At Emancipation he presented his estate on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas in perpetuity to his freed slaves, whose descendants still lived in what became known as Rolleville as late as the 1920s.

[2] He was the largest landowner in Devon, with about 55,000 acres centred on his seats of Stevenstone in the north and Bicton House in the south-east,[nb 2] and thus was highly influential in that county.

He promoted and financed several large engineering projects, including the Rolle Canal in North Devon, Rolle Quay in Pottington, Barnstaple, and two road bridges over the River Torridge near Torrington, at Town Mills and Weare Giffard and the sea-wall at Exmouth.

He reminded me always of a Devonshire rustic, but he possessed plain common sense, a manly mind, and the faculty of stating his ideas in a few strong words."

At this time, the seat of Devon was controlled by a group of large landowners principally in the families of Courtenay of Powderham, Bampfylde of Poltimore and Rolle, who had so many supporters that no other challenge was possible.

However, following North's resignation, Rolle developed a vehement dislike of Charles James Fox for recalling George Rodney to a Naval command.

John Rolle joined the South Devon Militia as an ensign and in 1796 as its commanding officer he took it to Ireland to help to suppress the rising which occurred when Britain was at war with France.

[12] In February 1812 it appears Lord Rolle led his regiment to Nottingham as part of a larger force to suppress a Luddite rebellion.

During the march his quartermaster-serjeant Richard I Braginton (1752–1812) died suddenly at Leicester, and Rolle erected a gravestone to his memory in St Martin's Church, Leicester inscribed thus:[13] "Beneath are deposited the remains of Richard Braginton Quarter Master Serjeant of the South Devon Militia who expir'd suddenly in this Town on his march to Nottingham[14][nb 7] in the night of 15th of February 1812 after retiring to rest in perfect health AGED 60 YEARS He served 40 in the said Regiment with unabated Zeal, diligence and Loyalty to his King; and firm attachment to his Country; While his private conduct was equally commendable.

[15] The violence of his attack led the supporters of Fox and Burke to make him the chief object of the Rolliad, which purported to be a literary criticism of an epic poem but was actually a vehicle used by the authors to insult all their opponents.

It gives a spoof pedigree of the Rolle family, which cannot in reality be traced further back than 16th-century Dorset, as sprung from "Rollo, Duke of the Normans".

Rolle backed Pitt on the regency crisis in 1789, making a direct attack on the Prince of Wales' relations with Maria Fitzherbert which was thought inappropriate by the Whigs.

In the general election in 1790 he was forced into a token contest against a Bampfylde Whig and declared his "firm attachment to Mr Pitt, founded on personal esteem as well as public principles", and was returned with a healthy majority.

His opposition to Parliamentary reform continued and intensified due to the French Revolution of 1789; he spoke against Thomas Paine's doctrines and supported the repressive legislation aimed at damping down revolutionary sentiment in Britain.

He supported moves to abolish slavery and campaigned for a reduction of duty on horses (suggesting a heavy tax on the employment of foreign servants be used to replace the revenue).

The 1790s saw him attempting to obtain a peerage for himself or his father who had returned to the life of an English country gentleman after the failure of his American colonisation schemes.

His father was uninterested but Pitt made a firm promise to Rolle himself, so long as a problematic by-election in Devon was not thereby caused by his removal to the House of Lords.

and then rose from the throne and advanced down one or two of the steps to prevent his coming up, an act of graciousness and kindness which made a great sensation.

It is, in fact, the remarkable union of naïveté, kindness, nature, good-nature, with propriety and dignity, which makes her so admirable and so endearing to those about her, as she certainly is.

[18]The incident is also included in the latter part of the tenth verse of Richard Harris Barham's Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the Coronation: Then the trumpets braying, and the organ playing, And the sweet trombones, with their silver tones; But Lord Rolle was rolling;— t'was mighty consoling To think his Lordship did not break his bones!

He was aged 201⁄2, therefore legally still a minor not having reached his majority of 21, when his father arranged for him to marry the 17-year-old Judith Maria Walrond.

The world that the Grecian conqueror subjugated was a small affair in space compared with the two hemispheres which this English lady has taken by the hair of the head and bound to her chair of state.

It seems to have been her ambition for nearly half a century to do what was never done before by man or woman in filling her great park and gardens with a collection of trees and shrubs that should be to them what the British Museum is to the relics of antiquity and the literature of all ages".At the time of her death in December 1885, the New York Times obituary [32] reported:

"Lady Rolle was a very clever woman, wonderful to the last in her capacity for business, and for her strong, shrewd common sense, and always resolute to have her own way in everything."

Whether his marriage to Louisa had been by chance or dynastic design, in fact the Trefusis Barons Clinton would have had an excellent claim to be his closest kin and legal heirs.

The text of the Mural monument in St Giles Church, St Giles in the Wood is as follows: "This monument by the directions of the undermentioned ANNE ROLLE of Hudscott is erected in the memory of DENYS ROLLE of Stevenstone in this parish, Esquire who died the 24th of June 1797 Aged 72 and ANNE, his wife daughter of ARTHUR CHICHESTER of Hall in this County, Esquire who died the 24th May 1781 Aged 64.