Long, Roger

The following data is extracted from Long Family Records.

(1680-1770), divine and astronomer: b. Croxton Park, Norfolk; educated at the public school of Norwich; entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1696, graduated B. A. in 1700, was elected a fellow of his college, 1703, and proceeded M. A., 1704; in the same year he resigned his fellowship, having been entered as a fellow-commoner at Emmanuel College, where he resided as private tutor to Sir Wolston Dixie; returned later to Pembroke Hall and read lectures on astronomy there for many years; as trips orator in 1714, he delivered a "music speech" in Latin prose alternating with English verse, which was several times reprinted; in 1728, probably on the occasion of George 11's visit to Cambridge, a degree of D.D. was conferred upon him, and being then vicar of Cherry Hinton in Cambridgeshire, he published a commencement sermon on "The Blessedness of Believing"; elected master of Pembroke Hall, 1733, and vice-chancellor of the university; in 1750 he was chosen to be the first occupant of the Lowndean chair of astronomy and geometry, and in 1751 he exchanged the rectory of Overton Waterville in Huntingdonshire, to which he had been presented many years previously by his college, for that of Bradwell-near-the-Sea in Essex; he erected in 1765 in one of the courts of Pembroke Hall, a hollow revolving sphere, eighteen feet in diameter, representing on its inner surface the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; thirty spectators could be accommodated within it; he published the first volume of an important work on astronomy in 1742 and a second installment in 1764; he was nominated, for the second time, vice-chancellor of the university, 1769; elected a fellow of the Royal Society, 1729, and subsequently joined the Spalding Society.

Source: Long Family Records

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