Denys Rolle (died 1797)

Denys Rolle (1725–1797) of Hudscott, Beam, Stevenstone and Bicton in Devon and East Tytherley in Hampshire, was an independent Member of Parliament for Barnstaple, Devon, between 1761 and 1774. He was the largest landowner in Devon, with a rent-roll of £40,000 per annum.

He was a philanthropist and generous benefactor to charities and religious societies. 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.

He spent much of his life attempting to establish an "ideal society", a Utopian colony of poor, homeless or criminal English persons on about 80,000 acres in Florida named Rollestown or Charlotta. On the failure of that venture he turned to slave labour, and on the loss of Florida as a British possession moved his colony to a smaller site on Exuma in the Bahama Islands. He was deemed by many to be stubborn, high-handed, irascible, litigious, and a megalomaniac, even stupid, and lacking diplomatic skills.

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 in the south-east was the centre of another large block of territory.

Denys Rolle was the youngest of four sons of John Rolle (1679–1730), of Bicton and Stevenstone, by his wife Isabella Charlotte Walter, daughter of Sir William Walter, 2nd Baronet of Sarsden, Oxfordshire. His eldest brother was Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (died 1759) of Stevenstone, whose heir was his next younger brother John Rolle Walter (c. 1714 – 1779), who was a Tory MP. Denys was baptised on 19 July 1725 in St Giles's Church,St Giles in the Wood, the parish church of Stevenstone. He matriculated at New College, Oxford on 19 January 1742, at the age of 16.

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