commander-in-chief at Barbadoes and the Leeward islands, and

conducted operations against Martinique, St. Lucia, and Granada, which he speedily reduced. He returned home in 1763 on the conclusion of peace, and in the following year was created a baronet, and soon after was appointed governor of Greenwich hospital, an office which he resigned when in 1771 he was appointed commander-in-chief on the Jamaica station. He was recalled in 1774. He had been elected member for Penryn; and in 1768, after a ruinous contest, he was chosen for Northampton. He thus became involved in great pecuniary difficulties, and was in consequence obliged to retire to Paris, where he remained until 1778, when the French court took part with the American colonies against Great Britain. Admiral Rodney having been enabled by the assistance of friends to make satisfactory arrangements with his creditors, returned to England, and in October, 1779, was appointed commander-in-chief of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands. Before he had been ten days at sea he captured sixteen Spanish transports, with seven ships of war. Eight days later (16th January, 1780) he fell in with a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, consisting of eleven sail of the line and two frigates, of which he captured four and destroyed two. In April following he attacked and defeated a French fleet under Count de Guichen, near Martinique, an exploit for which he received the thanks of both houses of parliament and a pension of £2000 a year. In 1780 Admiral Rodney was chosen, free of expense, the colleague of Fox in the representation of Westminster, and was made a knight of the bath. In the following year, war having broken out with Holland, Rodney received instructions to attack the possessions of the Dutch in the West Indies, and captured the island of St. Eustatia, in which he found an immense booty valued at upwards of three millions. He was afterwards accused of undue severity in his treatment of the inhabitants of this island, whom he termed a nest of thieves and vipers. The Dutch colonies of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, also fell into his hands. In consequence of a painful ailment brought upon him by the climate, the admiral was obliged to return home in the autumn of 1781 to recruit his health, and was welcomed with great enthusiasm. He resumed his post in the following year, and on the 12th of April encountered a powerful French fleet under Count de Grasse. He put in practice for the first time the bold manœuvre of breaking the line, and after a severe engagement, which lasted eleven hours, he sank one ship and took five, including the admiral's ship, the Ville de Paris, which was freighted with thirty-six chests of money, thus making, as Rodney wrote to his wife, four admirals whom he had captured in two years. For this brilliant victory the admiral, with his officers and seamen, received the thanks of parliament. He was also appointed vice-admiral of Great Britain, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Rodney of Stoke in Somersetshire. Orders for his recall having been somewhat ungraciously issued by the ministry shortly before the engagement, the admiral returned home in September, and was welcomed by all classes with a burst of gratitude and joy. He survived four years, and died in 1792, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Lord Rodney was twice married and left a numerous family. A monument was erected to his memory in St. Paul's at the public expense.—J. T. RODOLPH. See Rudolf. ROE or ROWE, Sir Thomas, an English diplomatist under the first Stewarts, was born about 1580 at Low Layton, near Wanstead, Essex. He studied at Magdalen college, Oxford, and after spending some time at one of the inns of court, he was made squire of the body to Queen Elizabeth. In 1604 he was included by King James I. in his first creation of knights, and shortly after was sent by Prince Henry on a voyage of discovery to the West Indies. In November, 1614, he set out on an embassage to the Great Mogul, the expense of which was defrayed by the East India Company. He spent four years in the execution of this service, an account of which was printed in 1665 as an appendix to the translations of Pietro della Valle's Travels, and again in Churchill's Collection of Voyages, vol. i., and in Pinkerton, vol. viii. Returning to England he was elected member of parliament for Cirencester in 1620, but in the following year was sent by the king as ambassador to the grand seignior. His negotiations there were productive of permanent benefit to this country, and were continued for seven years—during the reigns of Osman, Mustapha, and Amurath. The history of this embassy was published in 1740, with a portrait of the ambassador. Towards the close of 1629 he went to the court