ROLLE, Robert (1622-60), of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe, Devon.

Rolle was baptised, and thus presumably born, at Stoke Damerel, near Plymouth. This was the parish of the Wise family’s second seat, Mount Wise, built by Rolle’s maternal grandfather. Rolle entered the Inner Temple just as his father was beginning his service in the Long Parliament. The outbreak of civil war affected Robert Rolle’s entire future life. Sir Samuel was one of the commanders of the regiment raised in Devon to support Parliament against the royalists, and Robert was initially his father’s lieutenant-colonel as they recruited soldiers in the north of the county. By May 1643, the younger Rolle was in charge of the garrison of Barnstaple, having been invited there by the town’s council of war which included George Peard*. They were joined by Captain Robert Bennett*. When Barnstaple surrendered to Prince Maurice in August, Rolle and Bennett were the only officers left in the garrison.17Gribble, Barnstaple, 446; Coate, ‘An original diary of Col. Robert Bennett’, 258. Both men were allowed to leave unmolested, and Rolle probably made his way to Plymouth, the bastion of support for Parliament in south west England.18Coate, ‘An original diary of Col. Robert Bennett’, 258.

During Parliament’s eclipse in Devon by the royalists, Rolle kept a low profile, and disappears from the records. The ‘Mr Rolle’ who served as a county magistrate in 1645 with Thomas Monck*, brother of George Monck*, was an adherent of the king and was probably Rolle’s cousin, of Stevenstone, St Giles-in-the-Wood.19Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/8. This house of the royalist Rolles was commandeered by the New Model army as headquarters when it passed through the district in February 1646.20Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 194. As for the parliamentarian Rolles, it is clear that the county regiment of Sir Samuel and Robert Rolle was still intact in 1646 (although Sir Samuel must have stood aside under the terms of the Self-Denying ordinance), as it was deployed in the blockading of Pendennis, Cornwall, in April.21CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 416. In October, Robert Rolle certified a petition of one of his officers, which confirms that it remained nominally the regiment of both father and son.22SP28/266/2, f. 82. This petition may well have been associated with the disbanding of the Rolles’ regiment, which with the complete conquest of the south west by the New Model, was redundant.

By March 1647, when Sir Samuel Rolle drew up his will, Robert Rolle was married to Arabella Clinton, daughter of the 4th earl of Lincoln, like the Rolles a Presbyterian parliamentarian army commander. Rolle seems to have stood aloof from the Devon county committee during 1647, and only figured in the deliberations of the committee from July 1648, when he was active in the plans to re-form the Devon militia. He was among the committeemen who complained about the defects in the militia ordinance and the inequalities in the rating system. With Arthur Upton*, Robert Shapcote*, William Morice*, Sir John Bampfylde*, William Fry* and Sir John Northcote*, he warned Speaker Lenthall in August that the county was ‘not free from intestine seditions’.23Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 163; Tanner 57, f. 173. When later that month, the Devon committee divided itself into three bodies to improve territorial coverage, Rolle was named to the second committee, with Thomas Boone* and John Elford*.24Add. 44058, f. 26v.

Rolle’s puritan piety continued a long family tradition. The Rolles had been intolerant of games of chance, including card games, ‘for well near, if not for more, than a full century of years’.25W. Trevethick, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Honourable Colonel Robert Rolle (1661), sig. B2i. Rolle himself was ‘careful to attend the Lord’s work, upon the Lord’s Day, constantly frequenting the public worship of God both morning and evening, most usually present with the first’.26Trevethick, A Sermon, 74. That being the case, it seems remarkable that the incumbent of Petrockstowe, his own parish, should have been removed by the county committee; stranger still that the ejected minister, Anthony Gregory, was in the habit of preaching twice on Sundays, ‘not then usual in those parts’.27J. Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy (1714), 250. When John Walker was collecting evidence for his anti-puritan collection, Sufferings of the Clergy, 50 years after the events being described, he was told that Gregory had been ejected after an intervention by the Independent minister, Lewis Stucley. Gregory was said to have raised money for the king.28Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, 250. That Rolle did nothing to protect his own minister may indicate that he was more isolated politically during the later 1640s and the 1650s than his various local government offices tend to suggest. Gregory’s successor at Petrockstowe, William Trevethick, had signed the Presbyterian Joint-Testimonie of Devon ministers in 1648 and, like Rolle, was in theological terms, a Presbyterian.29Calamy Revised, 492.

