John Hooper, Laurence Saunders, John Bradford and others for a year, their petitions, whether for less rigorous treatment or for opportunity of stating their case, being alike disregarded. In December 1554 parliament re-enacted the penal statutes against Lollards, and on January 22nd, 1555, two days after they took effect, Rogers with ten others came before the council at Gardiner's house in Southwark, and held his own in the examination that took place. On the 28th and 29th he came before the commission appointed by Cardinal Pole, and was sentenced to death by Gardiner for heretic ally denying the Christian character of the Church of Rome and the real presence in the sacrament. He awaited and met death (on the 4th of February 1555 at Smithfield) cheerfully, though denied even an interview with his wife. Noailles, the French ambassador, speaks of the support given to Rogers by the greatest part of the people: “even his children assisted at it, comforting him in such a manner that it seemed as if he had been led to a wedding.” He was the first Protestant martyr of Mary's reign, and his friend Bradford wrote that “he broke the ice valiantly."
The following divines of the same name may be distinguished:— John Rogers (1572?-1603), Puritan vicar of Dedham, Essex, “one of the most awakening preachers of the age.”—John Rogers (1610-1680), ejected vicar of Croglin, Cumberland, and the founder of Congregational churches in Teesdale and Weardale, where he evangelized the lead miners. John Rogers (1679-1729), one of George II.'s chaplains, famous for his share in the Bangorian controversy (1719), his Vindication of the Civil Establishment of Religion (1728), and his Persuasives to Conformity, addressed to Dissenters (1736) and to Quakers (1747).—John Rogers (1740?-1814), leader of the Irish seceding divines, minister of Cahans, Co. Monaghan.—John Rogers (1778-1856), rector of Mawnan, Cornwall, and the owner of the Penrose and Helston estates; a good botanist and mineralogist, and a distinguished Hebrew and Syriac scholar.
ROGERS, JOHN (1829-1904), American sculptor, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October 1829. In 1848 he became an apprentice in a machine shop at Manchester, New Hampshire, and remained there for about ten years. During the latter part of this time he had done some modelling in clay in his leisure hours, and, having decided to become a sculptor, he spent eight months in Rome and Paris in 1858-59.
Becoming discouraged, he returned to America and obtained
employment as a draughtsman in the office of the city surveyor
of Chicago; but soon afterwards, owing to the favourable
reception of his group of small figures, “The Checker Players,”
he resumed sculptural work, confining himself to these small
figures, known as “Rogers Groups,” which had an enormous popular success and were extensively reproduced. The Civil War in America gave him patriotic themes that increased his vogue and prosperity, and in 1863 he became a National Academician. His subjects were familiar scenes and incidents of home life known to the masses, and the reproductions of his groups were sold in the most remote districts as well as in the larger cities. He executed several life-sized statues, including “General John F. Reynolds" and a seated figure of Lincoln, both in Philadelphia; but it is by his statuettes that he is best remembered, and these were characterized by sentiment and human interest rather than any genuine artistic feeling. He died at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 27th of July 1904.
ROGERS, ROBERT (1727-1784?), American frontier soldier,
was born of Irish parentage in 1727, probably at Methuen,
Massachusetts, whence his father, James Rogers (often confused
with James Rogers, an early settler of Londonderry, N.H.),
removed in 1739 to Starktown (now Dunbarton), New Hampshire.
During the Seven Years' War he raised and commanded
a force of militia, known as Rogers' Rangers, which won a wide
reputation for its courage and endurance in the campaigns
about' Lake George. He took part in Wolfe's expedition
against Quebec, and on the 4th of October 1759 he destroyed
an Abnaki Indian village on the St Francis river near its
mouth and killed about 200 of its inhabitants. After the
Montreal campaign of 1760, in which he served, he was sent by
General Amherst to take possession of the north-western posts,
occupied Detroit on the 29th of November, and later returned
to the east. In 1763, during the Pontiac uprising, he accompanied
the relief expedition under James Dalyell to Detroit
and took part in the battle of Bloody Bridge on the 31st of July
(see PONTIAC). Soon after this he went to England, and in
1765 published in London a Concise Account of North America, containing a Description of the Several British Colonies . . . also an Account of the Several Nations and Tribes of Indians
(new edition, Albany, 1883). In 1766-68 he was commandant
of Michilimackinac. He spent the next few years in England,
and after 1772 was in the service of, the dey of Algiers. At
the beginning of the War of Independence he returned to
America, and in spite of his protestations of patriotism was
considered by Washington and others a Loyalist spy. He was
arrested by agents of Congress, but was paroled. His rearrest
he considered a release from his parole. He then openly
joined the British, and under a commission from General Howe
organized a regiment of Loyalists which was known as the
Queen's Rangers, and which after his return to England in
1776 was commanded by Capt. John G. Simcoe. In 1779 he
was commissioned to raise a regiment to be called the King's
Rangers, and he returned for a short time to America; but the
command of the Rangers, which soon became a part of the
garrison of St John's, Quebec, was taken by his brother James
(d. 1792), who had formerly served under Robert. Rogers
died in London probably in 1784.
In addition to the Concise Account of North America, he published his Journals (London, 1765), and is supposed to have written, at least in part, Ponteach, or the Savages of America, a Tragedy (London, 1766). See also his “Journal” in the Diary of the Siege of Detroit in the War with Pontiac (Albany, 1860; new edition, 1883), edited by F. B. Hough; and Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols., Boston, 1884).
ROGERS, SAMUEL (1763-1855), English poet, was born at
Newington Green, London, on the 30th of July 1763. His
father, Thomas Rogers, was the son of a Stourbridge glass
manufacturer, who was also a merchant in Cheapside. Thomas
Rogers had a place in the London business, and married Mary,
the only daughter of his father's partner, Daniel Radford,
becoming himself a partner shortly afterwards. On his mother's
side Samuel Rogers was connected with the two well-known
Nonconformist divines Philip and Matthew Henry, and it was
in Nonconformist, circles at Stoke Newington that he was
brought up. He was educated at private schools at Hackney
and Stoke Newington. He wished to enter the Presbyterian
ministry, but at his father's desire he joined the banking business
in Cornhill. In long holidays, necessitated by delicate health,
Rogers became a diligent student of English literature, particularly in Johnson, Gray and Goldsmith. Gray's poems, he
said, he had by heart. He had already made some contributions
to the Gentleman's Magazine, when in 1786 he published a volume containing some imitations of Goldsmith and an “Ode to Superstition” in the manner of Gray. In 1788 his elder brother Thomas died, and Samuel's business responsibilities
were increased. In the next year he paid a visit to
Scotland, where he met Adam Smith, Henry Mackenzie, the
Piozzis and others. In 1791 he was in Paris, and enjoyed a hurried inspection of the art collection of Philippe Egalité at the Palais Royal, many of the treasures of which were later on to pass into his possession. With Gray as his model, Rogers took great pains in polishing his verses, and six years elapsed after the publication of his first volume before he printed his elaborate poem on The Pleasures of Memory (1792). This poem may be regarded as the last embodiment of the poetic diction of the 18th century. Here is carried to the extremest pitch the theory of elevating and refining familiar themes by abstract treatment and lofty imagery. In this art of “raising a subject,” as the 18th-century phrase was, the Pleasures of Memory is much more perfect than Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, published a few years later in imitation. The acme of positive praise for the fashionable serious poetry of the time was given by Byron when he said, “There is not a vulgar line in the poem.”
In 1793 his father's death gave Rogers the principal share in the banking house in Cornhill, and a considerable income.
