Denys Rolle (c. 1725 – 26 June 1797) was a British politician and landowner who was an independent member of parliament for Barnstaple between 1761 and 1774.

Rolle spent much of his life in Florida attempting to establish an "ideal society", a utopian colony of British settlers named Rollestown or Charlotta.

The project was a failure and Rolle recorded his colonial adventure in great detail in a lengthy official complaint made in 1765 to the British government entitled The Humble Petition of Denys Rolle, Esq., Setting Forth the Hardships, Inconveniences, and Grievances Which Have Attended Him in His Attempts to Make a Settlement in East Florida, Humbly Praying Such Relief as in their Lordships Wisdom Shall Seem Meet.

His colonists having failed to live up to his ambitious expectations and having largely deserted him, he turned to slave labour and following the loss of Florida as a British possession in 1783 he moved his colony to a smaller site on Exuma in the Bahama Islands.

The Rolle family was one of the richest and most powerful in Devon and owned several dozen manors, their most ancient holding being Stevenstone near Great Torrington in the north of the county, whilst Bicton (inherited from the Denys family, after whom he was named) in the south-east was the centre of another large block of territory.

By Anne he had the following children:[6] A modest man, considered eccentric, his favourite pastime was to perform the work of a common farm-labourer.

He was puritanical in morals, opposing ale-houses, cockfighting and bear-baiting, and was humane and tender towards animals claiming a special kinship with wildlife.

In 1786 he purchased for the huge sum of £72,000 the manors of Otterton and East Budleigh, situated adjacent to Bicton in south-east Devon from the heirs of the Duke family, descendants of Richard Duke (died 1572) who in 1540 had purchased the former lands of Otterton Priory following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

In May 1764 Rolle obtained a grant from the crown of 20,000 acres of land for a plantation in St Mark's in East Florida,[3] an area recently ceded by Spain to Great Britain following the Seven Years' War.

[16] His vision was to establish an "ideal society", a Utopian colony for poor, homeless or criminal English persons.

[9] He embarked for America on 10 June 1764 with 14 settlers and arrived at Charleston on 12 August 1764[3] and was in St Augustine, capital of East Florida, by September 1764.

[3] Rolle's settlers were in the opinion of observers deemed low quality, of poor morality, indisciplined and not capable of hard work.

[23] Rolle died on 26 June 1797, aged 72, of angina during one of his habitual long walks between his manors of Hudscott and Stevenstone,[8] and was buried in St Giles's Church on 1 July 1797[2] The vicar and historian of Chittlehampton, Rev.