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 the Fury. During his absence, on 26 Dec. 1822, he was promoted to be lieutenant, and as such sailed in the Fury in Parry's third voyage in 1824–5, and was still in her when she was wrecked in Regent's Inlet. In 1827 he was again in the Hecla with Parry in the expedition to Spitzbergen and the endeavour to reach the pole by travelling over the ice. On his return he was made a commander, 8 Nov. 1827. In the Felix Booth expedition of 1829–33 he accompanied his uncle in the little Victory, had a principal share in carrying out the sledging operations on the coasts of Boothia and King William Land, and was the actual discoverer of the magnetic pole on 1 June 1831. On 28 Oct. 1834 he was promoted to post rank, and in 1836 commanded the Cove in a voyage to Baffin's Bay for the relief of some frozen-in whalers. In 1838 he was employed by the admiralty on a magnetic survey of the United Kingdom, and in April 1839 was appointed to command an expedition fitted out for magnetic and geographical discovery in the Antarctic.

The two ships Erebus and Terror sailed from England in September 1839. They first crossed the Antarctic Circle on 1 Jan. 1841, and in a short time discovered a long range of high land, which Ross named Victoria, a volcano upwards of twelve thousand feet high, named Mount Erebus, and the ‘marvellous range of ice-cliffs’ which effectually and to all appearances permanently barred the way to any nearer approach to the pole. For this discovery, in 1842 he was awarded the gold medal of the Geographical Societies of London and Paris. The expedition returned to England in 1843, having lost only one man by illness in the four years. Ross was knighted, and in the following year was made an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford. In 1847 he published ‘A Voyage of Discovery in the Southern and Antarctic Seas’ (2 vols. 8vo). In 1848–9 he commanded the Enterprise in an expedition for the relief of Sir John Franklin. He had no further service, though he continued to be consulted as the first authority on all matters relating to Arctic navigation. He died at Aylesbury on 3 April 1862. He married, in 1843, Anne, daughter of Thomas Coulman of Whitgift Hall, in Yorkshire; she predeceased him in 1857, leaving issue three sons and a daughter. It was said that an agreement with her family on his marriage prevented his acceptance of the command of the Franklin expedition which was, in the first instance, offered to him. Ross was elected F.R.S. on 11 Dec. 1828. Stephen Pearce twice painted his portrait; one picture is in the Franklin Museum at Greenwich, the other in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which also possesses a medallion by Bernard Smith.

[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Ann. Reg. 1862, p. 395; Markham's Fifty Years' Work of the Royal Geogr. Soc. p. 65; Sir John Ross's Narrative of a Second Voyage, &c.; his own Voyage of Discovery, &c., referred to in the text; information from his cousin, Mr. Andrew Ross.]  ROSS, JOHN (1411?–1491), antiquary of Warwick. [See .]

ROSS or ROSSE, JOHN (1719–1792), bishop of Exeter, born at Ross in Herefordshire, on 24 or 25 June 1719, was the only son of John Rosse, attorney in that town. So late as 1749 Gray spelt the name as 'Rosse.' He was educated at the grammar school, Hereford, was admitted a pensioner at St. John's College, Cambridge (April 1737), and on the following 22 June became a Somerset scholar of the third foundation at his college. He graduated B.A. 1740-1, M.A. 1744, B.D. 1751, D.D. 1756, and on 10 July 1744 was incorporated at Oxford. From March 1743-4 to 1770 he held a fellowship at St. John's, and down to 1768 he discharged a variety of college duties.

In 1757 Ross was appointed to the preachership at the Rolls (although Hurd was a competitor and received the strong support of Warburton and Charles Yorke), and in the same year became a king's chaplain. Lord Weymouth, who had been one of his private pupils, bestowed upon him in 1760 the valuable benefice of Frome, Somerset, and he retained it until his death; he further received in March 1769 the twelfth canonry in Durham Cathedral. He was consecrated on 25 Jan. 1778 as bishop of Exeter, and held with the bishopric, as was the case with many successive occupants of the see, the archdeaconry of Exeter, a prebendal stall in the cathedral, and the rectory of Shobrooke in Devonshire. He also retained the vicarage of Frome, but resigned the canonry at Durham. Though the see of Exeter was meanly endowed, he had the good fortune to receive 8,000l. for adding two lives on a lease at Cargoll (, Biogr. Sketches, iii. 157; cf., Journals, pp. 162, 170).

Ross personally examined all candidates for deacon's orders, and was very hospitable; his conversation abounded in pleasant anecdotes and apt literary references. He disapproved of the introduction of Sunday schools (, Reminiscences, i. 138-42), but in a sermon before the House