Sir Roger, a political writer of the seventeenth century, was the youngest son of Sir Hamond L'Estrange, of Hunsstanton Hall, Norfolk, and was born at the family seat in 1616. After receiving a liberal education, he commenced his public career by attending Charles I. on his expedition against the Scots in 1639. During the civil war he was a zealous royalist, and in 1644, having received a commission from the king, appointing him governor of Lynn, he endeavoured to wrest that town by surprise from the parliamentary forces, but was betrayed by two of his accomplices and lodged in prison. He was tried before the city court-martial, was condemned to death as a traitor, and sent to Newgate. As he had friends, however, in both houses of parliament, he was reprieved; and after lying in prison for nearly four years, was allowed to escape beyond the sea. Availing himself of the Act of Indemnity that had been passed in 1652, he returned to England in 1653; and after loitering about Whitehall for some time, and making personal application to Cromwell, he was allowed to live unmolested. This tampering with the ruling party was afterwards a galling weapon in the hands of his enemies, and was perhaps one of the reasons why the only reward he received from Charles II., after his restoration, was the invidious office of licenser of the press. Nevertheless, in several pamphlets which he published about this time, and in the Public Intelligencer, a newspaper which he started in 1663, he was a slavish supporter of the crown. His other paper, the Observer, begun some time after the Popish plot, was the organ of the Tory party, then on the ascendant, and was designed to excutiate the king from the charge of leaning towards Popery. On the accession of James II., he was knighted for "his unshaken loyalty to the crown," and sat in the parliament of 1685. When the king propounded his doctrine of toleration, L'Estrange, hesitating for the first time to agree with royalty, discontinued his Observer. At the Revolution, he was deprived of the office of licenser of the press; and shortly afterwards becoming imbecile, he died on the 11th of December 1704.

His political pamphlets, intended as they were, to suit the taste of the common people, swarm with vulgarisms and coarse and abusive epithets. He wrote also translations of the following works:—Josephus' Works, Cicero's Offices, Seneca's Morals, Erasmus' Colloquies, Aesop's Fables, Quevedo's Visions, Bond's Guide to Eternity, Five Love-Letters from a Nun to a Cavalier.