Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/376

 nomenclature largely obsolete, Roxburgh's book is still not only a mine of wealth on Indian economic botany, but also the only compendious guide to the plants of the plains.

The manuscript copy of the ‘Flora Indica’ which Roxburgh took to England with him he submitted to Robert Brown. This is now in the botanical department of the British Museum, and it contains many notes by both Roxburgh and Brown that are not in the printed editions.

Besides these works, Roxburgh published a ‘Botanical Description of a New Species of Swietenia or Mahogany,’ London, 1793, 4to; a number of letters on Indian fibres in the ‘Transactions of the Society of Arts,’ vol. xxii. (1804), and papers in ‘Asiatic Researches,’ vols. ii.–xi., Nicholson's ‘Journal,’ ‘Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine,’ ‘Transactions of the London Medical Society,’ vol. i. (1810), and ‘Transactions of the Linnean Society,’ vols. vii. and xxi. These mostly deal with Indian botany, especially from an economic standpoint; they treat, for instance, of hemp, caoutchouc, teak, the butter-tree and the sugar-cane, but they include others on the lac insect, on a species of dolphin from the Ganges, on silkworms, and on land winds.

Wallich seems to have distributed Roxburgh's dried specimens, so that no set now exists; but his numerous detailed drawings largely compensate for this loss. These drawings were copied for Kew, at the expense of Sir W. J. Hooker.

There is an engraved portrait of Roxburgh by C. Warren in the ‘Transactions of the Society of Arts,’ vol. xxxiii. (1815), and an enlarged photo-etching of this forms the frontispiece of ‘Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta,’ vol. v. (1895), a volume which is dedicated to Roxburgh's memory.

[Brief Memoir by Dr. G. King in Annals of Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, vol. v. (1895); The Cottage Gardener, 1851, vi. 65; the prefaces to Roxburgh's works.] 

ROXBY, ROBERT (1809?–1866), actor, born about 1809, was son of William Roxby Beverley, an actor, who was manager at one time of the theatre in Tottenham Street, Fitzroy Square. Henry Roxby Beverley [q. v.] and William Beverley, the well-known scene-painter, were his brothers. After performing in the country, Roxby appeared in 1839 at the St. James's, under the management of Hooper. In 1843 he took the Theatre Royal, Manchester, where he played many leading parts in comedy. He was for some years in London at the Lyceum or Drury Lane, and was during eleven years stage-manager of the theatre last named. He acted much with Charles Mathews, whose principal parts he was in the habit of taking in the country, and was with him and Madam Vestris at the Lyceum from 1847 to 1855. This was his brightest period. On 10 Oct. 1855 he played, at Drury Lane, Rob Royland to the Mopus of Charles Mathews, in ‘Married for Money,’ an adaptation of Poole's ‘Wealthy Widow.’ On this occasion the Lyceum company had been engaged by E. T. Smith for Drury Lane. The following year at Drury Lane he supported Mrs. Waller, an actress from America and Australia. On 8 March 1858 he was the original Lord George Lavender in Sterling Coyne's ‘Love Knot.’ He played, 14 March 1860, an original part in Fitzball's ‘Christmas Eve, or the Duel in the Snow,’ founded on Gérome's famous picture; was on 28 Nov. 1861 the first Hardress Cregan in Byron's burlesque, ‘Miss Eily O'Connor.’ At the Princess's as stage manager, 23 Jan. 1863, he was seriously burnt in extinguishing a fire on the stage, by which two girls in the pantomime lost their lives. On the first appearance in London of Walter Montgomery [q. v.] at the Princess's as Othello, 18 June 1863, Roxby was the Roderigo. At the close of the year he was again at Drury Lane, where, 12 April 1864, he played in ‘An April Fool’ by Brough and Halliday. On 25 July 1866, after a long and painful illness, he died at the house of his brother, 26 Russell Square, London. Roxby was a capable stage-manager and, in spite of some hardness of style and weakness of voice, a respectable actor in light-comedy parts.

[Personal Recollections; Era, 29 July 1866; Gent. Mag. 1866, ii. 416; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ix. 116; Scott and Howard's Blanchard.] 

ROY, WILLIAM (fl. 1527), friar and assistant to William Tindal in the translation of the New Testament, was possibly son of William Roy, native of Brabant, to whom letters patent of denization were issued in London on 3 Feb. 1512 (Patent Rolls, 3 Henry VIII, p. 3, m. ii.) He studied at Cambridge, and subsequently became a friar observant in the Franciscan cloister at Greenwich. In 1528 Humphrey Monmouth was prosecuted for ‘assisting Tindal and Roy to go to Almayn to study Luther's sect’ (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, iii. 1760;, Eccles. Mem. i. 588). This doubtless refers to Tindal's departure from London in May