Less than a year after the execution of the king, Rolle was called to the office of high sheriff. His service in this significant local position must demonstrate that he accepted the regicide, publicly at least. He was named as a colonel of militia foot in the summer of 1650. Whatever his feelings about the regicide, he was certainly not sympathetic to the planned invasion of England by Charles Stuart at the head of a Scots army. In June 1651 he was active as a militia commissioner, recruiting foot soldiers in north Devon prior for an expedition to Ireland.30SP28/227, loose warrant. That summer, he attended Devon quarter sessions at Exeter in his capacity as a justice of the peace, but this was an exceptional appearance. Apart from that one occasion in 1651, Rolle stayed away from quarter sessions completely for ten years after 1649. Not until January 1659 did he sit again on the bench of magistrates. This semi-detached pattern of participation persisted: Rolle continued to hold a place in the commission of the peace and in July 1654 signed a printed order for the restoration of the war-damaged church of St Thomas, an Exeter suburb.31Devon RO, QS order bks. 1/8, 1/9; Bodl. Walker c.5, f. 352. This order was almost certainly framed on the eve of the county election for the first protectorate Parliament, which was held at Exeter. Rolle’s name was first on the indenture that was returned to Westminster, but he played no known part in the Parliament.

Between his election to Parliament in 1654 and the opening of that assembly, Rolle was appointed as an ‘ejector’, or commissioner for scandalous ministers, under the Cromwellian ordinance of August that year. He must have found favour on the strength of his reputation for piety, rather than for any ringing declarations of loyalty to the protectorate. In fact, it was said of him, admittedly when the Restoration of the monarchy was assured and when expressions of loyalty to the king were virtually universal, that

His judgment was as he was pleased to express himself (even in the greatest excess of all the actings to the contrary) that the only person under heaven that was likely to heal our breaches was he whom we trust the Lord in mercy hath made to be such indeed, even our gracious sovereign.32Trevethick, A Sermon, 78.

It is impossible to date with accuracy his adoption of this pro-monarchical view. Although he is not known to have involved himself in royalist plotting, he was by 1657 being noted by agents of Charles Stuart as a likely sympathiser, valuable to them because he was ‘a very popular man amongst the Presbyterians’.33CCSP iii. 409. It was thought that Rolle might bring in more than 3,000 Devonians, if pardons and guarantees of immunity from land confiscations were forthcoming from the exiled monarch. The terms of this correspondence in 1657 suggest that Robert Rolle was not the ‘Mr Rolles’ who as early as 1655 was receiving letters from Charles.34CCSP iii. 16. At his funeral, Rolle’s eulogist explicitly answered criticism of him for not involving himself more vigorously in direct action, reporting Rolle’s opinion that such ventures would worsen things for the king.35Trevethick, A Sermon, 78-9. In this sense, he was typical of the Sealed Knot group of cautious well-wishers to the monarchy.

Rolle was returned again to the second protectorate Parliament in 1656. A number of Devon Presbyterians were excluded from taking their seats in this assembly, but Rolle was not among them. If he played any part in the Parliament, he is hard to disentangle from his cousin, Francis Rolle. Because Robert Rolle was often described as Colonel Rolle, the fact that all references in the Journal are to Mr Rolle suggests that most if not all the 11 committee appointments noted by the clerk went to Francis, rather than Robert. Among the committees that Robert Rolle may have attended, simply because there are no clues either way, were on three petitions: by doctors of civil law, by George and Sarah Rodney against John Cole (22 Nov.) and from the inhabitants of the Isle of Axholm, Lincolnshire. It might have been Robert Rolle who waited on the lord protector with a group of other Members (25 Nov.), so they could present bills that had been passed.36CJ vii. 457a-b, 458b. With his military background, he was perhaps more likely than Francis Rolle to have worked on a bill of indemnity (31 Mar. 1657).37CJ vii. 516a.

Given the return in 1659 to the pre-1653 arrangements of two seats per shire, Rolle’s election as knight of the shire for Devon in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament was confirmation of his popularity in the county. He was named to five committees. On 4 March he was called to the committee inquiring into an assault on Major-general William Packer*, and on 1 April was named to the important committee for Irish affairs, where he was a colleague of Thomas Reynell, a Devon man of similar Presbyterian outlook.38CJ vii. 610a, 623a. With John Maynard*, William Morice* and Hugh Boscawen*, Rolle was named to the committee on the ways the House should interact with the Cromwellian ‘Other House’ (6 Apr.) and on the 8th, to a committee on the estates of the exiled Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel, thought to be a Protestant. Four other members from Devon sat on this committee (John and Edmund Fowell, Sir John Northcote and Sir John Copleston), and three sat with Rolle on the committee dealing with the impeachment of Major-general William Boteler*.39CJ vii. 627a, 632a, 637a. On three of these committees, Rolle was in the company of Hugh Boscawen.

