Robert Rochester

Sir Robert Rochester KG ( – 28 November 1557) was an English Catholic and Comptroller of the Household and a member of the Privy Council in the reign of Mary I. Family Rochester's family were 'minor Essex gentry' associated with the Earls of Oxford. According to Ross, Robert Rochester, esquire, was Comptroller of the Household to John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, at a fee of £10 per year, from about 1495 until his death in 1508. Robert Rochester was born at Terling, Essex, the third son of John Rochester and Grisold Writtle, daughter of Walter Writtle of Bobbingworth. Grisold Writtle's sister, Eleanor, married James Walsingham, and was the mother of Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower of London. Rochester's younger brother, Blessed John Rochester, was a Carthusian priest and martyr who was executed in York in May 1537, and beatified in 1888.