19 John Rogers married Margaret Cock - Their life in Newcastle in the mid 1600's.

I have been unable to find anything at all about John Rogers from his birth until he was listed in Newcastle.  He was a Captain, and he became very rich.  Did he sail ships? very likely, or did he engage in trade in Europe? another strong possibility, given his family links with the Merchants.


At this point in history criminals were being taken to America, maybe he became involved in that.

Generally persons in that time gained wealth from owning vast tracts of land.  Was his father also very wealthy?  Did his mother's family hold lands? Being the eldest son did he inherit?

Unfortunately there is no research to prove any of the above suggestions.

Having a name like John Rogers has really limited the ability to research.

However we can start again in Newcastle and the following is an exerpt from a book:

Archaeologia Aeliana: Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquities"

In Dugdale's Visitation of Northumberland, in 1666, John Rogers I, a
merchant in Newcastle, a native of " Blaby " in Leicestershire, entered his
pedigree, and was allowed the arms argent, in base a fleur de lis sable, a chief
gules. 

He was at that time 45 years of age, and by his wife Margaret, daughter
of Henry Cock of Newcastle, merchant, was the father of a son, also named
John, and of two daughters, Mary and Sarah. 

He was buried in St. Nicholas' 1st June, 1671, having made his will on the 20th May previously.



John Rogers married Margaret Cock around 1655.  They had 3 children  

John Rogers II        was born 1656        he married Elizabeth Ellison 
Mary Margaret     was born  1660    she married Sir William Creagh     * Our lineage
Sarah                       around 1660         she married Charles Montagu

Margaret was the daughter of Henry Cock and Dorcas Shafto.  She was baptised on 26th June 1631 at St Nicholas's Cathedral in Newcastle.

Do you remember the nursery rhyme of Bobby Shafto? well this is the same family.

Henry was a merchant in Newcastle, as was his brother Ralph Cock.  Both served the city as either mayor or sheriff.

Henry was the Sheriff in 1627.    A Henry Cock died in 1630 and was buried at St Nicholas Cathedral.  This might have been his father also known as Henry, because in 1631 he was recorded as the father on the baptism of his daughter Margaret.  Only limited records of the Cathedral and Northumberland are online.

What was the role of the Sheriff? he was the "bagman", the person who rode with the Mayor on his Barge while it went up the River, and he collected the taxes.  The sheriff had a more important role than the mayor and had to be elected unopposed by the members of the "Merchant's Guild"

1627

Henry Chapman  Mayor

Henry Cock  Sheriff

Heraldic visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms (or more often by junior officers of arms, acting as the Kings' deputies) in England, Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to regulate and register the coats of arms of nobility and gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. They took place from 1530 to 1688, and their records provide important source material for genealogists.


So we learn that our John Rogers I, was born circa 1626 and came from Blaby, and when he was in Newcastle in 1666 he was a merchant.  In 1669 he was the high sheriff.

During our trip to Newcastle we were taken on a personal tour of the Newcastle Civic Centre where the names of every Mayor and Sheriff are listed in the Concert Hall.  Behind the scenes were were shown the symbols of office the Orb and the Spectre and the Mayoral chairs.  The old City Hall which would have been used was in the olden section of the town, near the river, but a huge fire destroyed the buildings.  The new hall was built in 1974.

Newcastle Civic Centre

1669

Thomas Davison

John Rogers

From the Archives another entry which proves he was in Newcastle in 1665.

From the Tyne and Wear Archives he leased land with others

Date 8 May 1665
	Item	83	Title Lease for 21 years by Robert Ellison of Hebburn, esquire, William Bonner of St Anthony's, gentleman, John Rogers of Newcastle, esquire and James Clavering of Lamesley, esquire, to William Orr of Jarrow, yeoman

St Nicholas's Church .

.
Margaret Cock and John Rogers had 3 children and after John Rogers died in 1671 she married Sir William Blackett.  From then she was known as Lady Margaret Blackett.

Sir William Blackett was a rather important figure in the history of Newcastle, as can be seen from this entry in Wikipedia.

Sir William Blackett, 1st Baronet (May 1621 – 16 May 1680) was a businessman who founded a mercantile and industrial base in Newcastle and a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1673 to 1680.

