the result that in 1859 he was appointed professor of statistics and economic science at King’s College, London, a post which he filled till his death. From 1862 to 1867 he also held the position of Drummond professor of political economy at Oxford. During that period he published (in 1866) the first two volumes of his History of Agriculture and Prices in England, dealing with the period 1259–1400, a minute and masterly record of the subject, and the work upon which his reputation mainly rests. Two more volumes (1401–1582) were published in 1882, a fifth and sixth (1583–1702) in 1887, and he left behind him at his death copious materials for a seventh and eighth; In 1868 he published a Manual of Political Economy, and in 1869 an edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In 1875 he collected and edited the Protests of the Lords. An intimate acquaintance with Cobden and John Bright led Rogers to take an active part in politics: he represented Southwark in parliament from 188O to 1885, and Bermondsey from 1885–86, as an advanced Liberal. In 1888, on the death of Professor Bonamy Price, who had succeeded him at Oxford as professor of political economy, he was re-elected to the post, and held it till his death. Previously (in 1883) he had been appointed lecturer in political economy at Worcester College, Oxford. His latter years were mainly spent at Oxford, where he died on the 12th of October 1890. He was celebrated as a caustic wit and humorist. Of his miscellaneous economic and historical writings, which were numerous, the most noteworthy is his Six Centuries of Work and Wages, published in 1884. As an economist, Thorold Rogers did much to promote the historical study of his subject: He was, however, apt to be guided too frequently by political prejudice, and the value of his work suffered from his aggressively contentious spirit.
ROGERS, JOHN (1627–c. 1665), English preacher, second
son of Nehemiah Rogers, a royalist and Anglican clergyman,
was born at Messing in Essex, and became a servitor and student
of medicine at King’s College, Cambridge. When still a youth
the violence of his religious despair .led him to attempt suicide
and ended in -his joining the extreme sect of the Puritans.
Deprived of his home in 1642, he walked to Cambridge, and
found the college establishment broken up; he nearly starved,
but obtained in 1643 a scholastic post in Lord Brudenel’s
house in Huntingdonshire, and subsequently at St Neot’s free
school. He became known as a preacher, received Presbyterian
ordination in 1647, married a daughter of Sir Robert Payne
of Midloe in Huntingdonshire, and obtained the living of
Purleigh in Essex. Subsequently he came to London, joined
the Independents, became lecturer at St Thomas Apostle’s, and
attracted attention by the violence of his political sermons.
He was appointed preacher to Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin
by the parliament in 1651, and while there served in the field,
returning in 1652 to St Thomas Apostle’s on account of religious
dissensions. In 1653 his parishioners at Purleigh, where he
had hitherto managed to retain the living, successfully proceeded
against him for non-residence. In the quarrel between
the army and the parliament Rogers had naturally sided with
the former, and he was one of the first to join the Fifth Monarchy
movement. He approved of the expulsion of the Long
Parliament, and addressed two letters to Cromwell on the
subject of the new government to be inaugurated, but the
establishment of the Protectorate at once threw the Fifth
Monarchy men into antagonism. Rogers addressed a warning
letter to Cromwell, and boldly attacked him from the pulpit
on the 9th of January 1654. Thereupon his house was searched
and his papers seized, and Rogers then issued another denunciation
against Cromwell, Mene, Tekel, Perez: a Letter lamenting
over Oliver Lord Cromwell. On the 28th of March, on which
day he had proclaimed a fast for the sins of the rulers, he
preached a violent sermon against the protector, which occasioned
his arrest in July. He confronted Cromwell with great
courage when brought before him on the 5th of February 1655,
and was imprisoned successively at Windsor and in the Isle of
Wight, being released in January 1657. He returned to London,
and, being suspected of a conspiracy, was again imprisoned
by Cromwell in the Tower from the 3rd of February 1658 till
the 16th of April. On the protector’s death and the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the ideals of the Fifth Monarchy men
seemed nearer realization, but Rogers was engaged in political
controversy with Prynne and became a source of embarrassment
to his own faction, which endeavoured to get rid of him
by appointing him “to preach the gospel” in Ireland. On
the outbreak of Sir George Booth’s royalist insurrection, however,
he became chaplain in Charles Fairfax’s regiment, and
served throughout the campaign. He obtained a lectureship at
Shrewsbury in October and was in Dublin in January 1660, being
imprisoned there by order of the army faction and released subsequently by the parliament. At the Restoration he withdrew to
Holland, studied medicine at Leiden and Utrecht, and obtained
from the latter university the degree of M.D. in 1662. He returned
to England the same year and resided at Bermondsey, was admitted to the degree of M .D. at Oxford in 1664, and is supposed, in the absence of further record, to have died soon afterwards.
