Bogus Pedigrees Claiming Descent from John ROGERS, the Smithfield Martyr

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Bogus Pedigrees Claiming Descent from John ROGERS, the Martyr

Many ROGERS families have a tradition of descent from the Martyr, but family traditions are so often a product of wishful thinking that no such tradition should be accepted as true without proof. It should be borne in mind that two contemporary pedigrees of John ROGERS exist and are housed in the British Museum:

1. The Visitation of the County of Warwick. Made in 1563 and continued and enlarged by another Visitation in 1619. This pedigree gives, by name, the eleven children of the Martyr.

2. The other pedigree is contained in the Harleian Manuscript. Among the pedigrees in the manuscript are the results of Visitations ca. 1634, including a ROGERS pedigree that is in agreement with the earlier one, while being more complete with regard to his grandchildren.

Chester's subsequent work has supported the accuracy of the above pedigrees, so these, and only these, are the children of the Martyr:

Daniel ROGERS
John ROGERS
Ambrose ROGERS
Samuel ROGERS
Philip ROGERS
Bernard ROGERS
Augustine ROGERS
Barnaby ROGERS
Susanna "Susan" ROGERS
Elizabeth ROGERS
Hester ROGERS

Below are given the bogus traditions debunked by Chester (1861) in his scholarly work on John ROGERS.

The most prominent of bogus pedigrees is that of Rev. Richard ROGERS (1551-1618) of Weathersfield, Essex, England, supposed son of the Martyr. That the Martyr had no son, Richard, should be sufficient grounds for dismissing this pedigree without further consideration, but it is certainly relevant that in none of Rev. Richard's own writings, nor in any biography of him, contemporary or otherwise, was a claim made that he was son of the Martyr.

The claim is made that the descendants of Rev. William JENKYN are descendants of the Martyr because William's wife, Mary ROGERS, was "granddaughter of the Martyr." However, Mary ROGERS is the daughter of the above Rev. Richard ROGERS, so the JENKYN's claim rests on a bogus connection. So great is the desire of descendants to cling to this long-held tradition that adherants rationalize it by saying that the Reverand had "changed his name" to Richard. Of course, no evidence of such a name-change exists.

Source:

1. Joseph Lemuel Chester. 1861. John Rogers: the Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible; the Pioneer of the English Reformation; and its First Martyr. Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, London.

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