comparatively a state of repose, disturbed to some extent during the Covenanting troubles and, to a much slighter degree. by the Jacobite rebellions.
Bibliography.—Sir George Douglas, Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Edinburgh, 1899); W. S. Crockett, The Scott Country (Edinburgh, 1902); Alexander Jeffrey, The History and Antiquities of Roxburghshire (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1857–64).
ROXBURY, formerly a city of Norfolk county, Massachusetts,
U.S.A., situated between Boston and Dorchester, but
since 1868 a part of Boston. It is primarily a residential
district. Among its institutions are the Roxbury Latin School,
established in 1645,[1] the Fellowes Athenaeum (a part of the
Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library), with about
26,000 volumes in 1909, and the New England Hospital for
Women and Children (1863), the New England Baptist Hospital
(1893), the Woman's Charity Club Hospital (1890), the Roxbury
Homoeopathic Dispensary (1886), the Roxbury Home for
Children and Aged Women (1856), a Home for Aged Couples
(1884) and the Massachusetts Home for Intemperate Women
(1879). On Mount Bellevue, in West Roxbury (set apart from
Roxbury in 1851 and annexed to Boston in 1873), there is an
observatory (erected in 1869 by the city of Boston as a standpipe
for the high service water supply). Among the manufactures
of the district are cotton and woollen goods, cordage,
carpets, shoes and foundry products. The town of Roxbury
(at first usually spelled Rocksbury) was founded in 1630 by
some of the Puritan immigrants who came with Governor John
Winthrop; the settlers were led by William Pynchon, who in
1636 led a party from here and founded Springfield, Mass. At
the home of Rev Thomas Welde (d. 1662), the first minister,
Anne Hutchinson (q.v.) was held in custody during the winter
of 1637–38. Associated as teacher with Welde and his successors,
Samuel Danforth and Nehemiah Walter, was John
Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, who removed to Roxbury in
1632 and died here in 1690. Roxbury was the home also
of Thomas Dudley, of his son Joseph and of his grandson Paul;
of Robert Calef (d. 1719), the leader of the opposition to the
witchcraft craze; of General Joseph Warren, and of William
Eustis (1753–1825), who was U.S. secretary of war (1809–12).
minister to the Netherlands (1814–18), and governor of
Massachusetts (1823–25), and from 1837 to 1845 Theodore
Parker was the pastor of the Unitarian Church of West Roxbury.
Of special interest in the old Roxbury burial-ground is the
“ Ministers' Tomb,” containing the remains of John Eliot, and
the tomb of the Dudleys. West Roxbury was the scene of
the Brook Farm experiment (see Brook Farm). Roxbury was
chartered as a city in 1846.
See F. S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury, its Memorable Persons and Places (Boston, 1878 and 1905).
ROY, WILLIAM (1726-1790), a famous British surveyor,
military draughtsman, antiquary, &c. In 1746, when an
assistant in the office of Colonel Watson, deputy quartermaster general
in North Britain, he began the survey of the mainland
of Scotland, the results of which were embodied in what is
known as the “duke of Cumberland's map.” In 1755 he
obtained his commission in the 4th King's Own Foot, and in
I7 59 gained his lieutenancy' and went to serve in Germany in
the Seven Years' War. In 1765 he appears as deputy quartermaster-general
to the forces, surveyor-general of coasts and
engineer-director of military surveys in Great Britain; in 1767
he became F.R.S., in 1781 major-general, in 1783 director of
Royal Engineers. Besides his campaigns and observations in
Germany, his visits to Ireland (1766) and to Gibraltar (1768)
were important. In 1783-84 he conducted observations for
determining the relative positions of the French and English
royal observatories. His measurement of a base-line for that
purpose on Hounslow Heath in 1784, the germ of all subsequent
surveys of the United Kingdom, gained him in 1785 the
Copley 'medal of the Royal Society. Roy's measurements
(not fully 'utilized till 1787, when the Paris and Greenwich
observatories were properly connected) form the basis of the
topographical survey of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Sussex.
