Mullingar, Westmeath, on 10 Oct. 1727, and was buried there. He left 100l. to the school, and endowed a church he had built at Gaulstown with the tithes of Killnegenahan. A portrait of him is preserved at Middleton Park, co. Westmeath.
Rochfort married Hannah (d. 2 July 1732), daughter of William Handcock of Twyford, Westmeath, ancestor of the earls of Castlemaine. By her he left two sons, George and John. Their names occur frequently in Swift's correspondence, and after visits to Gaulstown in 1721 and 1722, Swift wrote two poems on their home there; one he entitled ‘Country Life’ (Swift, Works, 2nd edit. (Scott) xiv. 163 sqq.). It was doubtless to John Rochfort's wife that Swift addressed his letter of ‘Advice to a very Young Lady on her Marriage’ (ib. ix. 202 sqq.).
George Rochfort (d. 1730), long M.P. for Westmeath, married Lady Betty, daughter of Henry Moore, third earl of Drogheda; his son Robert (1708–1774) represented Westmeath till 1737, when he was created an Irish peer, with the title of Baron Bellfield, and subsequently Viscount Bellfield (1751) and Earl of Belvedere (1757). The title became extinct on the death of the first earl's son George (1738–1814), who sold Gaulstown to Sir John Browne, first lord Kilmaine, and left all his unentailed estates to his widow, Jane, daughter of the Rev. James Mackay; she bequeathed them to George Augustus Rochfort-Boyd, her son by her second husband, Abraham Boyd, and they now belong to his descendant, George Arthur Boyd-Rochfort of Middleton Park, co. Westmeath. The entailed estate of Belvedere passed to Lady Jane, only daughter of the first earl of Belvedere, who married Brinsley Butler, second earl of Lanesborough; it subsequently passed to Charles Brinsley Marlay, esq.
From Robert Rochfort's younger son John, M.P. for Ballyshannon in 1715, who married Deborah, daughter of Thomas Staunton, recorder of Galway, descend the Rochforts of Clogrenane, co. Carlow, among whom Anne Rochfort (b. at Dublin in 1761, d. at Torquay in 1862), wife of Sir Matthew Blakiston, second baronet, is a well-authenticated instance of centenarianism.
[Lodge's Irish Peerage, ed. Archdall, iii. 13–30; Swift's Works, passim; King's State of the Protestants; Smyth's Law Officers in Ireland; information from Lady Danvers (née Rochfort).]
ROCHFORT, SIMON (d. 1224), bishop of Meath, was the first Englishman who held that see, to which he was consecrated in 1194 (Cotton, Fasti Eccles. Hibern. iii. 111). He was one of the judges appointed by Innocent III in the famous suit for possession of the body of Hugh de Lacy, fifth baron Lacy and first lord of Meath [q. v.], between the monks of Bective in Meath and the canons of St. Thomas's, Dublin. He gave sentence in favour of the latter in 1205 (Reg. St. Thomas, Dublin, pp. 348–50, Rolls Ser.) Bishop Simon founded a house of regular canons at Newtown, near Trim, in 1206, and ultimately erected the church into the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, forsaking the old cathedral of Clonard (Annals of Clonard ap. Cogan, Diocese of Meath, i. 20, 71). At Newtown he held a synod in 1216, of which an account is extant (Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Brit. i. 547, ed. 1737). He alloted vicar's portions to the churches in his diocese, in which his work was valuable (Ware, Works on Ireland, i. 141, ed. 1739). He died in 1224 (Chartularies, &c., of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, ii. 288, Rolls Ser.), and was buried in the church at Newtown.
[Authorities cited in the text.]
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:
- ‘Hierurgia, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass expounded,’ 1833,
