Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/305

 where he was physician of the infirmary for many years. Professor John Rotheram (d. 1804) [q. v.] was his elder brother. He is said to have first gone to sea in a collier. In April 1777 he entered the navy as able seaman on board the Centaur in the Channel. He was in a very short time rated a midshipman and master's mate. After three years in the Centaur he was moved, in April 1780, to the Barfleur, carrying the flag of vice-admiral Barrington, and on 13 Oct. 1780 was appointed acting-lieutenant of the Monarch, one of the ships which went out to the West Indies with Sir Samuel (afterwards Viscount) Hood [q. v.], was with Hood in the actions off Martinique on 29 April 1781, off the Chesapeake on 5 April 1781, at St. Kitts in January, and in the actions of 9 and 12 April 1782. In 1783 she returned to England, and on 19 April Rotheram was confirmed in the rank of lieutenant. In 1787 he was in the Bombay Castle; in 1788 in the Culloden; in 1790 in the Vengeance, all in the Channel. In October 1790 he was again appointed to the Culloden, and, continuing in her, was present in the action of 1 June 1794. When the French ship Vengeur struck, Rotheram was sent in command of the party which took possession of her, and when it was clear that the ship was sinking, Rotheram by his energy and cool self-possession succeeded in saving many of her crew (Naval Chron. xiv. 469;, Miscell. Essays, ‘The Sinking of the Vengeur’). On 6 July 1794 Rotheram was promoted to the rank of commander. In 1795 and 1796 he commanded the Camel store-ship in the Mediterranean, and from 1797 to 1800 the Hawk in the North Sea and the West Indies. In the summer of 1800 he brought home the Lapwing as acting-captain, and was confirmed in the rank on 27 Aug. In December 1804 he was appointed to the Dreadnought as flag-captain to Vice-admiral Cuthbert (afterwards Lord) Collingwood [q. v.] On 10 Oct. 1805 he followed Collingwood to the Royal Sovereign, and commanded her in the battle of Trafalgar, 21 Oct. It is said that prior to the battle there was some bitterness between him and Collingwood which Nelson removed, saying that in the presence of the enemy all Englishmen should be as brothers. On 4 Nov. Collingwood appointed him to the Bellerophon, vacant by the death of Captain John Cooke; he commanded her in the Channel till June 1808, when she was put out of commission. Rotheram had no further service, but was nominated a C.B. in 1815, and in 1828 was appointed one of the captains of Greenwich Hospital. He died of apoplexy on 2 Nov. 1830, in the house of his friend Richard Wilson of Bildeston in Suffolk.

[Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. iii. (vol. ii.) 298; Service-book in the Public Record Office; Naval Chronicle, xiv. 469; Gent. Mag. 1830, ii. 565.] 

ROTHERAM, JOHN (1725–1789), theologian, second of the three sons of the Rev. William Rotherham—as the father spelt his name—master of the free grammar school of Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, was born there on 22 June 1725, and was educated at his father's school. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, as batler, on 21 Feb. 1744–5, being partly maintained by his elder brother, the Rev. Thomas Rotheram, professor in Codrington College, Barbados. He graduated B.A. in 1748–9, and then proceeded to Barbados as tutor to the two sons of the Hon. Mr. Frere, arriving in the island on 20 Jan. 1749–50. In 1751 he accepted the post of assistant in Codrington College.

While dwelling with the Frere family Rotheram wrote his first work: ‘The Force of the Argument for the Truth of Christianity drawn from a Collective View of Prophecy,’ 1752, which was prompted by a controversy between Sherlock, bishop of London, and Dr. Conyers Middleton [q. v.] His increased leisure when connected with the college enabled him to produce the larger volume: ‘A Sketch of the One Great Argument, formed from the several concurring Evidences for the Truth of Christianity’ (1754 and 1763). For these ‘services to religion’ he was, though absent in the colonies, created M.A. on 11 Dec. 1753 by special decree of Oxford University. In 1757 he returned to England.

Rotheram accepted, on arriving in London, the curacy of Tottenham in Middlesex, and held it until 1766. From 1760 to 1767 he enjoyed a Percy fellowship at University College, Oxford, and he was also one of the preachers at the royal chapel, Whitehall. His talents attracted the attention of Richard Trevor [q. v.], bishop of Durham, who bestowed on him the rectory of Ryton, where he remained from February 1766 to 1769. On 30 Oct. 1769 he was appointed by the same patron to the valuable rectory of Houghton-le-Spring, which he continued to hold until his death, and from 1778 to 1783, when he resigned the benefice in favour of his nephew, Richard Wallis, he was vicar of Seaham. He was chaplain to Bishop Trevor, on whom he preached a funeral sermon at Newcastle on 27 July 1771, and to Trevor's successor in the see; he was elected proctor in con-