Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/99

 great detail by Samuel Richardson (1740), but with scarcely any attempt at annotation or editing, beyond a very full analytical table of contents and decipherments of some of the ciphers. This large volume (of lxiv + 828 folio pages) was published mainly at the cost of the ‘Society for the Encouragement of Learning,’ and Thomas Carte [q. v.], who originated this society, appears to have arranged the papers published in this volume (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 6190 f. 21, 6185 ff. 103, 111; Harl. 1901). This was prospectively the first of several volumes, and the intention was to have published the rest of Roe's correspondence up to his death, but the scheme was abandoned. Roe also printed, besides several of his parliamentary speeches in pamphlet form: 1. ‘A True and Faithful Relation … of what hath lately happened in Constantinople, concerning the death of Sultan Osman and the setting up of Mustapha his uncle,’ London, 1622, 4to. 2. ‘A Discourse upon the reasons of the resolution taken in the Valteline against the tyranny of the Grisons and heretics,’ translated from Fra Paolo Sarpi, London, 4to, 1628 (reissued in 1650 as ‘The Cruel Subtilty of Ambition’). A poem by Roe on the death of Lord Harington appeared in ‘The Churches Lamentation for the Losse of the Godly,’ 1614 (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. v. 9).

A few of Roe's despatches, preserved in the state paper office, were edited in 1847 by Dr. S. R. Gardiner for the ‘Camden Society Miscellany,’ vol. vii., ‘Letters relating to the Mission of Sir T. Roe to Gustavus Adolphus,’ and George lord Carew's letters to Roe between 1615 and 1617 were edited by Sir John Maclean for the Camden Society in 1860. There are numerous letters and despatches of Roe's, still unpublished, in the public record office; but few of those published in the volume of ‘Negotiations’ seem to be preserved there (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 351–2). In the British Museum, besides his Indian journal and letters, there are letters among the Harleian, Egerton, and Sloane manuscripts. Roe is further stated by Wood to have left in manuscript ‘A Compendious Relation of the Proceedings and Acts of the Imperial Dyet held at Ratisbon in 1640 and 1641, abstracted out of the Diary of the Colleges,’ which was in the possession of T. Smith, D.D., of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a ‘Journal of several proceedings of the Knights of the Garter,’ frequently cited by Ashmole in his ‘Institution’ (Cat. MSS. Angliæ et Hib. i. 330). His portrait, by Michael van Miereveldt of Delft, is engraved by Vertue as a frontispiece to the ‘Negotiations.’

[Authorities cited above; Laud's Works, passim; information from Messrs. T. M. J. Watkin, Portcullis, S. R. Gardiner, J. Cartwright, F. H. Bickley, and Lionel Cust, F. S. A.] 

ROEBUCK, JOHN, M.D. (1718–1794), inventor, born in 1718 at Sheffield, was the son of John Roebuck, a prosperous manufacturer of Sheffield goods, who wished him to engage in and inherit the business. John had a higher ambition, and, after receiving his early education at the Sheffield grammar school, was removed to Dr. Doddridge's academy at Northampton. He became a good classical scholar, retaining throughout life a taste for the classics; and he formed at Northampton a lasting intimacy with his fellow-pupil, Mark Akenside. Thence he proceeded to Edinburgh University to study medicine. There the teaching of Cullen and Black specially attracted him to chemistry. He became intimate with Hume, Robertson, and their circle, forming an attachment to Scotland which influenced his subsequent career. He completed his medical education at Leyden, where he took his degree of M.D. on 5 March 1742. A promising opening having presented itself at Birmingham, he settled there as a physician. He had soon a considerable practice, but his old love of chemistry revived, and he spent all his spare time in chemical experiments, particularly with a view to the application of chemistry to some of the many industries of Birmingham. Among his inventions was an improved method of refining gold and silver and of collecting the smaller particles of them, formerly lost in the processes of the local manufacturers. Stimulated by his successes, he established in Steelhouse Lane a large laboratory, and in connection with it a refinery of the precious metals. He associated with himself in the management of the laboratory an able business coadjutor in the person of Samuel Garbett, a Birmingham merchant. Roebuck became, in fact, what is now called a consulting chemist (, p. 15), to whom the local manufacturer applied for advice, and thus a considerable impetus was given to the industries of Birmingham. The most important of his several improvements in processes for the production of chemicals at this period was one of very great utility in the manufacture of sulphuric acid. In the fifteenth century the German monk Basil Valentine had first produced oil of vitriol by subjecting sulphate of iron to distillation, and the process had been but little improved previous to 1740, when Joshua Ward facilitated the manufacture by burning nitre and sulphur over water, and condensing the resulting vapour in glass globes, the largest that could be blown with safety. For glass