Blackett was the third son of William Blackett and his wife Isabella Crook and was born in Gateshead. His father, was a successful businessman at Jarrow and Gateshead and retired to Hoppyland, County Durham. Blackett was apprenticed to a merchant at Newcastle in 1636 and became merchant trading with Denmark  The following story about him was printed in the Newcastle Daily Journal of 18 April 1893.

"Sir William, soon after he commenced business risked his little all in a speculation in flax, and having freighted a large vessel with that article received the unpleasant intelligence that the flax fleet had been dispersed in a storm, and most of the vessels either lost or captured by the enemy. He took his accustomed walk next morning, ruminating on his loss, and was aroused by the noise of a ship in the river. He jumped upon an adjoining hedge, hailed the vessel and found it to be his own, which had without difficulty weathered the storm. He instantly returned and hiring a horse rode in a very short time to London and hastened to the exchange, found the merchants in great alarm about the loss of the flax fleet and speaking of the consequent high price of flax. On informing them that he dealt in that article and had a large quantity to dispose of, speculators soon flocked around him and he sold his whole cargo at a most extravagant price, and the produce of that adventure laid the foundation for one of the largest fortunes acquired in Newcastle. Sir William (and also his children) is said to have regarded with a kind of veneration the hedge from which he first perceived the vessel and made it the extent of his future morning walks. "

Business and political career

Blackett was a member of Merchant Adventurers at Newcastle in 1645 and became freeman in 1646. He became a common councilman of Newcastle in 1648. In 1653 he was a member of the Eastland Company and the Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He played no apparent part in the English Civil War or interregnum politics until the time of the Restoration.

Blackett was commissioner for militia in March 1660 and captain of foot militia in April 1660. From August 1660 to 1661 he was commissioner for assessment for Newcastle. He was elected sheriff of Newcastle for 1660 to 1661, when he was described as "a loyal man, much beloved and fit for the office". From 1661 until his death he was an alderman of Newcastle.

 He was governor of the Hostman's Company from 1662 to 1664 and was Mayor of Newcastle for 1666–67 during which year of office he appeased a riot over taxes with an assurance that payment was voluntary. He was governor of the Hostman's Company again from 1667 to 1669 and was a commissioner for assessment for Newcastle from 1667 until his death.

Blackett was also involved in coal and lead mining, having "by the product of his mines and collieries acquired a very great fortune". He invested heavily in the local coalfield, and once spent £20,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to drain a flooded pit. He is believed to have extended his fortune by buying land in the 1660s and 1670s. He also acted as business adviser to Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Carlisle. From 1669 until his death, he was sub-farmer of coal duties.

He became Deputy Lieutenant of the county in 1670. In 1672, he was involved in a dispute with the local customs officials as member of the syndicate which leased the coal export duties from Lord Townshend for £3,200 a year. He was J.P. for Northumberland from 1673 until his death.

In 1673, Blackett was elected in a by-election as Member of Parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the Cavalier Parliament. He was created a baronet nine days later on 12 December 1673 and the fee was remitted "in consideration of his good services". He was commissioner for assessment for county Durham and Northumberland from 1677 until his death and commissioner for carriage of coals for the port of Newcastle in 1679. He retained his seat at Newcastle in the two elections of 1679.
Blackett died aged about 61 and was buried at St Nicholas Church, Newcastle.

Family

Blackett married firstly, on 10 July 1645 at Hamsterley. Elizabeth Kirkley, daughter of Michael Kirkley merchant of Newcastle. She died on 7 April 1674 and was buried at St Nicholas Church Newcastle.

 He married secondly Margaret Rogers, widow of Captain John Rogers and daughter of Henry Cock of Newcastle. He was succeeded as baronet by his son by his first wife Edward to whom he left a substantial fortune. He also left a fortune to his third son William who acquired the Wallington estate.

He married Margaret Rogers in 1674, almost immediately after his first wife's death!  This great grandmother inherited some properties at the time of his death, which she passed on to her son John.

In 1674 or 1675 Blackett married Margaret (bap. 1631, d. 1709/10), daughter of Henry Cocke of a leading Newcastle merchant family, and widow of John Rogers. Sir William, who had low-church sympathies (he had appointed Nathaniel Burnand, the excluded vicar of Brampton, to be minister to the miners of Alston Moor), had hitherto lived quite modestly.

