George Rolle (c. 1486 – 20 November 1552) of Stevenstone in the parish of St Giles in the Wood near Great Torrington in Devon, was the founder of the wealthy, influential and widespread Rolle family of Devon, who by 1842 had become the largest landowners in Devon with about 55,000 acres according to the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 in the person of Hon. Mark Rolle (died 1907), the adoptive heir of John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (died 1842).[nb 1] He was a Dorset-born London lawyer who in 1507 became Keeper of the Records of the Court of Common Pleas and was elected as a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1542 and 1545.[1] He became the steward of Dunkeswell Abbey in Devon, and following the Dissolution of the Monasteries he purchased much ex-monastic land in Devon. Not only was he the founder of his own great Devonshire landowning dynasty but he was also an ancestor of others almost as great, including the Acland baronets of Killerton,[2] the Wrey Baronets[3] of Tawstock and the Trefusis family of Trefusis in Cornwall now of Heanton Satchville, Huish, later Baron Clinton, heirs both of Rolle of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe and of Rolle of Stevenstone.
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- ^ "ROLLE, George (by 1486-1552), of Stevenstone, Devon and London. - History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
- ^ His daughter Elizabeth Rolle married Robert Mallet of Woolleigh whose descendant and eventual heiress Eleanor Mallet was the mother of Sir John Acland, 1st Baronet (1591–1647)
- ^ Sir Bourchier Wrey, 4th Baronet (1653–1696) married Florence Rolle, a daughter of Sir John Rolle (died 1706) of Stevenstone