Rogers, JAMES EDWIN THOROLD, economist, was born at the village of West Meon, Hampshire, in 1823, and educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen Hall, Oxford, graduating with a first-class in 1846. At first an ardent Puseyite, he took orders, but soon returned to Oxford and became a successful 'coach,' and renounced his orders formally, together with Dr Congreve and Leslie Stephen, after the Clerical Disabilities Act of 1870. In 1862 he was elected professor of Political Economy, but made so many enemies by his outspoken zeal for reforms that he was not re-elected in 1868, nor until the death of Bonamy Price in 1888. An advanced Liberal in politics, he represented Southwark, 1880-85, and Bermondsey, 1885-86. He died October 12, 1890. His greatest work is his painful and laborious History of Agriculture and Prices in England (8 vols. 1866-93), and its abridgment, Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1885). Besides these he wrote a study on Cobden (1873), edited the Speeches (1868) and Public Addresses of Bright (1879), the Wealth of Nations (2 vols. 1880), and the Collection of Protests of the Lords [1624-1874] (3 vols. 1875).
Other books are Education in Oxford (1861); Historical Gleanings (2 series, 1869-70); The First Nine Years of the Bank of England (1887); The Economic Interpretation of History (1888); and, ed. by his son, The Industrial and Commercial History of England (1892).