Home of Margaret and William Blackett (nee Rogers)*

But his new wife gave him a taste for splendour. His largest extravagance was the acquisition of the Gray Friars mansion in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, in 1675 from Sir Francis Anderson, his fellow MP for the town. It was where the king had been lodged after his surrender to the Scots at Newark in 1646: ‘a princely house, and very stately and magnificent, being supposed to be the most so of any house in the whole kingdom within a walled town’ (Brand, 341)

. In 1679 he was re-elected MP for the town in March and again in October, but his declining health allowed him little activity in the Commons. In his will, made on 9 March 1680, Sir William left the staggering sum of £1000 for ‘my funeral expenses and for mourning for my wife and for all my children and grandchildren’ (will).

 Other provisions suggest that relations with his new wife were poor, and he favoured most his 22-year-old third son, William Blackett, who was appointed sole executor and received the residue of the estate. The two elder sons also received a substantial share of his land, lead mines, and interests in coal mines, entailed for their male descendants, with remainders over to the others in default of male heirs.

Sir William Blackett died in Newcastle on 16 May 1680 and was buried in great pomp in St Nicholas's Church. His wife survived him by thirty years. 

His son Michael died an alderman, but childless, on 26 April 1683, and the property that his father left him accrued to add to his two brothers' considerable wealth. Sir Edward was soon building Newby Hall near Ripon, and Sir William (as he became) was soon building Wallington in Northumberland. As his descendant Sir Charles Otto Trevelyan wrote in 1932 (Country Life, 22 July 1918), ‘the first Sir William was rich enough to make two elder sons’.

The house is circled, this copy from Tyne and Wear Archives it was also called the Newe House

About the mansion fromtThe History of the Blacketts website their information appears not to be the same as other records.

The town residence of Sir William and Sir Walter Blackett.[i]
Anderson Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, situated within the city walls near the ruins of a Franciscan Friary, was built in the 16th century by Robert Anderson, and was also known as Grey Friars or the Newe House. Standing in extensive grounds, with a tree lined avenue leading to the house, the gardens of beautiful walkways and greens extended down to the main entrance of Pilgrim Street. It was purchased in 1675 by Sir William Blackett (1657-1705) of Matfen and Wallington, whose son extended the house. It passed down to Sir Walter Calverley Blackett (1707-1777) who married Sir William’s granddaughter. (Sir Walter also inherited Wallington Hall, Cambo.) It was sold to George Anderson in the 1780s, and later renamed Anderson Place. 

It makes one wonder what her home with John Rogers was like! as she obviously liked the good things in life.

The old town from across the bridge 

A little more about the Freemen of Newcastle can be found here.

http://www.freemenofnewcastle.org/merchantadventurers/index.html

http://www.sclews.me.uk/newcastle.html

And a little more history for the period that our great grandparents were living and working in Newcastle.

