Routh was entrusted with the task of continuing Catrou and Rouillé's ‘Histoire Romaine,’ but he wrote only vol. xxi. (Paris, 1748, 4to).
[De Backer's Bibl. de la Compagnie de Jésus, (1872), ii. 1080, (1876) iii. 400; Dreux de Radier's Bibl. Historique et Critique du Poitou (1842–49), ii. 391; Hogan's Chronological List of Irish Jesuits, p. 67; Nouvelle Biogr. Générale, xlii. 787.]
ROUTH, Mrs. MARTHA (1743–1817), quakeress, youngest child of Henry and Jane Winter of Stourbridge, Worcestershire, was born there on 25 June 1743, and early adopted the dress and bearing of the quakers. At seventeen she became teacher in a Friends' boarding-school at Nottingham, and at the age of twenty-four succeeded to the post of principal. After a mental struggle she first preached four years later, and was ‘acknowledged a minister’ in 1773. She married Richard Routh of Manchester on 7 Aug. 1776 at Nottingham, relinquished her school, and devoted herself to the ministry. Before 1787 she travelled through Wales, Scotland, the north of England, and to the Land's End. Two years after she passed six months in Ireland. On 21 July 1794 she embarked from London on a protracted missionary tour to America. Not content with visiting all places inhabited by Friends in the New England states, she travelled through Virginia and North Carolina, crossed the Alleghany mountains, and traversed parts of Ohio and Kansas. In little over three years, she says, she travelled eleven thousand miles, and never failed at a single appointed meeting, although the difficulties of crossing rivers and driving over rough unbroken country severely tried her strength.
On the voyage home in the winter of 1797, the ship was boarded by French privateers. In 1804, after sixty-six days' passage, she again reached New York with her husband. The latter died there shortly afterwards, and at the end of a year Mrs. Routh returned to England. Her last journeys were made in 1808 and 1809, through Wales, Somerset, and the northern counties of England. She still preached with power. After attending the yearly meeting in London, she died at Simon Bailey's house in Spitalfields on 18 July 1817, and was buried at Bunhill Fields.
Martha Routh edited ‘Some Account of a Divine Manifestation’ in Christopher Taylor's school at Waltham Abbey, Essex; Philadelphia, 1797, 8vo (reprinted, London, 1799, 12mo). In her seventy-first year she commenced to write her journal, portions of which, with a memoir, were published at York in 1822, 12mo (2nd ed. 1824; reprinted in vol. xii. of the ‘Friends' Library,’ Philadelphia, 1848).
[Memoir above mentioned; Smith's Catalogue, ii. 513.]
ROUTH, MARTIN JOSEPH (1755–1854), president of Magdalen College, Oxford, the eldest of the thirteen children of Peter Routh (1726–1802), rector of St. Peter's and St. Margaret's, South Elmham, Suffolk, was born in his father's rectory on 18 Sept. 1755 (Burgon). His mother was Mary, daughter of Robert Reynolds of Harleston, Suffolk, and a descendant of Dr. Richard Baylie (d. 1667), president of St. John's College, Oxford, and dean of Salisbury, who married a niece of Archbishop Laud. When Martin was about three years old his father, who was an excellent scholar, migrated to Beccles, Suffolk, and there kept a private school, at which Routh received his early education. Peter Routh was subsequently appointed master of the Fauconberge grammar school at Beccles.
Martin entered Queen's College, Oxford, as a commoner, and on 24 July 1771 was elected a demy at Magdalen College on the nomination of the president, Dr. George Horne [q. v.] He graduated B.A. on 5 Feb. 1774, and was elected to a fellowship at Magdalen on 25 July 1775. He continued to reside there, and did some tutorial work. He proceeded M.A. on 23 Oct. 1776, received deacon's orders on 21 Dec. 1777, was appointed college librarian in 1781, was junior dean of arts 1784–5, and senior proctor in 1784, and in 1786 took the degree of B.D. His learning in ecclesiastical matters was recognised outside the university. He had acted as tutor to one of Lord-chancellor Thurlow's nephews, and when the American delegates came to England in 1783 with reference to the foundation of a native episcopate, the chancellor advised them to consult Routh. He dissuaded them from applying to the Danish bishops, and recommended them to seek episcopal succession from the bishops of the disestablished church of Scotland (Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, App. C, 2nd edit.) In 1784 he published an edition of the ‘Euthydemus’ and ‘Gorgias’ of Plato, with notes and various readings, and then turned his attention mainly to patristic learning, beginning to prepare his ‘Reliquiæ Sacræ,’ a collection of the fragmentary writings of the less known ecclesiastical authors of the second and third centuries. This work was interrupted about 1790, taken up again in 1805, and then pursued until the appearance of the first two volumes in 1814.
