ROLLE, John (b.1563), of St. Giles, Great Torrington, Devon.

A George Rolle, keeper of records for the court of common pleas, purchased estates in Devon at the dissolution of the monasteries, and the senior branch of the family settled at Stevenstone, near Torrington. A junior branch was of Hearton and Petrockstowe. In the absence of any firm evidence it has been assumed that of several namesakes, it was George Rolle’s grandson, a younger son of the senior branch, who sat for Callington in 1601, through the influence of the 4th Marquess of Winchester, to whom the Rolles were (or were shortly to be) related by marriage. Eventually the lordship of the manor of Callington came into the family, who represented it in several early seventeenth-century Parliaments. The date of Rolle’s death is unknown. It must have been after May 1628, when he was the executor of his brother Robert’s will. His own property was limited to a life interest in lands at Torrington and Buckland Brewer, but his son Henry succeeded to Stevenstone later that century.1Vivian, Vis. Devon, 279-80, 653, 654; R. Polwhele, Hist. Devon, ii. 223; J. Prince, Worthies of Devon (1810 ed.), 706, 709; PCC 122 Capell, 37 Barrington, 31 Lyon; DNB (Rolle, Henry and Rolle, John).