(British History Online Sawbridgeworth Parish)

G Norton.
T Josselyn.
Edmund Mordant.

In Bonner's retinue when the Bishop conducted his visitation of Hertfordshire and Essex in 1554. Inadvertently struck by Bonner, who was trying to strike Edmund Brygott, the parson of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Jested about Bonner's sanity to Feckenham, who tried to apologise for the Bishop (1570, p. 1645; 1576, p. 1403-40 [recte 1404]; 1583, p. 1474).

Sir Thomas's son John was Matthew Parker's secretary and probably was also one of Foxe's sources for this incident.

Also referred to as Sir Thomas Josselin.
(from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs)

Contents

Covenant between Sir Robert Jocelyn of Hide Hall, Sawbridgeworth, baronet, and Dame Jane his wife, and Strange Jocelyn, esq, eldest son and heir of the above, 1st, Winifred Conyers, widow of Tristram Conyers late of Walthamstow, Essex, serjeant-at-law, and Mary Conyers, only daughter of the above, 2nd, Sir Charles Gerard of Flamberts, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middx, baronet, John Conyers of Walthamstow, esq, and Gerard Conyers of London, merchant, 3rd, Thomas Gerard of London, merchant, and Richard Bacon of the Middle Temple, London, gent, 4th, for the 1st parties to levy a fine of the manors of Hide Hall, Hertford, and High Rodingbury, Broomshawbury and Newhall Josselyns, Essex, and property in Sawbridgeworth, Little Hallingbury, High Roding, Hatfield Broadoak, Aythorpe Roding, and Canfield, so that Thomas Gerard and Richard Bacon may be tenants in a recovery: Sir Charles Gerard, John Conyers and Gerard Conyers being demandants. The last named are to stand seised of the property in trust.

Signatures. Seals

Admitted a student of Gray's Inn in 1709, Jocelyn was called to the Irish bar on 27 January 1719, and at a by-election in September 1725 he was returned, through the influence of his brother-in-law the bishop of Kilmore, to the Irish House of Commons for Granard, co. Longford. He was appointed third serjeant on 28 March 1726, and at the general election in 1727 he was elected for Newtownards, co. Down. On 4 May 1727 he became solicitor-general. On the accession of George II, Jocelyn was confirmed in his office, and on 22 October 1730 he was promoted to the post of attorney-general in the place of Thomas Marlay, who was appointed lord chief baron. On the unexpected resignation of Thomas, Lord Wyndham, Jocelyn, through the influence of his old friend Lord Hardwicke, was appointed lord chancellor (7 September 1739) and took his seat as speaker of the Irish House of Lords at the opening of parliament on 9 October 1739.

When the appointment was made Lord Lieutenant Devonshire pointed out that Jocelyn had not been the first choice among the king's servants in Ireland, and, having asked Hardwicke to request Jocelyn to be especially careful to keep ‘up that harmony in the government which his Majesty's service requires’ and throughout his tenure of office, Jocelyn was always careful to do so (Burns). Nevertheless in 1746 Archbishop Stone, then bishop of Derry, wrote to the new chief secretary, Edward Weston:

my Lord Chancellor will be found always ready to bring his assistance without difficulty upon terms and conditions. There is a jealousy subsisting between these two Princes [speaker and chancellor], which some of their respective friends are constantly endeavouring to cure and others to inflame … It may possibly give you some little amusement but no real trouble. (Walton)

In the inter-parliamentary absences of the lord lieutenant, the primate, the speaker, and the chancellor were usually appointed lords justices, and Jocelyn held this office nine times.

Jocelyn was created Baron Newport of Newport in the county of Tipperary, by letters patent dated 29 November 1743, and on 3 February 1744 he presided as lord high steward at the trial of Nicholas, fifth Viscount Netterville, who was indicted for the murder of Michael Walsh and was honourably acquitted. Described by Lord Chesterfield as ‘a man of great worth’ (Harris, 2.15), Newport possessed an amiable character, and literary and antiquarian tastes; he was president of the Dublin Physico-Historical Society.

