Roper, lay Chancellor to Bishop Murray and member of the Legislative Council, who was thrown off the Manx bar and spent the next year in litigation about it.

The quarrel began in the Chancery court. The Lieutenant-Governor charged him with an insult on the strength of words he had used there, in the course of a comparison between the length of the articles served by clerks to Dumbell and to Bluett, and expelled him from the Manx bar. Bishop Murray wrote to the Home Secretary about it in July 1825, twice within three days, sending first the fact of the expulsion of his lay Chancellor and then a statement of the words themselves. The Lieutenant-Governor's own account went to the Home Office in the same month and was referred to the Law Officers for their opinion, and the papers printed in the Douglas newspapers went with it.

He then went after his opponents in the courts. In 1826 he preferred charges against John Christian of Fort Ann, who was acquitted of them on 30 June, that acquittal being Christian's first act since his own re-admission to the bar. Christian called it a most malicious prosecution and asked that Mr Peel be got to see Colonel Goldie about Roper's conduct. The trial of Roper against Christian was reported at length in the Manks Advertiser, and cuttings were sent to the Home Office.