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Rogers
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Rogers

medicine at Padua, where he was consul of the English nation in the university, and graduated M.D. John Evelyn, who continued his acquaintance throughout life, visited him at Padua in June 1645. He was incorporated M.D. at Oxford on 14 April 1648, and about 1654 began to practise as a physician in London. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians on 20 Oct. 1664, was treasurer 1683–5, and was president in 1688. In 1681 he delivered the Harveian oration, which was printed in 1682, and of which he gave a copy to Evelyn (Evelyn, Diary). His only other publication is a congratulatory Latin poem to his friend Christopher Bennet, printed in the ‘Theatrum Tabidorum’ in 1655. He resigned on 11 Dec. 1691, owing to ill-health, the office of elect, which he had held in the College of Physicians since 5 Sept. 1682. He died on 22 Jan. 1697, and was buried at Ruislip, Middlesex. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Hawtrey of Ruislip, and had three daughters, who died young, and three sons, George, Thomas, and John.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 316; Works; Evelyn's Diary; Foster's Alumni Oxon.]

N. M.

ROGERS, HENRY (1585?–1658), theologian, born in Herefordshire about 1585, was son of a clergyman. He matriculated from Jesus College, Oxford, on 15 Oct. 1602, and graduated B.A. 21 Oct. 1605, M.A. 30 May 1608, B.D. 13 Dec. 1616, D.D. 22 Nov. 1637. He became a noted preacher, and was successively rector of Moccas from 1617, and of Stoke-Edith from 1618, and vicar of Foy from 1636 to 1642, and of Dorstone—all are in Herefordshire. He was installed in the prebend of Pratum Majus of Hereford Cathedral on 28 Nov. 1616 (Le Neve, Fasti), and in 1638 became lecturer, apparently in Hereford, through the influence of Secretary Sir John Coke and of George Coke, then bishop of Hereford. Laud gave testimony that Rogers was ‘of good learning and conformable’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. ii. 199, 200, 208). Rogers also had the reputation of being an eminent schoolmaster. In the convocation of 1640 ‘he showed himself an undaunted champion’ for the king (Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, i. 35, ii. 343). On the surprise of Hereford by the parliamentary forces (December 1645), Rogers was imprisoned and deprived of his prebend, and on 17 Dec. 1646 of his rectory of Stoke-Edith. He subsequently experienced great straits, though ‘sometimes comforted by the secret munificence of John, lord Scudamore, and the slenderer gifts of the loyal gentry’ (Walker, ubi supra; cf. Calendar of Committee for Compounding, v. 3239). He died in 1658, and was buried under the parson's seat in Withington church on 15 June 1658.

Rogers wrote:

  1. ‘An Answer to Mr. Fisher the Jesuit his five propositions concerning Luther, by Mr. Rogers, that worthy Oxford divine, with some passages also of the said Mr. Rogers with the said Mr. Fisher. Hereunto is annexed Mr. W. C. [i.e. William Crashaw [q. v.] ], his dialogue of the said argument, wherein is discovered Fisher's folly’ [London?], 1623, 4to.
  2. ‘The Protestant church existent, and their faith professed in all ages and by whom, with a catalogue of councils in all ages who professed the same,’ London, 1638, 4to; dedicated to George Coke, bishop of Hereford.

[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iii. 31; Rogers's works; information kindly sent by the Rev. Thomas Prosser Powell, rector of Dorstone, and the Rev. Charles S. Wilton, rector of Foy; Havergal's Fasti Herefordenses.]

W. A. S.

ROGERS, HENRY (1806–1877), Edinburgh reviewer and Christian apologist, was third son of Thomas Rogers, surgeon, of St. Albans, where he was born on 18 Oct. 1806. He was educated at private schools and by his father, a man of profound piety and more than ordinary culture, who, bred a churchman, had early attached himself to the congregationalist sect. In his seventeenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Milton-next-Sittingbourne, Kent; but a perusal of John Howe's discourse on ‘The Redeemer's Tears wept over Lost Souls’ diverted his attention from surgery to theology, and after somewhat less than three years spent at Highbury College, he entered the congregationalist ministry in June 1829. His first duty was that of assistant pastor of the church at Poole, Dorset, whence in 1832 he returned to Highbury College as lecturer on rhetoric and logic. In 1836 he was appointed to the chair of English language and literature at University College, London, which in 1839 he exchanged for that of English literature and language, mathematics and mental philosophy in Spring Hill College, Birmingham. That post he held for nearly twenty years. An incurable throat affection early compelled him to abandon preaching, so that his entire leisure was free for literary pursuits.

In 1826 Rogers published a small volume of verse, entitled ‘Poems Miscellaneous and Sacred;’ and at Poole he began to write for the nonconformist periodical press. On his return to London he contributed introductory essays to editions of Joseph Truman's ‘Discourse of Natural and Moral Impotency,’ the works of Jonathan Edwards,