Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/80

  torum Abbrev. p. 290 (Record ed.); Parl. Writs and Rolls of Parl. passim; Cal. of Patent Rolls, Edw. I, ed. 1893–5, vols. i. and ii.; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid. and Chronica Series; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 375; Archæol. Cantiana, v. 25; Foss's Lives of the Judges.] 

ROCHFORD,. [See, first earl, 1645-1709; , fourth earl, 1717-1781.] ROCHFORD,. [See, d. 1538.]

ROCHFORD, JOHN  (fl. 1390–1410), mediæval writer, was apparently son of Saer de Rochford of Holland in Lincolnshire, and, according to Pits, after receiving a good education in England, studied in France and Italy. In 1381 he served on a commission to inquire into certain disturbances at Boston (Cal. Patent Rolls, Richard II, ed. 1895, p. 421). Before 1386 he was knighted, and in that year was placed on commissions in the same county to raise sums lent to the king, and to supervise the purchase of arms and horses. In the following year he was sworn to support the lords appellants. On 26 Sept. 1405 he was summoned to meet Henry IV at Coventry, and accompany him on his expedition to Wales. But his interests lay chiefly in literary work. In 1406 he completed his ‘Notabilia extracta per Johannem de Rochefort, militem, de viginti uno libris Flavii Josephi antiquitatis Judaice;’ it is extant in All Souls' College MS. xxxvii. ff. 206 et seqq. He also compiled a ‘Tabula super Flores Storiarum facta per Johannem Rochefort, militem, distincta per folia,’ contained in All Souls' College MS. xxxvii. ff. 157 et seqq. It was also extant, with an ‘Extractum Chronicarum Cestrensis Ecclesiæ per Johannem Rocheford, a Christo nato ad annum 1410,’ in Cotton MS. Vitellius D. xii. 1, which is now lost. The ‘Tabula’ is merely an index of the ‘Flores Historiarum’ of Matthew of Westminster [q. v.], the authorship of which has been erroneously ascribed to Rochford. Pits also attributes to Rochford ‘Ex Ranulphi Chronico librum unum,’ and says that he translated many works, but he does not specify them.

[Rymer's Fœdera, original edition, vii. 544, 547, viii. 413; Rolls of Parl. iii. 401 a; Hardy's Descr. Cat. of Materials, iii. 316; Matthew of Westminster's Flores Hist. (ed. Luard, in the Rolls Ser.), Pref. pp. xxix, xxx, xlii; Bale's Script. vii. 4; Pits, ed. 1619, p. 581; Fabricius's Bibl. Med. Ævi Latinitatis, iv. 363; Oudin's Comment. de Script. iii. 2227; Thomas James's Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabr. 1600, p. 45; Vossius's Hist. Lat. ed. 1651, pp. 545–6; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Coxe's Cat. MSS. in Coll. Aulisque Oxon.; Chevalier's Répertoire.] 

ROCHFORT, ROBERT (1652–1727), Irish judge, born on 9 Dec. 1652, was second son of Lieutenant-colonel Primeiron Rochfort, who was shot on 14 May 1652, after trial by court-martial at Cork House, Dublin, for having killed Major Turner. By his wife, Thomazine Pigott, the colonel left two sons, the younger of whom, Robert, ‘he begot the very night he received his sentence of death,’ 9 March 1651–2. The Rochfort family was settled in co. Kildare as early as 1243, and to it belonged Sir Maurice Rochfort, lord-deputy in 1302, and Maurice Rochfort, bishop of Limerick, and lord-deputy in 1351–3.

Robert was ‘bred to the law,’ his mother having received a gratuity and pension. He became recorder of Londonderry on 13 July 1680, and acted as counsel to the commissioners of the revenue in May 1686 (Clarendon to Rochester, Correspondence, i. 396). His name appears in the first division of the list in James II's act of attainder in 1689, and his estate in co. Westmeath was sequestered. In 1690, however, either on 26 May (, ii. 47), before the arrival of William III, or on 1 Aug. ( Continuation, p. 36), on his departure for the siege of Limerick, Rochfort was made commissioner of the great seal with Richard Pyne and Sir Richard Ryves; and they held the post till the appointment of Sir Charles Porter to the chancellorship on 3 Dec. On 6 June 1695 he was made attorney-general of Ireland, vice Sir John Temple, and, having been elected member for co. Westmeath on 27 Aug., was chosen speaker of the Irish House of Commons on the 29th (, iii. 287). He took a prominent part in the attack on the chancellor, Sir Charles Porter [q. v.] He was continued as attorney-general on the accession of Anne, but refused re-election as speaker in September 1703 (, v. 344). On 30 June 1707 he succeeded Richard Freeman as chief baron of the exchequer, which post he held till removed by the whigs in October 1714, after the accession of George I, when he resumed practice at the bar. During this period he had acquired considerable property in Westmeath (see, p. 21 n.), and on 21 May 1704 had been dangerously wounded in St. Andrew's Church, Dublin, by a ‘disgusted suitor,’ one Francis Cresswick, of Hannams Court, Gloucestershire. In October 1722 Swift writes that ‘old Rochfort has got a dead palsy;’ he died at his fine house of Gaulstown, on Lough Ennel, near