Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/391

 port collectors' accounts of the customs, with a salary of 600l. a year. This post he appears to have enjoyed until 1761. In addition he was deputy-paymaster of the forces at Gibraltar from 1745 to 1762 (Court and City Register), and on 16 May 1748, in conjunction with Philip Ludwell Grymes, received a grant of the office of receiver-general of the revenues, duties, and imports in the colony and dominion of Virginia. He was granted a pension of 800l. a year, on the Irish establishment, on 3 June 1754 (Gent. Mag.)

At the general election of March 1761 Roberts, who owned property at Harwich and Esher (Royal Kalendar), entered parliament for Harwich, and represented that constituency until his death. From 23 Oct. 1761 to 28 Dec. 1762, and again from 20 July 1765 until his death, he was a lord commissioner of trade and foreign plantations, with a salary of 1,000l. a year. He died in London on 13 July 1772. A marble monument to his memory was erected by his three surviving sisters, Susannah, Rebecca, and Dorothy, in Westminster Abbey in 1776. To make room for it part of Chaucer's tomb was removed (, Letters, ed. Cunningham). His portrait was painted, with Pelham, by John Shackleton [q. v.], and engraved by R. Houston.

His son, (1739–1810), was for some time a clerk in the secretary of state's office, and was under-secretary of state for the southern department from July 1765 to October 1766 (Cal. State Papers). He was made secretary of the province of Quebec on 12 July 1768, and afterwards commissary-general. He died in 1810.

[Parliamentary Returns; Haydn's Book of Dignities; Foster's Peerage; Brayley's History of Westminster Abbey.]

 ROBERTS, JOHN (1749–1817), Welsh poet. [See .]

 ROBERTS, JOHN (1767–1834), Welsh divine, was son of Evan and Mary Roberts of Bronyllan, Mochdre, Montgomeryshire, where he was born on 25 Feb. 1767. He was one of twelve children. His sister Mary was mother of William Williams (Gwilym Cyfeiliog) (1801–1876) and the Rev. Richard Williams (1802–1842) of Liverpool. A younger brother, George (1769–1853), an independent minister, emigrated to America, and started the Cambria settlement at Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, where he published, in 1834, ‘A View of the Primitive Ages,’ a translation of the ‘Drych y Prif Oesoedd,’ by Theophilus Evans [q. v.]; this was reprinted at Llanidloes, North Wales, about 1864 (, Montgomeryshire Worthies, pp. 124–6, 281–3, 313, 319).

John's parents removed in his youth to Llanbrynmair, and joined the old-established independent church there. Roberts commenced to preach in January 1790. In March following he entered the Oswestry academy, then under Dr. Edward Williams (1750–1813) [q. v.]; he was ordained on 25 Aug. 1796 as co-pastor of the Llanbrynmair church with the then aged Richard Tibbot, upon whose death, in March 1798, he became sole pastor. In addition to his pastoral work, Roberts kept a day-school at his chapel, and through his exertions six schoolhouses for occasional services and Sunday schools were built within a radius of five miles of Llanbrynmair. In 1806 he was induced to take a small farm belonging to Sir W. Williams-Wynn of Wynnstay, called Diosg, on the improvement of which he spent much money and energy, though only a tenant from year to year; but the harsh treatment subsequently dealt to him, and, after his death, to his widow and children, by raising the rent on his own improvements, under threat of a notice to quit, was made public by his son, Samuel Roberts (1800–1885) [q. v.], in ‘Diosg Farm: a Sketch of its History’ (Newtown, 1854, 12mo), and has since been frequently quoted as a typical example of the confiscation of tenants' improvements by Welsh landlords (see, Letters and Essays on Wales, 1884, pp. 107–9; Minutes of Evidence before Welsh Land Commission, 1893–6, Qu. 74898 et seq.). He died on 21 July 1834, and was buried in the burial-ground of the parish church.

On 17 Jan. 1797 Roberts married Mary Brees of Coed Perfydau, Llanbrynmair, who died on 9 March 1848. By her he had three sons—Samuel (1800–1885) and John (1804–1884), who are separately noticed—and Richard, besides two daughters, one of whom, Maria, was the mother of John Griffith (1821–1877), a Welsh journalist, widely known as ‘Y Gohebydd.’

Roberts was noted for his suavity of temper and eminent piety. His theological views, which were moderately Calvinistic, he expounded in ‘Dybenion Marwolaeth Crist’ (‘The Ends of Christ's Death’), Carmarthen, 1814, 12mo. This evoked a tedious controversy, in which Roberts was bitterly assailed by Arminians on the one hand and by ultra-Calvinists on the other. Thomas Jones (1756–1820) [q. v.] of the latter school replied to Roberts, and this drew from him in 1820 ‘Galwad Ddifrifol ar Ymofynwyr am y Gwirionedd,’ Dolgelly, 12mo (‘A Serious Call to Inquirers for the Truth’), which was