Charles Rogers

Charles Rogers (2 August 1711– 2 January 1784) was an English customs official, known as an art collector. He also wrote on drawings, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Life Born on 2 August 1711, he was second surviving son of William and Isabella Rogers of Dean Street, Soho, London. In May 1731 he was placed in the custom house under William Townson, from whom he acquired a taste for the fine arts and book-collecting. Townson, the head in the Customs Office of the Certificate Office, collected books and prints.

Townson left his estate to Rogers in 1740, a bequest which included a house at 3 Laurence Pountney Lane, London, containing a museum of art treasures. Here Rogers in 1746 took up residence. In 1747 he became clerk of the certificates.

Rogers built up a print collection, with the help of friends, particular of Horatio Paul who lived abroad, and whose father Robert was a customs official, and Robert Udny. He was well connected in artistic and antiquarian circles. His personal assistant in the 1780s was Henry Walton Smith. He died unmarried on 2 January 1784, and was buried in the Laurence Pountney churchyard. From the collection of Niccolò Gabburri, there were facsimiles of drawings that Rogers had acquired, in the 1762 sale by the dealer William Kent. One living artist was included, Vieira Lusitano.

In 1782 Rogers published an anonymous blank-verse translation of Dante's Inferno. He also contributed to Archæologia and The Gentleman's Magazine. William Cotton matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford in 1811, aged 17, graduating B.A. in 1814, and M.A. in 1818. (He did not go into the church, as Alumni Oxonienses claims: the mistaken identity, confusion with William Cotton (died 1853) who was the son of Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton, 5th Baronet is pointed out in the Clergy of the Church of England database.) He lived at the Priory, Leatherhead, Surrey, and Highland House, Ivybridge, Devon.

After making some additions to the collection, Cotton handed it over in two instalments, in 1852 and 1862, to the proprietors of the Plymouth Public Library. An apartment was built for it and was opened to the public on 1 June 1853 by the name of the Cottonian Library.

The collection included four portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, about five thousand prints, a few fine examples of early typography, illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century, carvings, models, casts, bronzes, and medals. A catalogue of the first part of the benefaction, compiled by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt, was printed in 1853.