"Under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo, which ended the first Anglo-Burmese war of 1824-26, the Government of India sent Henry Burney to Burma as Resident Minister to the Court of Ava. Arriving at post in April 1830 he kept a journal in which, a few months later, he recorded the following: August 12 I paid a visit this morning to an extraordinary character, an uncle of the King, named Mekkhra Mon tha or Prince of Mekkhra. He has been taught to read and understand English by the late Mr Rogers, and he evinces a very laudable desire of becoming acquainted with European science and literature. (Tarling, ed.1995:59) Burney goes on to say that he and his associates considered the Prince to be ‘certainly the most extraordinary man we have seen in this country? in that he possessed an impressive English library, was already well informed in scientific matters, had translated extracts from Rees?s Cyclopaedia and – with the help of an American missionary – had well-nigh completed an English- Burmese dictionary. According to Burney, then, the tutor credited with enabling the Prince to do all this was ‘the late Mr Rogers.? But how did this intriguing English-born character come to be there, and who exactly was he? I raise the question because, while most of the information we have about Rogers is based on his own accounts of his background, those accounts are not consistent. I shall therefore, working backwards from 1830, collate various pieces of information about him in an attempt to establish the truth about his past. We must first jump back four years..."