ROLLE, Francis (aft.1627-86), of Shapwick, Som. and East Tytherley, Hants

Henry Rolle, brother of Sir Samuel* and John*, was a London-based barrister who from the 1620s began converting the wealth he had gained as a successful lawyer into a series of substantial landholdings. However, he did so not in Devon, his native county, but in Somerset in the area around Glastonbury and Bridgwater. His first purchase was of the manor of Wookey, in 1626. Then, in 1634, he joined with his brother, Sir Samuel, and their brother-in-law, Hugh Fortescue, to buy the manor of Bawdrip from the Long family.20VCH Som. vi. 185. Six years later this trio made a further purchase when they bought the manor of Shapwick from Abraham Burrell*. After Sir Samuel’s death in 1647, Henry was left as the sole owner.21VCH Som. viii. 166; C. Gerrard and M. Aston, The Shapwick Project (2007), 285. He probably then rebuilt Shapwick House to serve as his principal country residence.22Collinson, Som. iii. 427; Gerrard and Aston, Shapwick Project, 285. Rolle made a further significant purchase in 1652 when he bought lands at Chedzoy from the 5th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert, Lord Herbert*).23VCH Som. vi. 246. He had in the meantime reached the top of his profession, serving as the lord chief justice of king’s bench (later upper bench) from 1648.

Henry Rolle married Margaret Bennett in 1627 and their only son, Francis, the future MP, was probably born within the next few years. In November 1646 Francis entered the Inner Temple by special admission as a favour to his father, who was a bencher of the inn.24I. Temple admissions database. Two months later he was also admitted as a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.25Al. Cant. His call to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1653 took place at the earliest possible date; indeed, it was approved in June of that year on the condition that he wait until the following November so that the minimum period of seven years could elapse. He later retained some connections with this inn, so it is possible that he did practise occasionally as a barrister.26CITR. ii. 306; iii. 83. In early 1655 he married a potential heiress, Priscilla, one of the daughters of Thomas Foote*, the wealthy London grocer and a former lord mayor.27Trans. of the Regs. of...S. Mary Woolchurch Haw, 361; London Vis. Pedigrees 1664, 65; Le Neve’s Pedigrees, 31. Two months later Rolle senior, while on circuit, was briefly held hostage at Salisbury by the rebels during Penruddock’s rising.28Clarendon, Hist. v. 375-6, 378-9; Ludlow, Mems. i. 404. On his return to London, Lord Chief Justice Rolle showed a reluctance to rule on the case of George Cony, a merchant who had refused to pay customs dues on the grounds that they had not been authorised by Parliament. Once it had become clear that the government was displeased with his handling of the case, Rolle resigned as a judge.29CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 167-8; Ludlow, Mems. i. 412-13. A year later he died. Apart from her jointure lands at Wookey and the lease on his house in the Old Bailey, which he left to his widow for life, all his lands passed to Francis as his only son.30PROB11/259/158.

Within weeks of his father’s death, Rolle was elected as one of the new MPs for Somerset. His showing in the county poll at 20 August 1656 was not especially strong, as, with 1,549 votes, he gained only the eleventh and final seat, although his margin over the next candidate, Richard Jones II*, was a comfortable 278 votes.31Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 77. What complicates any analysis of his time in this Parliament is that his cousin, Robert Rolle*, had been elected as an MP for Devon and that the Journal rarely distinguishes them. Francis’s only certain committee appointment was when he was named to the committee to consider the maintenance of ministers (31 Oct. 1656).32CJ vii. 448b. The other confirmed fact about him is that he attended the meetings of the committee of trade on 18 and 23 December alongside his father-in-law, who was one of the London MPs, in order to support the Merchant Adventurers in their dispute with the clothworkers over the export of undressed white cloths.33Burton’s Diary, i. 175, 221. In the case of four committee appointments, it is possible that Francis rather than Robert Rolle was named simply because Foote was named to those committees as well. These were the committees on the petition from Samuel Vassall* (2 Feb. 1657), on the bill for the maintenance of ministers at Exeter (9 Feb.), on the petition against James Chadwicke* (13 Feb.) and on the petition from the lord mayor and corporation of London (1 Apr.).34CJ vii. 485a, 488a, 490b, 516b. Moreover, one Rolle was second on the list of those appointed on 25 November 1656 to attend on Oliver Cromwell* to ask when MPs could meet with him to present some of the bills for his assent.35CJ vii. 458b. ‘Mr. Rolle’ also made a procedural intervention in the debate on the dispute between George Rodney and John Cole on 5 January 1657.36Burton’s Diary, i. 304.

One consequence of Rolle’s election as an MP was that from 1657 he was included on the Somerset commission of the peace and on the assessment commission.37C231/6, p. 360; A and O.; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 332, 334, 357, 358. Moreover, he also began to be appointed to the similar bodies in Hampshire.38A. and O.; C231/6, p. 431. Rolle’s inheritance had included lands at East Tytherley, which had been purchased by his father in 1654, and, in time, he would become as much a Hampshire figure as a Somerset one.39VCH Hants. iv. 516. Thus, after the Restoration he sat in Parliament six times, three of them as MP for Hampshire and three representing Bridgwater. Throughout that period he was sympathetic to religious nonconformity and by the early 1680s was siding with the whigs. In 1685, at the time of Monmouth’s rebellion, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He died the following year. His son, John†, a tory, sat for Bridgwater in 1713.40HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.