George III, ed. Barker, ii. 30–1; R. Cumberland's Memoirs, 1806, Suppl. pp. 37–9; Bishop Newton's Life by himself, 1782, pp. 15, 85–6, 87; Webb's Compend. Irish Biogr.; Evans's Cat. Engr. Portraits.]
ROBINSON, ROBERT (1735–1790), baptist minister and hymn-writer, youngest child of Michael Robinson (d. 1747?), was born at Swaffham, Norfolk, on 27 Sept. 1735 (his own repeated statement; the date, 8 Oct., given by Rees and Flower, is a reduction to new style). His father, born in Scotland, was an exciseman of indifferent character. His mother was Mary (d. September 1790, aged 93), daughter of Robert Wilkin (d. 1746) of Mildenhall, Suffolk, who would not countenance the marriage. He was educated at the grammar school of Swaffham; afterwards at that of Scarning, under Joseph Brett, the tutor of John Norris (1734–1777) [q. v.] and Lord-chancellor Thurlow. Straitened means interfered with his projected education for the Anglican ministry; on 7 March 1749 he was apprenticed to Joseph Anderson, a hairdresser in Crutched Friars, London. The