Besides the pamphlet already cited, Rogers wrote in 1653 Ohel or Bethshemesh, a Tabernacle for the Sun, in which he attacked the Presbyterians, and Sagrir, or Doomesday drawing nigh, from his new standpoint as a Fifth Monarchy man, and was the author of Challah, the Heavenly Nymph (1653); Dod, or Chathan; the Beloved or the Bridegroom going forth for his Bride . . . (1653); Prison-born Morning Beams (1654); Jegar Sahadutha . . . (1657); Mr Prynne’s Good Old Cause stated and stunted 10 Year ago . . . (1609); Διαπολιτεία, a Christian Concertation (1659); Mr Harrington’s Parallel Unparalleled (1659); A Vindication of Sir H. Vane (1659); Disputatio Medica Inauguralis (1662).
Authorities.—Life and Opinions of a Fifth Monarchy Man, by Ed. Rogers (1867), Compiled from Rogers’s own works; Wood, Athenae Oxonienses and Fasti; Calendars of State Papers (Domestic). See also “English Ancestry of Washington,” Harper’s Magazine, xxi. 887 (1891) ; “John Rogers of Purleigh,” The Nation, vol. 53, p. 314 (1891)
ROGERS, JOHN (c. 1500–155S), English Protestant martyr, was born in the parish of Aston, near Birmingham, and was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1526. Six years later he was rector of Holy Trinity, Queenhithe, London, and in 1534 went to Antwerp as chaplain to the English merchants. Here he met William Tyndale, under whose influence he abandoned the Roman Catholic faith, and married an Antwerp lady. After Tyndale’s death Rogers pushed on with his predecessor's English version of the Old Testament, which he used as far as 2 Chronicles, employing Coverdale’s translation (1535) for the remainder and for the Apocrypha. Tyndale’s New Testament had been published in 1526. The complete Bible was put out under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew in 1537; it was printed in Antwerp, and Richard Grafton published the sheets and got leave to sell the edition (1 500 copies) in England. Rogers had little to do with the translation, but he contributed some valuable prefaces and marginal notes. His work was largely used by those who prepared the Great Bible (1539–40), out of which in turn came the Bishop’s Bible (1568) and the Authorized Version of 1611. After taking charge of a Protestant congregation in Wittenberg for some years, Rogers returned to England in 1548, where he published a translation of Me1anchthon’s Considerations of the Augsburg Interim. In 1550 he was presented to the crown livings of St Margaret Moyses and St Sepulchre in London, and in 1551 was made a prebendary of St Paul’s, where the dean and chapter soon appointed him divinity lecturer. He courageously denounced the greed shown by certain courtiers with reference to the property of the suppressed monasteries, and defended himself before the privy council; He also declined to wear the prescribed vestments, donning instead a simple round cap. On the accession of Mary he preached at Paul’s Cross commending the “true doctrine taught in King Edward’s days,” and warning his hearers against “pestilent Popery, idolatry and superstition.” Ten days after (16th August 1553), he was summoned before the council and bidden to keep within his own house. His emoluments were taken away and his prebend was filled in October. In January 1554 Bonner, the new bishop of London, sent him to Newgate, where he lay with
