His father's family, the Roches were Old English and descended from Adam de Rupe who had come to Ireland from Wales with Robert FitzStephen.
[20] His mother was still alive in 1590, but she predeceased his father, who remarried to Catherine FitzGerald, third daughter of the rebel earl by his second wife, Eleanor Butler.
[21] Before 1593 Roche married Joan, daughter of James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant, by his wife Ellen MacCarthy Reagh.
Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, her Lord Deputy of Ireland, proclaimed James VI and I as King.
[35] Thornton and Fermoy, as he now was, proclaimed James I as King on 13 April 1603, outside the walls in the northern suburbs[36] when the mayor, Thomas Sarsfield, hesitated to do so.