of Poland and Sweden, and contributed so materially to the truce then concluded between those two kingdoms that a medal was struck in his honour, of which an impression now exists in the English state paper office. (Bruce's Calendar, 1629-31, p. 466.) In 1640 he sat in parliament for the university of Oxford, but again quitted legislative for diplomatic duties, by going as ambassador to the emperor at Ratisbon in 1641, to mediate on behalf of the prince elector. He wrote a "Compendious Relation of the Proceedings" at this Diet, which is in MS. in Magdalen college. After his return he was made chancellor of the garter and member of the privy council. His death occurred not long after the breaking out of the civil war on the 6th of November, 1644. He was buried in Woodford church, near Wanstead. He gave several choice books to the Bodleian library while living; and after his death his widow transferred to the keeper of the same library two hundred and forty-two silver medals. Among the entries in the calendar of state papers, is that of a warrant to pay Sir Thomas Roe £3500 for two pendant diamonds sold by him to the king.—R. H. ROEBUCK, John, an eminent British metallurgist and practical chemist, was born at Sheffield in 1718, and died at Kinneil house, near Borrowstoness in Scotland, on the 17th of July, 1794. He studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Leyden, at the latter of which he took the degree of doctor of medicine. He practised as a physician for some time at Birmingham. Having turned his attention to the subject of chemical manufacture, he entered into partnership with Samuel Garbett in a sulphuric acid work, about 1749, in which he introduced for the first time the use (since universally adopted) of leaden chambers instead of glass retorts. This undertaking was perfectly successful, and produced a large profit to the partners. The same was the case with the celebrated Carron Iron Works, established by Roebuck, near the river of that name, in 1760. Unfortunately, the same enterprising and sanguine spirit which had guided him to those undertakings, induced him to take a lease of some coal and salt mines, which not only produced no profit, but swallowed up the whole of his previous gains, and reduced him to bankruptcy; so that during the latter years of his life he lived on an allowance granted by his creditors. About the year 1765 Roebuck formed an intimate friendship with James Watt, of whose improvements on the steam engine he formed so high an opinion, that he agreed to pay the whole expense of obtaining a patent and trying the invention in practice, upon condition of receiving two-thirds of the profits; but soon after the patent had been obtained, the commencement of his pecuniary difficulties put a stop to the intended experiments, and suspended the introduction of Watt's invention into practice for several years. Roebuck's creditors set no value on his share of Watt's patent, and so rejected the means by which his fortune might have been retrieved. That share was sold to Boulton in 1773. Roebuck was a fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, and a contributor to their Transactions.—W. J. M. R. * ROEBUCK, John Arthur, M.P., Q.C., was born in 1801 at Madras, where his father was a resident. His grandfather was the well-known physician, the founder of the Carron ironworks, and coadjutor of James Watt. An early residence in Canada contributed to familiarize Mr. Roebuck with the affairs of that colony, of a province of which he became afterwards the official representative. In 1831 he was called to the English bar at the Inner temple, and in 1832 he entered the house of commons as member for Bath; becoming at once prominent in the little band of philosophical radicals to which he attached himself. In 1835 he commenced the publication of his strongly anti-whig "Pamphlets for the people." He also contributed to the London Review, and soon afterwards became agent in England for the house of assembly for Lower Canada. From 1837, when he lost his seat for Bath, to 1841 he was out of parliament, but sat for Bath from 1841 to 1847, when he was again rejected. Since May, 1849, he has represented Sheffield in the house of commons. In that assembly he has done some notable things; among them the proposal of the vote of confidence in Lord Palmerston in 1850, after the Pacifico affair, and which was carried against a coalition headed by the late Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Disraeli, and Joseph Hume. Another of his achievements was the vote, carried on his motion, in January, 1855, for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the state of the army before Sebastopol, a vote which overthrew the Aberdeen administration. Soon afterwards he became chairman of the now defunct administrative reform association. Mr. Roebuck