In 1600 a new charter was given to the town By Elizabeth I. It gave the Company of Hostmen a monopolistic control not only of the municipal government but also of the economic life of Tyneside for a century and a half. No further change was made in the town franchise until 1835.  From 1600 onwards these 'Lords of Coal' represented the borough in parliament, and from 1606, as town magistrates, exercised admiralty jurisdiction over the Tyne. They also owned every one of the twenty-five or more important collieries in the Tyne valley and supplied the capital for the development of the local glass, lime and salt industries. They acted as bankers for the entire Tees/Tweed region. The social link between the landed class and the hostmen was close and fluid, for many landowners, like the Delavals and Lowthers became colliery owners. The Newcastle 'grand lessees' often bought estates or married into the gentry. 1600 The Grammar School was refounded as the Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth. Mystery plays were suppressed in the 1600s as a result of Reformation opposition to the idolatry and pageantry associated with Catholicism. 1601 A contemporary complains that the bulk of coal exported from the Tyne was carried in French or Dutch ships, though the situation was changing. 1603 James VI, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, passed through the North East on the way to his coronation as James I in London, staying in Widdrington on the first night. He is said to have lodged at the Nag's Head in Newcastle, at the foot of what is now Akenside Hill, where he was entertained by the mayor and prominent citizens for three days. 1603 Newcastle youths were again enjoined 'not to dance or use music in the streets at night': nor are they to deck themselves in velvet and lace - or to wear their 'locks at their ears like ruffians'. 1606 Trinity House Newcastle given authority over the coast from Whitby to Holy Island At first it was mainly concerned with the licensing of pilots but took over the provision of lighthouses on the North East coast in the 18th century. 1608 Crown of St Nicholas rebuilt c1616-23 James I conferred on Sir Robert Mansell the glass-making monopoly in England from his factories in London and Newcastle. 1617 James I passed through Newcastle on a splendid progress - the only royal visit to Scotland of his reign 1618 The great Ben Jonson, though bulky and getting on in years, walked all the way to Scotland to visit William Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh. He passed through Newcastle in August, having bought a new pair of shoes in Darlington. He was still wearing them when he came back through Newcastle in January 1619. 1632 Death of Dorothy Lawson in Heaton. Though a recusant and priest-harbourer, she was never subjected to persecution, and her funeral in All Saints church proceeded unhindered. 1633 Charles I visited Newcastle on his way to be crowned in Scotland. 1633 Glass was made in Newcastle for most parts of the kingdom. 1633 Ballast Hills riot started by apprentices on Shrove Tuesday, against the erection of a lime kiln. 1634 Henry Madison, prominent citizen and mayor died. He has a colourful monument in the cathedral 1635 Chapel of Trinity House on the Newcastle Quayside built. The banqueting hall of 1721 has a fine 17th century 'draught of fishes' overmantel. 1635 Institution of a government postal service for towns between London and Edinburgh via Newcastle to run day and night and return in six days. 1636 Severe plague in Newcastle 1639 Apart from King's Lynn, Newcastle was the only major port which declared for the king in the English Civil War. Charles I visited Newcastle in 1639, and progressed along the Tyne to Shields. 1640 Newcastle was occupied by the Scots in 1640 after the farcical battle of Newburn. The Scots army stayed until 1641 and the king indemnified Newcastle to the tune of £60,000. An indication of the importance of Newcastle at this period is that during the English Civil War, King Christian IV of Denmark supposedly named as his price for assisting Charles I (his nephew) the pawning to Denmark of Orkney, Shetland and Newcastle with its environs. He actually paid for the region - and the money has not been returned! One must suppose that the city, technically, belongs to Denmark. 1644 The Scots returned to Newcastle and besieged and stormed the town 'with roaring drummes', after heroic resistance by the Royalist garrison under Sir John Marley. Newcastle is supposed to have received its motto from a grateful Charles I - FORTITER DEFENDIT TRIUMPHANS. Parliament ordered a day of thanksgiving when the fall of the city ensured London's coal supplies. 1646-7 Charles I, after his capture at Nottingham, was held prisoner by the Scots in Newcastle for eight months, May 1646 - January 1647: a plaque in Market Street marks the event. He spent his time playing chess and 'goff', resting at King Charles' House in Shieldfield, which was demolished some years ago. Newcastle indeed may be unique in holding captive both a king of England and Scotland. When the Scots paraded through Newcastle taking the king to be handed over to Cromwell, they were assailed with brickbats and cries of 'Judas!' 1647 Grass men appointed to take care of the Town Moor. 1649 Oliver Cromwell stayed with his army in Newcastle for three days. As he dined in the mayor's house, he was serenaded by the Town Waits in their blue cloaks and beavers, on the little bridge over the Lort Burn near the Sandhill. He left on 20 October, but returned on 15 July 1650 on his way to the fateful encounter with the Scots at Dunbar. 1649 Pirates active in the North Sea off Newcastle 1649 The first history of Newcastle:Chorographia by William Grey. It has been described as 'a fascinating fragment'. 