Guillaume ROGER
Biography

ROGER, GUILLAUME, principal court officer and clerk of the Conseil Souverain, provost judge of the seigneury of Notre-Dame-des-Anges, royal notary; son of Roger Guillaume, court officer, and Élisabeth Oussaye; b. in France in 1632; buried in Quebec 22 May 1702.

From August 1674 he acted as a court officer for the Conseil Souverain, and on 15 June 1676 replaced Peuvret* Demesnu as court clerk and secretary; on 25 Oct. 1677 he again became clerk under the latter’s orders. He was appointed principal court officer on 18 May 1681, and was confirmed in this post on the 11 August following. In 1679 the Jesuits appointed him provost judge of the Notre-Dame-des-Anges seigneury. He succeeded Claude Auber* in 1694 as royal notary. While holding these different offices concurrently, he also served the council, on occasion, as acting judge, attorney, and secretary.

In August 1674, Frontenac [Buade*] had the Sulpician François de Salignac* de La Mothe-Fénelon arrested at Montreal, following a sermon which he gave. He was put in prison at Quebec, under Roger’s guard. In the following October Fénelon, by order of the council, was required to pay “37 livres to court officer Guillaume Roger for his services.”

At the conclusion of an “extraordinary trial,” in his capacity as judge of the Notre-Dame-des-Anges seigneury, he sentenced Jean Denis junior, in absentia, to be broken on the wheel for the murder of Pierre Gendron.

In 1673 he had married Ursule Levasseur; they had had nine children, only one of whom reached adult age.

Antonio Drolet

Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003

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