Humphrey Verdon Roe

ROE, HUMPHREY VERDON ), British aeronautic engineer, was born on April 18,1878. He served in the South African War, and joined the Royal Air Force during the World War (1917), being wounded in France in 1918. In the same year he married Dr. Marie Carmichael Stopes and with her founded at Holloway the first birth control clinic (1921).

ROE

(or ROW), SIR THOMAS (c. 1581-1644), English diplomatist, born at Low Leyton, Essex, was educated at Mag dalen college, Oxford. He was made esquire of the body to Queen Elizabeth, was knighted in 1605, and in 1610 was sent by Henry, prince of Wales, to the West Indies and South America to dis cover gold. Elected M.P. for Tamworth (1614) and Cirencester (1621), his reputation was secured by his successful mission to the court of the great Mogul, Jahangir, at Agra, where he ob tained protection for an English factory at Surat. Appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1621, Roe secured further privileges for English merchants, concluded a treaty with Algiers in and gained the support of the Transylvanian prince, Bethlen Gabor, for the European Protestant alliance and the cause of the Palatinate.

Through his friendship with the patriarch of the Greek Church the Codex Alexandrinus was presented to James I., and Roe himself collected several valuable mss., which he gave to the Bodleian library. In 1629, he mediated successfully between the kings of Sweden and Poland; in 1630 he negotiated treaties with Danzig and Denmark, and in 1637 was appointed chancellor of the Order of the Garter. Subsequently he took part in the peace conferences at Hamburg, Regensburg and Vienna; in June 1640 he was made a privy councillor, and in October he became mem ber of parliament for the University of Oxford. He died on

Nov. 6, 1644.

His

Journal of the mission to the Mogul, several times printed, has been re-edited, with an introduction by W. Foster, for the Hakluyt Society (1899). Of his correspondence, Negotiations in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte, 1621-28, vol. i., was published in 1740, but the work was not continued. Other correspondence, consisting of letters relating to his mission to Gustavus Adolphus, was edited by S. R. Gardiner for the Camden Society Miscellany (1875), vol. vii., and his correspondence with Lord Carew in 1615 and 1617 by Sir F. Maclean for the same society in 186o. Several of his mss. are in the British Museum collections. Roe published a True and Faithful Rela tion . . . concerning the Death of Sultan Osman . . . 1622; a transla tion from Sarpi, Discourse upon the Resolution taken in the Valteline (1628) ; and in 1613 Dr. T. Wright published Quatuor Colloquia, consisting of theological disputations between himself and Roe ; a poem by Roe is printed in Notes and Queries iv. Ser. v. 9. The Swedish Intelligencer (1632-33), including an account of the career of Gustavus Adolphus and of the Diet of Ratisbon (Regensburg) is attributed to Roe in the catalogue of the British Museum. Several of his speeches, chiefly on currency and financial questions, were also published. Two other works in mss. are mentioned by Wood: Compendious Relation of the Proceedings . . . of the Imperial Diet at Ratisbon and Journal of Several Proceedings of the Order of the Garter.