Hon. Anne Damer, from drawings by himself; but only one number, containing five plates, was issued. He painted, for the Duke of Marlborough, three of the scenes in the private theatricals organised at Blenheim in 1787, of which engravings by John Jones were published in 1788. These, like all his works, are treated in a formal, inartistic manner. In or before 1795 Roberts was appointed portrait-painter to the Duke of Clarence. In 1809 he published ‘Introductory Lessons, with Familiar Examples in Landscape, for the use of those who are desirous of gaining some knowledge of the Art of Painting in Watercolours.’ A portrait of Sir John Hawkins (1719–1789) [q. v.], painted by Roberts in 1785 for the music school at Oxford, has been engraved. His portraits of Mrs. Abington as Lady Teazle in the ‘School for Scandal,’ and Miss Pope as Mrs. Ford in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ belong to the Garrick Club.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893; Bryan's Dict. ed. Armstrong; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits.]
ROBERTS, JOHN (1576–1610), Benedictine monk, born in 1576 at Trawsfynydd in Merionethshire, was the son of John Roberts, esq., of Llanfrothen, a merchant of ancient descent. He was educated as a protestant, and on 26 Feb. 1595–6 matriculated at St. John's College, Oxford. Foster's conjecture that he graduated B.A. from Christ Church and M.A. from St. Mary Hall is erroneous. Leaving Oxford in 1598, he studied for a few months at one of the inns of court, and then visited Paris. There he was converted to Roman catholicism, and entered the jesuit college of Saint Alban at Valladolid on 18 Oct. 1598. In the following year he wished to enter the Spanish congregation of St. Benedict, but the jesuits were unwilling to lose him, and brought several charges against him, which almost deterred the Benedictine superiors from receiving him. He was able to prove the falsity of the accusations. In 1602 he was ordained priest, and was sent over to England as a missionary on 26 Dec. that year, though he did not reach the country till April 1603. He was four times arrested and imprisoned, once, after the failure of the gunpowder plot, in the house of Thomas Percy's ‘first wife.’ He was, however, acquitted of any complicity in the plot. On each occasion he was condemned to banishment (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, pp. 239–40, 514). He helped to found the house of St. Gregory's, Douay, 1606–7, and became its first prior. He was arrested for the fifth time in 1610, and was tried under the statute which prohibited Roman catholic priests from exercising their office in England. On his own confession he was found guilty of high treason, together with his companion, Thomas Somers, who was arraigned on the same charge. They were executed on 10 Dec., but were suffered to hang until quite dead before being disembowelled. Roberts's remains were secretly conveyed to Douay by the catholics, with the exception of his right leg, which was intercepted on the way and buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, by the orders of Archbishop Abbot, and an arm taken to his old monastery of St. Martin's, Compostella.
[Le Vénérable Jean Roberts, by D. Bede Camm., in ‘Revue Bénédictine,’ 1895–6; Challoner's Martyrs to the Catholic Faith, ed. 1878, ii. 41–5; Pollen's Acts of English Martyrs, Quarterly ser. lxxv. 142–70.]
ROBERTS, JOHN (1623?–1684), quaker humourist, born at Siddington, near Cirencester, about 1623, was son of John Roberts alias Hayward, a well-to-do yeoman, who purchased a small estate at Siddington in 1618. His mother was Mary, sister of Andrew Solliss, a neighbouring magistrate. After being educated at his native place, he joined, soon after coming of age, the army of the parliament. Subsequently, when journeying to visit his family, he was waylaid and nearly killed by royalist soldiers, but he soon rejoined the parliamentary forces, and remained on active service till 1645. His father was then dead, and he inherited the family property at Siddington, where he settled and married.
Though of humorous disposition, Roberts was always devoutly inclined, and sympathised with the puritans. In 1655, some eight years after George Fox had established the Society of Friends, ‘it pleased the Lord to send two women Friends out of the north to Cirencester, who, inquiring after such as feared God, were directed’ to Roberts's house. They induced their host to visit the quaker Richard Farnworth [q. v.] in Banbury gaol, and Roberts was quickly led by Farnworth to embrace the quaker doctrines. He came to know George Fox, whose marriage at Bristol in 1669 to Margaret Fell he attended. Like others of the sect, he suffered much persecution. For defending before the magistrate some Friends who had stood with their hats on in Cirencester church he was imprisoned in Gloucester Castle in 1657, and released only through his uncle's interposition. Twice he was imprisoned for the nonpayment of tithes at the suit of George Bull [q. v.], rector of Siddington, afterwards
