Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/170

 complaints touching the violated rights of the Westminster electors, Rolle was made the hero of the ‘Rolliad,’ in which he was gibbeted as the degenerate descendant of Rollo, though the satire was principally aimed at Pitt and Dundas. By patent dated 20 June 1796 the revived title of Baron Rolle of Stevenstone was conferred upon him; and on 5 Oct. he took his seat in the House of Lords, in which, except to second the address to the throne on 26 June 1807 and that to the prince regent on 30 Nov. 1812, he hardly spoke. He voted against Earl Grey's reform bill on its second reading, 13 April 1832, and remained a strong conservative throughout life. He was colonel of the South Devon Militia and Royal Devon Yeomanry, an active county magistrate, a good landlord, and a liberal benefactor to the church. He died at Bicton House, near Exeter, on 3 April 1842. He married twice, viz. first, on 22 Feb. 1778, Judith Maria (d. 1820), only daughter of Henry Walrond of Bovey, Devonshire; and, secondly, on 24 Sept. 1822, Louisa Barbara, second daughter of Robert George William Trefusis, seventeenth baron Clinton, who survived him. He left issue by neither wife.

A bust of Rolle was exhibited in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1842; an engraving of his portrait by Cruickshank is in Ryall's ‘Portraits of eminent Conservatives and Statesmen,’ 2nd ser.



ROLLE, RICHARD, (1290?–1349), hermit and author, born about 1290 at Thornton in Yorkshire (probably Thornton-le-Street), was the son of William Rolle of Thornton in Richmondshire, and was sent by his parents to school at an early age, where he showed such good promise that Thomas de Neville, archdeacon of Durham, sent him to Oxford, paying all the charges of his education. There he is said to have made rapid progress in his studies, but, being moved with a strong desire to devote himself to a religious life, at the age of nineteen he left the university and returned to his home. Richard's ambition was not to enter any of the recognised communities of monks and friars, but to become a hermit and give himself up to contemplation. His mode of making his profession was to construct for himself a costume from two of his sister's kirtles, one white, the other grey, which she lent to him, and having borrowed also his father's rain-hood, he took up his abode in a wood near his father's house. His family naturally looked upon him as out of his senses. Richard, therefore, fearing that he would be put under restraint, fled from his home and commenced a wandering life. Entering a certain church at Dalton, near Rotherham, to pay his devotions on the eve of the Assumption, he was recognised by the sons of John de Dalton, the squire of the place, who had known him at Oxford. The next day, the festival of the Assumption, he appeared again in church, and, putting on a surplice, took part in the service. At the mass he went, with the priest's permission, into the pulpit and preached with wonderful power. John de Dalton, having conversed with him, and satisfied himself as to his sanity, offered to provide him with a fitting cell, hermit's clothing, and the necessaries of life. This Richard accepted, and, establishing himself near his patron at Dalton, devoted himself to contemplation and devotional writings. The ‘Legenda’ represent him as becoming completely ecstatic, living in a spiritual world, and having many conflicts with devils, in all of which he is victorious. In his ‘De Incendio Amoris’ he describes in detail the steps by which he reached the highest point of divine rapture: the process occupied four years and three months. Richard soon began to move from place to place, and in the course of his wanderings came to Anderby in Richmondshire, where was the cell of an anchoress, Dame Margaret Kyrkby, between whom and Richard there had long existed a holy love. Here he procured the miraculous recovery of the recluse from a violent seizure. Subsequently he established himself at Hampole, near Doncaster, in the neighbourhood of the Cistercian nunnery of St. Mary, which was founded there by William de Clairefai in 1170 for fourteen or fifteen nuns. Here the fame of his sanctity and his learning became very great, bringing numerous visitors to his cell, and here he died on 29 Sept. 1349. His grave at Hampole was visited by the faithful for many years after his death, and miracles—chiefly of healing—were reported to be worked there; 20 Jan. was the day traditionally assigned to his commemoration. An ‘office,’ consisting of prayers and hymns, together with a series of legends adapted to the canonical hours and the mass, was drawn up in anticipation of his canonisation, which did not take place. The legends there preserved are the chief source