He was finishing an account of this work for the Phil. Trans.
when he died on the 1st of July 1790.
Roy's principal book-publication is the Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain (1793). See also notices of him and contributions from him in the records of the War Office and the Royal Engineers, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vols(lxvii., lxxvl, lxxvii., lxxx., lxxxv., and in the Gentlemanfs Magazine, vols. lv., lx. He is whimsically denounced by Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns in Scott's Antiguary.
ROYAL FERN, in botany, the common name for the 'fern
Osmunda regalis, a native of Britain, where it grows in bogs,
marshy woods, &c. It is a handsome plant with bi-pinnate
fronds 2 to 6 ft. long and 1 ft. or more broad; the tops of the
fronds are fertile, the 'fertile pinnae being cylindrical and
densely covered with the spore-cases, giving the appearance of a
dense panicle of flowers, whence the plant is known as the
flowering fern. There are various cultivated forms-cristata
has the ends of the fronds and the pinnae finely crested, and
corymbifera has curiously forked and crested fronds. Several
other species, such as O. cinnamamea, O. Claytoniana, are
known as handsome greenhouse ferns' (see also FERNS).
ROYAL SOCIETY, THE, the oldest scientific society in Great
Britain, and one of the oldest in Europe. The Royal Society
(more fully, The Royal Society of London for Improving
Natural”Knowledge) is usually considered to have been founded
in the year 1660, but a nucleus had in fact been in existence for
some years before that date. As early as the year 1645 weekly
meetings were held in 'London of “ divers worthy persons,
inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human
learning, and particularly of what hath been called the New
Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy, ” and there can belittle
doubt that this gathering of philosophers is identical with the
“ Invisible College” of which Boyle speaks in sundry letters
written in 1646 and 1647. These weekly meetings, according
to Wallis, were first suggested by Theodore Haak, “ a German
of the Palatinate then resident in London, ” and they were held
sometimes in Dr Goddard's lodgings in Wood Street, sometimes
at the Bull-Head Tavern in Cheapside.
Some of these “ Philosophers, ” resident in Oxford about 1648, formed an association there under the title of the Philosophical Society of Oxford, and used to meet, most usually in the rooms of Dr Wilkins, warden of Wadham College. A close intercommunication was maintained between the Oxford and
London Philosophers; but ultimately the activity of the society was concentrated in the London meetings, which were held principally at Gresham College. A,
On November 28, 1660, the first journal book of the society was opened with a “ memorandum, ” from which the following is an extract: “ Memorandum that Novemb. 28.,1660, These persons following, according to the usuall custom of most of them, mett together at Gresham Colledge to heare Mr Wren's lecture, viz. The Lord Brouncker, Mr Boyle, Mr Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr Wilkins, Dr Goddard, Dr Petty, Mr Ball, Mr Rooke, Mr Wren, Mr Hill. And after the lecture was ended, they did, according to the usuall manner, 'withdraw for mutuall converse. Where amongst other matters that were discoursed of, something was offered about a designe of founding a Colledge for the promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning.” It was agreed at this meeting that the company should continue to assemble on Wednesdays at three o'clo, ck; an admission fee of ten shillings with a subscription of one shilling a week was instituted; Dr Wilkins was appointed chairman; and a list of forty-one persons judged likely and lit to join the design was. drawn up. On the following Wednesday Sir Robert Moray brought word that the king (Charles approved the design of the meetings; a form of obligation was framed, and was signed by all the persons enumerated in the memorandum of the 28th of November and by-seventy-three others. On the 12th of December another meeting was held at
- ↑ This school was founded, primarily through the influence of the Rev. John Eliot, by inhabitants of Roxbury. In 1672 Thomas Bell, one of the original founders, bequeathed to the school all his Roxbury lands. In 1789 the school was incorporated.
