|
|
Vol. I. Slight indeed, and very remote will his relationship appear;
but no nearer connex, can be found, I think, betwe. any of our innumeraable
Rogerses and the glorious suffer. John, the editor of Tyndall's bible.
Encouragem. to adhere to the illusion, against the strong array of Mr.
Deane's logic, was felt by some of the supporters of tradit. for the holy
martyr's descent, on hearing that Mr. Hunter of London was slow in
deciding adverse to the claim. No judgment, on such a point, could outweigh
his. He says in a letter to me. Oct. 1866, "The subject has been
so long absent from my mind, that I really do not now understand, how
the question rests at present, or even what I may have written about
it" -- "I know nothing but what I learned from America; and, on the
other hand, I never saw in English docum. any evid. of the descent wh.
they claim, wh. may, for any thing I kn. be correct, tho. I shd. like to
see the evid. on wh. it rests. Something beyond tradit. is now demand.
in all claims to ancestr. honors." Only will I add that this tradit. is very
modern. In the mass of MS. gather. by Candler to illustr. the Puritan
Hist. of Eng. tho. he is so copious upon the E. counties' confessors, no
reference to the desc. of John of D. was perceiv. by Hunter, and this
since the tradit. was first ment. within twenty yrs. The name was most
widely diffus. in Eng. Perhaps there were near a hundred min. in the
days of Elizabeth nam. Rogers, of wh. one or more may well have been
s. of the proto-martyr of the preced. reign. In the Register of the
single diocese of Salisbury by Sir Thomas Phillips, from 1297, to 1810,
wh. he gave me, are rec. the institutions of Nicholas R. 1565; of Ambrose
R. 1569; and of John R. 1582. So natural is it to infer that the blood
of the sufferer should in the sec. and third generat. be blessed, that the
writer of a Memoir of the fam. of Rev. Nathaniel, claiming to be a
descend. in Geneal. Reg. V. 105, most copiously carried out, makes his
f. John of Dedham, to be gr.s. of the martyr, and a student so diligent
as Dr. Allen, in the Sec. Ed. of his Biog. Dict. made even Nathaniel the
gr.s. whereas from the monum. inscript. on John, the Dedham min. we
learn that he was not b. bef. 1571 or 2, 16 or 17 yrs. after the solemn
scene of his supposed f's martyrd. in the midst of London. In his third
Ed. however, the f. of Nathaniel is made gr.s. of Smithfield John. No
tradit. that the f. of Nathaniel was descend. of the hero of 1555, had
ever reached his successor at the altar, or the hearers in Dedham, bef. it
was told by me in 1842. See 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. VIII. 309. Good acco.
it not to be any where found of the ten ch. male and fem. of the noble
sufferer at Smithfield, exc. Daniel, ment. by Fox, the martyrolog. He
got promotion at Court, under patronage of some civilian of Elizabeth and
may hardly have encourag. the puritan tendency of any relative. See
Hunter's Suffolk Emigr. 3 Mass. Histo. Coll. X. 165. There was a
|
|