After the closure of this Parliament and the collapse of the Cromwellian protectorate, Rolle became more open to overtures from the royalist party. By June 1659, John Mordaunt was telling Edward Hyde* of assurances by the activists Sir John Grenville and Sir Chichester Wray, that Devon and Cornwall would rise for the king, in concert with the rebellion by Sir George Boothe* in Cheshire. Mordaunt was in discussions with the Devon Presbyterians, Rolle and Sir John Northcote, together with Hugh Boscawen in Cornwall. Booth himself was in contact with them.40Bodl. Clarendon 61, f. 204. Kinship and family friendships linked this group. Boscawen was Rolle’s first cousin and brother-in-law and his associate in the 1659 Parliament. Sir John Grenville and Rolle had both been trustees of the Fortescues of Weare Giffard in a family marriage settlement in 1645, when they were on opposing sides in the civil war.41Devon RO, 1262M/FS16. There was even a family link between Rolle and Boothe, whose first wife had been a sister of Arabella Rolle and a daughter of Theophilus, 4th earl of Lincoln.42A. Austin, Hist. of the Clinton Barony 1299-1999 (privately published, 1999), endpiece pedigree. There were hopes in mid-July that Rolle and Northcote would take Exeter, but the western gentry evidently decided against following Boothe’s lead.43CCSP iv. 276.

On 2 January, Rolle was made a councillor of state by the Rump Parliament, restored for the second time. He was among a group of ten councillors not Members of this Parliament, and it seems likely that his association with Grenville and the Presbyterians of Devon and Cornwall, which had coalesced as a political bloc during the final years of the protectorate, account for his sudden call to national prominence. As a consequence of his elevation, the leaders of the king’s interest believed that Rolle and Sir Thomas Fairfax* would be taking over command of the army. But Rolle never attended the council, nor does there seem to be any evidence that he was involved in the securing of Pendennis castle, although Boscawen clearly was.44CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxv; Publick Intelligencer no. 210 (2-9 Jan. 1660), 998 (E.773.41); HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 349. On 13 January 1660, Rolle put his name to the petition of the Devon gentry which called for the Members secluded in 1648 to be recalled.45Som. RO, DD Baker/9/3/3; A Letter from Exeter Advertizing the State of Affairs there (1660, 669. f.22.74). In this initiative, the Devon men were taking their cue from the Cornish gentry, who had expressed themselves in similar terms the previous month: the return of the secluded Members was to be a prelude to fresh elections and by implication the restoration of monarchy.46To the Right Worshipfull the High Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace for the County of Cornwall (1660, 669.f.22.53); To the Right Worshipful our Worthy Patriots of our County of Cornwall (1660, 669.f.23.13). Boscawen and Rolle were evidently working closely together in January 1660.47CCSP iv. 525. On the 23rd, clearly anxious that pro-monarchical sentiments were threatening order, Monck wrote to Rolle to ask him to restrain the Devon gentry, using his

utmost endeavours and interest to beget a right understanding and compliance in them touching the proceedings of this Parliament, from whom, through the Lord’s blessing, we are in hopeful expectation of a speedy and good settlement in a commonwealth, not upon any fanatical parties or principles. but upon the true basis of interest and righteousness.48Clarke Pprs. iv. 259; CCSP iv. 531.

Monck singled out Rolle as a mediator because of his popularity, his importance among the Devon Presbyterian group, his close links with the Cornish gentry and probably not least because Rolle and Monck were both councillors of state. Rolle was also temperamentally cautious, having declined to join Boothe because he was unconvinced that the parliamentarian army could be won over.49CCSP iv. 528. Monck asked Rolle to convey to his co-petitioners that his intentions were limited to securing freedom ‘from tyranny and oppression’.50Clarke Pprs. iv. 259. Monck wrote in similar terms to William Morice* at the same time, in order to secure support for the Parliament.51Clarke Pprs. iv. 260. The Devon men’s response was to fire back a more openly royalist manifesto.52CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 330-1.

The secluded Members were readmitted on 20 February 1660, and the way was open for more direct contact between the king’s closest advisers and the Presbyterian Devon gentry, including Rolle.53Bodl. Clarendon 69, f. 179. On 9 March, he was among the western gentlemen who assured Hyde through an intermediary that they wished the king to know that they when the Long Parliament was dissolved, they would ‘go immediately into the country to put themselves in the better condition to protect themselves and country and serve the king’.54Bodl. Clarendon 70, f. 13. But Rolle was probably already ill by this time. He drew up his will on 17 February, and although he was returned to the Convention for Callington on his own interest, he is unlikely to have taken his seat. Among his executors, he named Hugh Boscawen and James Erisey*.55HP Commons 1660-1690; PROB11/303/269. He was dead by 19 June, when a new writ was moved.56CJ viii. 68b. At his funeral, William Trevethick lamented that the ‘church hath lost a generous and an uncorrupted patron, and his country a constant and a faithful patriot’.57Trevethick, A Sermon, 81. Trevethick subsequently took Rolle’s only surviving son, Samuel, abroad as part of his education. Samuel Rolle† later sat in 16 Parliaments, making his way politically from being a country Member, well regarded by Shaftesbury, to becoming a Jacobite after 1688.58HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715; HP Commons 1715-1754.