Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rock, Daniel

by Charles William Sutton

ROCK, DANIEL, D.D. (1799–1871), ecclesiologist, born at Liverpool on 31 Aug. 1799, was entered as a foundation scholar at St. Edmund's College, near Ware, Hertfordshire, in 1813. In December of the same year he was one of six students who went from England to Rome on the reopening of the English College in that city. He was ordained subdeacon on 21 Dec. 1822, deacon on 20 May 1823, and priest on 13 March 1824. He returned to England in April 1825, and it is thought that his degree of D.D. was obtained before leaving Rome. He was engaged on the ‘London mission’ from 1825 to 1827, when he became a domestic chaplain to the Earl of Shrewsbury. About 1838–45 he was a prominent member of a club of priests calling themselves the ‘Adelphi,’ formed for promoting the restoration of the Roman catholic hierarchy in this country. In 1840 he was appointed priest of the Roman catholic congregation of Buckland, near Faringdon, Berkshire, and in 1852 was elected one of the first canons of Southwark Cathedral. Two years later he resigned his country charge and took up his residence in London. In 1862 he served as a member of the committee appointed to carry out the objects of the special exhibition at the South Kensington Museum of works chiefly of the mediæval period. He died at his residence, Kensington, on 28 Nov. 1871, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.

He wrote:

1. ‘Hierurgia, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass expounded,’ 1833, 2 vols.; 2nd edit. 1851; 3rd edit., revised by W. H. J. Weale, 1893; illustrated from paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions belonging to the earliest ages of the church.
2. ‘Did the Early Church in Ireland acknowledge the Pope's Supremacy? Answered in a Letter to Lord John Manners,’ 1844.
3. ‘The Church of our Fathers, as seen in St. Osmund's Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury; with Dissertations on the Belief and Ritual in England before the Coming of the Normans,’ 1849–54, 3 vols. in four parts; a new edition, by the Benedictines of Downside, is in preparation (1896).
4. ‘The Mystic Crown of Mary the Holy Maiden, Mother of God,’ &c., in verse, 1857.
5. ‘Textile Fabrics, a Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church Vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework, and Tapestries, forming that Section of the (South Kensington) Museum,’ 1870. The introduction to this volume was reissued as No. 1 of the ‘South Kensington Handbooks,’ 1876.

Rock contributed to Manning's ‘Essays in Religion,’ &c., 1865, a paper ‘On the Influence of the Church on Art in the Dark Ages,’ also three papers to the ‘Archæological Journal’ (vols. xxv. xxvi. xxvii.), and many communications to ‘Notes and Queries.’ He also wrote an article on the ‘Fallacious Evidence of the Senses’ in the ‘Dublin Review’ for October 1837.

[English Cyclopædia, Suppl. to Biography, 1872, col. 1047; Graphic, 30 Dec. 1871 (portrait); Brady's Episcopal Succession in England, iii. 350; information kindly supplied by the rector of the English College at Rome, by the president of St. Edmund's College, and by Mr. Joseph Gillow.]

C. W. S.