Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rogers, Daniel (1538?-1591)
ROGERS, DANIEL (1538?–1591), diplomatist, eldest son of John Rogers (1500?–1555) [q. v.], was born at Wittenberg about 1538, came to England with his family in 1548, and was naturalised with them in 1552. After his father's death in 1555 he returned to Wittenberg, and studied under Melanchthon, but returned on Elizabeth's accession, and graduated B.A. at Oxford in August 1561. Nicasius Yetswiert, Elizabeth's secretary of the French tongue, who had known his father, and whose daughter Susan he afterwards married, introduced him to court. His knowledge of languages stood him in good stead. He was employed by Sir Henry Norris, the English ambassador in Paris between 1566 and 1570, and sent home much useful intelligence to Secretary Cecil. In October 1574 he went with Sir William Winter to Antwerp, and he accompanied an important embassy to the Netherlands, to treat with the Duke of Orange, in June 1575. In July he was elected secretary of the fellowship of English merchants settled at Antwerp. His father had in earlier years been their chaplain. He was still engaged in diplomatic business in the Low Countries through 1576, and in March 1577 was there again to negotiate the terms on which Queen Elizabeth was to lend 20,000l. to the States-General. This business occupied him till March 1578. In September 1580 he was ordered to Germany to induce the Duke of Saxony to stay dissensions which were threatening a schism among German Lutherans. By an unhappy mischance he was arrested on imperial territory by the Baron von Anholt, at the request of Philip of Spain, and spent four years in captivity. His release was procured by the baron's counsellor-at-law, Stephen Degner, who had been Roger's fellow-student under Melanchthon at Wittenberg. Degner promised Rogers's gaolers 160l. When Rogers put the facts before Lord Burghley, the latter ordered a collection to be made among the clergy to defray the sum. On 5 May 1587 Rogers was appointed a clerk of the privy council; he had already filled the office of assistant clerk. He was M.P. for Newport, Cornwall, 1588–9. He still occasionally transacted official business abroad, visiting Denmark in December 1587, and again in June 1588, when he conveyed expressions of sympathy from Queen Elizabeth to the young king on the death of his father, Frederic II. On his own responsibility he procured an arrangement by which the subjects of Denmark and Norway undertook not to serve the king of Spain against England.
He died on 11 Feb. 1590–1, and was buried in the church of Sunbury beside his father-in-law's grave. In a ‘Visitation of Middlesex’ dated 1634 he was described as ‘of Sunbury.’ According to the same authority he had two children—a son Francis, who married a lady named Cory; and a posthumous daughter, Posthuma, who married a man named Speare. The son is said to have left a son, also named Francis, but his descendants have not been traced.
Rogers was a man of scholarly tastes, and was the intimate friend of the antiquary Camden. The latter calls him ‘vir optimus’ in a letter to Sir Henry Savile (Smith's Epistolæ, No. 13), and he contemplated a discourse ‘concerning the acts of the Britons’ for Camden's ‘Britannia,’ but it was never completed. Camden quotes some Latin poems by him in his account of Salisbury, including an epigram on the windows, pillars, and tower-steps in the cathedral there, which he represented as respectively equalling in number the months, weeks, and days in the year. Rogers was also known to the scholar Gruter, who described him to Camden as ‘protestantissimus,’ and he wrote to Hadrianus Junius asking him for early references to the history of Ireland (Epist. 476, 479, 628). He wrote Latin verses in praise of Bishop Jewel, which are appended to Lawrence Humphrey's ‘Life of the Bishop,’ and Latin verses by him also figure in the preface to Ortelius's ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ and in Ralph Aggas's description of Oxford University, 1578.
[Chester's John Rogers, 1863, pp. 259–71; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 569; Hunter's MS. Chorus Vatum in Addit. MS. 24487, ff. 1–2; Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Chauncey's Hertfordshire, i. 123.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.238
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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