Newport was a central if reluctant figure in the money bill dispute of the early 1750s. On 14 January 1754 Primate Stone wrote to the duke of Newcastle that ‘the Chancellor has always before his eyes, change of times, fluctuation of power and retaliation’ (‘The correspondence of Archbishop Stone and the duke of Newcastle’, 735). A few months earlier, in October 1753, the chief secretary, Lord George Sackville, had written: ‘I cannot say enough of the support that my Lord Chancellor has given us on this occasion’ (Stopford-Sackville MSS, 200); at the conclusion of the crisis Newport was created Viscount Jocelyn in the peerage of Ireland, by letters patent dated 6 December 1755. An interesting letter, written by Newport (from Dublin, 2 November 1754) to the duke of Newcastle, calls the duke's attention to ‘the very extraordinary height to which the disputes and animosities here have been unhappily carried’ (BL, Add. MS 32737, fol. 245).

Jocelyn married, first, in 1720, Charlotte, daughter and coheir of Charles Anderson of Worcester; their only son, Robert Jocelyn (1720/21–1797), succeeded his father as second viscount and was created earl of Roden, of High Roding in the county of Tipperary, on 1 December 1771. Charlotte died on 23 February 1747, and on 15 November 1754 Jocelyn married, as his second wife, Frances (d. 1772), daughter of Thomas Claxton of Dublin and widow of Richard Parsons, first earl of Rosse. In September 1756 the great seal was put in commission during Jocelyn's absence from Ireland for the recovery of his health. He never returned, however, and died in London on 3 December 1756, aged sixty-eight, survived by his wife. He was buried in the church at Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire; a marble bust by Bacon was erected in Sawbridgeworth church by his son.

Jocelyn succeeded to his father's title on 3 December 1756, and became an Irish privy councillor in 1758. On 1 December 1771 he was created earl of Roden, of High Roding, co. Tipperary, a title named after the old family seat in Essex. On 24 May 1778 he succeeded to his cousin Sir Conyers Jocelyn's baronetcy, and to the family's Hertfordshire estates. However, the lands that he inherited from his father were located in co. Tipperary, and it was here and in Dublin that he spent the rest of his life.

Throughout his political career Roden was an unswerving servant of the Dublin Castle administration, and though he returned few MPs his loyalty enabled him to secure a number of valuable offices and sinecures for himself and his adherents. His only brief flirtation with opposition politics came during the spread of volunteering in the late 1770s, when he personally led one of the more conservative local corps.

Though Tipperary politics and society were dominated by the Mathew family, Roden was still an influential figure, and did not restrict himself to tending to his estates. He was involved in a number of linen manufacturing schemes in Newport and was instrumental in the establishment of a charter school in that village, which ultimately failed to instigate any conversions en masse. He died at York Street, Dublin, on 22 June 1797, and was succeeded by his son Robert.

Two years later he was deprived of his see by an ecclesiastical court consisting of four Irish bishops, held at Armagh. This was as a result of his being caught in a homosexual act with a guardsman in a London public house on 19 July 1822. He appeared in court the next day and was let out on bail of £1000. The incident sparked extensive newspaper attention especially in the ‘gutter’ press. A mass of tracts and graphic cartoons were soon published about the affair and further exposés of clerical vice and crime quickly followed. Jocelyn was never convicted, however, and was allowed to escape without trial, although his notoriety seriously embarrassed the government and shocked the Church of Ireland. After the scandal he moved to Scotland and worked as a butler under the assumed name of Thomas Wilson. He died in Edinburgh on 3 September 1843 and was buried on the same day in the new cemetery in the city.

On Monday morning, the 21st instant, at his seat Fair Hill, near Dundalk, in the 60th year of his age, after a long and lingering decline, which he bore with true Christian resignation, the Honorable JOHN JOCELYN, youngest brother to the late (2nd), and uncle to the present (3rd), Earl of Roden. He lived beloved by all, and died deservedly lamented. Mr. Jocelyn served many years in the Irish Parliament for the Borough of Dundalk ; and several years in the Imperial Parliament for the County of Louth, until ill health prevented his attendance, and caused his resignation. His remains were deposited in the family vault, on Thursday morning, in the Church of St. Nicholas.

He was also careful to leave money not only to several of his favourite servants, but to the eldest sons of his servants, to set themselves up in business. And to all his servants he left half a year's wages.

An interesting feature of the Will is the following clause: "I desire and request that my remains may be committed to the Grave in the most private manner at a very early hour in the morning and that no Publicity whatsoever may attend my funeral, also that no name be inscribed on my Coffin and my age. And I desire no publication of my death to be inserted in any public paper."

Some years ago, the Jocelyn family vault at Kilcoo Parish Church in Bryansford, Co. Down was opened for structural repairs to the church, and it was discovered that it contained one more coffin than the number of grave markers would indicate, and that the extra coffin was unmarked. The family concluded that this is the grave of the Bishop of Clogher.

