Dummer Rogers, "Teacher of French, English, Latin, and "Mathematicks," was, according to
Notes and Queries
(4th series, vol. iii. p. 561), an American loyalist, pensioned by the English Government. He lived at Hen Cross, Nottingham, when Byron was staying in that city, partly with Mrs. Parkyns, partly at Mr. Gill's, in St. James's Lane, to be attended by a man named Lavender, "trussmaker to the general hospital," who had some local reputation for the treatment of misshapen limbs. Lavender, in 1814 (
Nottingham Directory
for 1814), appears as a "surgeon." Rogers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with Byron, represents him as, for his age, a fair scholar. He was often, during his lessons, in violent pain, from the position in which his foot was kept; and Rogers one day said to him, "It makes me uncomfortable, my Lord, to see you sitting there in such pain as I know you must be suffering." "Never mind, Mr. Rogers," answered the boy; "you shall not see any signs of it in
me
." Many years after, when in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, Byron sent a kind message to his old instructor, bidding the bearer tell him that he could still recite twenty verses of Virgil which he had read with Rogers when suffering torture all the time.