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Frederic Rogers, Baron Blachford

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1811-1889), British civil servant, eldest son of Sir Frederick Leman Rogers, 7th Bart. (whom he succeeded in the baronetcy in 1851), was born in London on the 31 st of January 1811. He was educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford, where he had a brilliant career, winning the Craven University scholarship, and taking a double first-class in classics and mathematics. He became a fellow of Oriel (1833), and won the Vinerian scholarship (1834), and fellowship (1840). He was called to the bar in 1837, but never practised. At school and at Oxford he was a contemporary of W. E. Gladstone, and at Oxford he began a lifelong friendship with J. H. Newman and R. W. Church; his classical and literary tastes, and his combination of liberalism in politics with High Church views in religion, together with his good social position and interesting character, made him an admired member of their circles. For two or three years (1841-1844) he wrote for The Times, and he helped to found The Guardian in 1846; he also did a good deal to assist the Tractarian movement. But he eventually settled down to the life of a government official. He began in 1844 as registrar of joint-stock companies, and in 1846 became commissioner of lands and emigration. Between 1857 and 1859 he was engaged in government missions abroad, connected with colonial questions, and in 1860 he was appointed permanent under-secretary of state for the colonies. Sir Frederic Rogers was the guiding spirit of the colonial office under six successive secretaries of state, and on his retirement in 1871 was raised to the peerage as Baron Blachford of Wisdolne, a title taken from his place in Devonshire. He died on the 21st of November 1889.

A volume of his letters, edited by G. E. Marindin (1896), contains an interesting Life, partly autobiographical.