1649 Newcastle's Puritan elders railed against young mens' use of ribbon and lace, gold and silver thread, and coloured shoes of Spanish leather. Nine recalcitrant youths received the pudding-basin treatment for their hair. 1650 Nuns Moor was purchased by the council and added to the Town Moor. 1650 Fourteen witches and one wizard were hanged on the testimony of a witchfinder, who earned 20 shillings a head. 1650 The regiment that later became the Coldstream Guards first mustered at Berwick. It had been formed from Sir Arthur Haselrigg’s forces at Newcastle and those of Sir George Fenwick at Berwick. 1650 The Horse Guards were formed in Newcastle by Sir Arthur Haselrigg on the orders of Oliver Cromwell. After subsequent name-changes, they became known from 1877 as the Royal Horse Guards (Blues) and now the Blues and Royals. Both Prince William and Prince Harry became cornets (as junior officers are known) in the regiment. 1651 John Cleveland (1613-58) was the most popular poet of his age and no fewer than 25 editions appeared between 1647 and 1700. The poem 'News from Newcastle' (first printed in 1651) is ascribed to him, but it may be the first major poetic work to emanate from Newcastle. Whoever wrote it was a poet of more than usual accomplishment and clearly also knew the Tyne very well. The famous beginning is arresting - and Newcastle is pronounced with the short 'a' that was the norm of polite speech until the early 19th century. England's a perfect world, has Indies too; Correct your maps, Newcastle is Peru! 1652 John Rushworth was made a freeman of Newcastle. After the Restoration in 1660, according to Isaac d'Israeli, when Rushworth presented to the king several of the Privy Council's books, which he had preserved from ruin, he received for his only reward the thanks of his majesty. 1655 Ralph Gardiner of Chirton accused the Newcastle Corporation of 'tyranny and oppression'. He was imprisoned for illegally brewing in North Shields and contravening the monopoly of the Bakers and Brewers Company of Newcastle. Gardiner petitioned Parliament without success for the abolition of the regulations that forced traders to deal through Newcastle. . 1655 On Dec 28 a group of 'common players of interludes' were whipped in the public market place under a statute passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1655-58 Construction of a new Guildhall and Exchange in the Sandhill by Robert Trollop. The Court Room or Guildhall proper has survived to the present. 1657 George Fox , the founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers, came to Newcastle from Scotland. In Newcastle, the Quakers received a hostile reception from the Mayor and his magistrates, and were turned out of town. The Friends' redoubtable foe in Newcastle was Alderman Ledger, who sneered memorably that 'the Quakers would not come into any great town, but lived on the fells like butterflies'. 1658 Horse racing on the Shield Field prohibited. 1659 Oliver Cromwell's son, Richard was proclaimed Protector at Newcastle. 1659 In November, Major General Lambert, the outstanding parliamentarian general arrived in Newcastle in a fruitless attempt to thwart his rival General Monck’s march south. 1660 General Monck arrived in Newcastle on 5 January on his march from Coldstream to London to (eventually) restore the monarchy. He wrote a letter from Newcastle to parliament on 6 January . His regiment, named the Coldstream Guards after Monck’s death in 1670, is the oldest continuously serving regiment in the British army and only recruits from the counties Monck passed through on his way to the capital. Monck‘s historic march was re-created by 100 Coldstream guardsmen in January 2010 in similar snowy conditions. 1663-65 According to Hearth Tax returns, Newcastle was the fourth largest provincial town in England, after Norwich, York and Bristol. 1675 A disease called the 'Jolly Rant' carried off 924 people. 1675 (- 1725) The middle classes of Newcastle were behind only London and Kent in the acquisition of modern consumer goods: clocks, china dishes, knives and forms etc. Houses were built in the modern style. 1676 Sir Francis North, a visiting judge, described the new transport of coal from the 'coalliery' to the staiths using wooden wheels on timber rails. This replaced carriage by pannier or cart. 1681 Holy Jesus Hospital built. 1682 The mayor and corporation started a municipal school at St Anne's Chapel. This was more than twenty years before the foundation of the earliest of the charity schools. 1682 Samuel Pepys travelled to Scotland and visited Holy Island before coming to Newcastle on 29 May. He was met at Clifford's Fort in North Shields by the Mayor and his officials and arrived in Newcastle where he was feted and received the freedom of the city. 1684 Judge Jeffreys sat at Newcastle assizes. The formidable judge was able and impartial in civil cases, but in criminal law it was otherwise. Ambrose Barnes tells us in his memoirs that Jeffreys would sit 'drinking to filthy excess till two or three o'clock in the morning, going to bed as drunk as a beast.' When the court sat, Jeffreys with his raileries and jests then acted the part of a harlequin.' (Jack Pudding erased). 1688 The statue of James II was dragged from its site on the Sandhill in front of the Guildhall and tumbled into the Tyne, as the mayor and corporation declared for the protestant William of Orange. * 1691 Old Mansion House built near the Closegate 1696 The Lort Burn in Newcastle, by then an open sewer, was covered in. This was some forty years before the same was done with the Fleet in London. 1698 Celia Fiennes (1662-1741) the famous traveller, considered that Newcastle 'most resembles London of any place in England...' She thought the shops good and the markets cheap. She describes in her inimitable style, 'little things look black on the outside and soft sower things" *1688 - This statue is of importance in our following family stories