Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rogers, Thomas (1760-1832)
ROGERS, THOMAS (1760–1832), divine, born at Swillington, near Leeds, on 19 Feb. 1760, was youngest son of John Rogers, vicar of Sherburn, Yorkshire, who is said to have been a lineal descendant of John Rogers [q. v.], the martyr. On leaving Leeds grammar school he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1779, graduated B.A. in 1783, and was ordained deacon on Trinity Sunday in that year. After being successively curate of Norton-cum-Galby in Leicestershire, Ravenstone in Derbyshire, and at St. Mary's, Leicester, under Thomas Robinson (1749–1813) [q. v.], he was appointed headmaster of the Wakefield grammar school on 6 Feb. 1795. In December of the same year he was allowed to hold with this office the afternoon lectureship of St. John's, Wakefield. Rogers conducted some confirmation classes in 1801 in Wakefield parish church with such success that a weekly lectureship was founded in order to enable him permanently to continue his instruction. His Sunday-evening lectures were thronged, and raised the tone of the neighbourhood, where religious feeling had long been stagnant. In 1814 he resigned the mastership of the grammar school, and in 1817 became chaplain of the West Riding house of correction in Wakefield. He effected many reforms in the prison. He died on 13 Feb. 1832, aged 71, and was buried in the south aisle of the parish church. His wife Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Long of Norton, whom he married in 1785, died in 1803, leaving six children.
Besides ‘Lectures on the Liturgy of the Church of England’ (London, 1804, 2 vols. 8vo; 3rd edit. 1816), he composed a manual of ‘Family Prayers,’ 1832.
[Memoir by his son, the Rev. Charles Rogers, 1832; Peacock's Hist. of the Wakefield Grammar School, 1892, pp. 143–6; Walker's Cathedral Church of Wakefield, 1888, pp. 187–9, 223.]