[1] He helped Margaret Ward arrange the escape of Richard Watson from Bridewell Prison when the boatman she had originally asked to help her refused to do so.

[2] Roche exchanged clothes with the prisoner and was arrested in his place.

[3] Offered his freedom if he would ask Queen Elizabeth I's pardon and promise to attend a Protestant church, he refused, and was hanged at Tyburn, London on 30 August 1588, along with Ward, Edward Shelley, Richard Martin, and Richard Leigh and Richard Lloyd (alias Flower).

A school in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets was named after him.

Usually shown in working-class Elizabethan dress and holding an oar or a miniature boat, he is the patron of sailors, mariners and boatmen.