Jocelyn married on 9 January 1813 Maria Frances Catherine Stapleton (1794–1861), second daughter of Thomas Stapleton, Lord le Despencer; they were to have three sons and three daughters. Both he and his wife became staunch adherents of the evangelical movement in the Church of Ireland, and their home at Tollymore Park, co. Down, was run on strongly spiritual lines, with the earl himself regularly leading services in his private chapel and teaching in Sunday schools on his estates. Tollymore became something of a haven for Roden's co-religionists, while its owner took a prominent role in the network of societies which promoted the ‘second Reformation’ in Ireland. He saw his devotional and religious life as the mainspring of his political endeavours. His faith was also reflected in his conscientiousness as a landlord, which inspired affection among his Roman Catholic as well as his protestant tenants. He was a vigorous critic of absentee Irish proprietors.

In the meantime Roden held several appointments in the royal household, as treasurer in 1812, vice-chamberlain from 1812 to 1821, and a lord of the bedchamber from 1828 to 1831. Despite his piety, he got on well with George IV, who at his coronation in 1821 created him Baron Clanbrassill in the peerage of the United Kingdom, thereby giving him an automatic seat in the House of Lords. Roden was auditor-general of the exchequer in Ireland from 1820 to 1822, when the office was abolished, leaving him with a handsome pension for life. He was custos rotulorum for co. Louth from 1820 to 1849, and a member of both the English and Irish privy councils.

In the Lords, Roden became a leader of the Irish tory peers, a position which was confirmed by his election in 1831 as president of the Irish Protestant Conservative Society. During the 1830s he played a central role in mobilizing protestant opinion on both sides of the Irish Sea to defend the Church of Ireland, notably through great public meetings in 1834 and 1837, and was instrumental in the Conservative leadership's maintenance of a robustly anti-Catholic stance. In 1834 Peel offered him the post of lord steward of the household, but he turned it down in order to preserve his independence of action.

After their accession to power in 1841 Peel and Wellington found it less necessary to cultivate the Irish protestant lobby, and Roden's influence waned. In 1849 he was accused of partiality in dealing with an Orange procession at Dolly's Brae in co. Down, which led to an affray with Roman Catholics and consequent fatalities. Roden firmly defended the integrity of his conduct, but the whig government nevertheless dismissed him from the commission of the peace. Despite this indignity, Roden's commitment to the protestant cause remained intense. He took a strong interest in the conditions of protestants on the continent, having visited Piedmont in 1844. He led a delegation to Florence in 1852 to urge the release of Francesco and Rosa Madiai, imprisoned by the Tuscan government for holding a protestant religious meeting in their home. In Ireland he was grand master of the Orange order, and was a steadfast opponent of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.

Lady Roden died in 1861, and on 16 August 1862 Roden married Clementine Janet (d. 1903), daughter of Thomas Andrewes of Greenknowes, Dumfriesshire, and widow of Captain Robert Lushington Reilly of Scarvagh, co. Down; there were no children from this marriage. Roden became very infirm at the end of his life, died in Edinburgh on 20 March 1870, and was interred on 29 March in the family vault at Bryansford, co. Down.

Roden was well over 6 feet tall, and in his prime had a commanding and energetic presence with a fluent oratorical style. He was especially effective in addressing Irish protestant audiences, for he well knew ‘how to call to his aid every feeling and recollection dear to their inmost souls’ (Random Recollections of Exeter Hall, 31–6). Although by the time of his death the political and religious creed he espoused could be dismissed as ‘somewhat narrow and antiquated’ (The Times), he was nevertheless an effective ambassador for his beliefs, with a fearless consistency which commanded respect even from his opponents.

Third Earl of Roden. MP for Dundalk 1810-20, then succeeded his father as earl. Created peer of United Kingdom and knight of St Patrick 1821. Became grand master of the Orange Society. On 12 July 1849 the local Orangemen gathered to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. They paraded through a Catholic district, Dolly's Brae, near Castlewellan, County Down, and were then entertained by Roden on his grounds at Tullymore Park. Troops and dragoons had been despatched to the area, and these escorted the Orangemen on their return, which they chose to make again through the 'Brae'.

In an encounter with a gathering of Catholics, including armed Ribbonmen, six or seven Catholics were killed, many were wounded, and the Orangemen set fire to their houses. One or two Orangemen were wounded seriously. A commission was set up to investigate the affair: Roden was censured and dismissed from the magistracy. He died in Edinburgh, 20 March 1870.

