He then kept a grammar school there in Broad Street, Henry Parry Liddon being one of his pupils.
From a young age he devoted himself to the history of the place and studied its archives.
[1] Roberts corresponded with Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Babington Macaulay quoted him as an authority on Monmouth's Rebellion.
Hepworth Dixon, in his Life of Admiral Blake, acknowledged obligations to Roberts.
On his account, the History of the Mutiny at Spithead and the Nore (1842), of William Johnson Neale, was modified from a manuscript of his.