Source: A Dictionary of Irish Biography, Henry Boylan (ed.), Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1998.

BILL RODEN was a professional naval officer who sailed the high seas with distinction and was mentioned three times in dispatches during the war. He fought in the Battle of the Atlantic, served with the convoys to Murmansk, supported the allied landings in North Africa and Sicily and took part in operations off Madagascar and in the Far East.

Yet the public might best remember him as the victim of a savage attack three years ago when masked raiders broke into his Ulster home. After tying up the 80-year-old earl, they ransacked the house before escaping with an estimated £1 million worth of valuables, triggering an international police search.

Roden was born Viscount Jocelyn at Tollymore Park in co Down, elder son of the eighth earl whose ancestors came with the Normans from a château in Brittany. The first Jocelyn to cross the Channel was made a saint for founding the Gilbertines monastic order, while a later forebear, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, became the first earl in 1771.

Young Bill went to Dartmouth at the age of 13 and served as a midshipman in the Dreadnought battleship Iron Duke, flagship of the Grand Fleet during the first world war. Much of his subsequent career, however, was to be spent in destroyers, including HMS Achates, Panther and Quality, which he captained in the second world war. He saw the sinking of HMS Hood from the bridge of Achates and took part in the hunt for the Bismarck, which had sunk her. Then in July 1941 he was mentioned in dispatches for the first time after Achates struck a mine off the coast of Iceland and was blown apart with heavy loss of life. Lieutenant-Commander Viscount Jocelyn was highly praised for the skill and seamanship he displayed in guiding what remained the warship undertow into harbour. But his name was to be most closely identified with his next ship, HMS Panther, which he took over at commissioning in December 1941. A fast, general-purpose destroyer, the Panther served in almost every theatre of the war, including the Mediterranean.

There, in late 1942, Jocelyn was mentioned in dispatches again when of the Panther rescued as many as 1700 men from the troopship Strathallan, which had been torpedoed off the coast of Algeria. In October of the following year, however, Panther was sunk off Rhodes by Stuka dive-bombers. She had slowed down to help the stricken cruiser Carlisle. only to be caught herself by the second wave of Stukas. One bomb went straight down a funnel, exploding on the keel and tearing the destroyer in two with the toss of 35 men.

Jocelyn helped to save a number of sailors in the water before being picked up himself by a Greek ship. The Times next day carried a report that Jocelyn was safe. He then moved to command the new escort HMS Quality and served in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, earning his third "dispatches" off Okinawa.

Continuing in the Navy after the war, Lord Roden (he succeeded his father in 1956) became chief of staff to the flag officer Scotland, then commanded the depot on Malta before retiring as a senior captain in 1960.

He returned to Northern Ireland, not to Tollymore Park which his father had sold during the war, but to another house in Bryansford, Co. Down. There he settled into the life of the community, becoming involved with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the Boy Scouts, his local church and later to some extent the Alliance party. He was also made a deputy lieutenant for Co. Down.

Roden was a skilled carpenter and craftsman who built his own sailing dingies and model boats. He even took his hobby to sea with him, turning his cabin into a joiner's shop. Together with his penchant for dressing down whenever his ship reached port - wandering off looking more like a tramp than a naval earl - this won him a reputation for eccentricity.

In retirement, on finding no chimney sweep left in Bryansford. he invested in a set of his own brushes and cleaned not only his own chimneys but those of his friends without charge. He was known not only for his kindness but his fairmindedness. When Panther was based at Londonderry, on escort duties with the transatlantic convoys, he was given leave to visit his wife and new-born son. But on hearing that one of his sailors had just had a similar request turned down, he refused to go. His reward was that he captained a happy ship.

Despite his love of the sea, it did not always treat him kindly. His younger brother died in the battleship Barham during the war, a midshipman aged 17. Then in 1991 his own second son went missing in his yacht off the coast of Rhodes and has never been found. By tragic coincidence, it was 50 miles away from where the Panther went down. Roden's wife Clodagh, the daughter of a prominent Irish horse breeder Edward Kennedy, died in 1989, two years after celebrating their golden wedding. A supremely fit man himself who once loved walking through the Mountains of Mourne, Roden suffered a stroke nine months after the raid on his house and never fully recovered.

He leaves two surviving sons. the elder of whom represented his father earlier this month at a reunion of the survivors of the Panther, on the 50th anniversary of its loss. He now succeeds to the title as the 10th Earl of Roden.