committee appointed by Philip to look after his affairs during his absence; he was also placed on a commission to inquire into the plots against the queen. In September there was some popular discontent because the loan was ordered to be paid through his hands, ‘the people being of the opinion that this was done in order that the crown might less scrupulously avail itself of the money through the hands of so very confidential a minister and creature of her majesty, than through those of the treasurer’ (Cal. State Papers, Venetian, vi. 588). On 23 April 1557 Rochester was elected K.G., but was never formally installed at Windsor. On 4 May he was placed on a commission to take the surrender of indentures, patents, &c., and grant renewal of them for adequate fines. He died, unmarried, on 28 Nov. following, and was buried at the Charterhouse at Sheen on 4 Dec. He was succeeded as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster by his nephew, Sir Edward Waldegrave [q. v.], son of Edward Waldegrave (d. 1543) and Rochester's sister Lora. The substance of Rochester's will is printed in Collins's ‘Peerage,’ iv. 424–5.
[Cal. of State Papers, Dom., Venetian, and Foreign Ser.; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Official Return of Members of Parl. i. 382, 386, 389, 393; Ducatus Lancastriæ, Record ed. ii. 175; Visitations of Essex, 1558 and 1612 (Harl. Soc.); Morant's Essex, ii. 127, 391; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club); Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. iii. 310, 311; Ashmole's Order of the Garter, p. 715; Metcalfe's Book of Knights; Strype's Eccl. Mem. passim; Foxe's Actes and Monuments; Burnet's Hist. of Reformation, ed. Pocock; Dixon's Hist. of Church of England; Chester's John Rogers, pp. 173, 204, 308; Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England; Tytler's England under Edward VI and Mary; Froude's and Lingard's Histories of England.]
ROCHESTER, SOLOMON de (d. 1294), judge, was a native of Rochester, whence he took his name. His brother Gilbert held the living of Tong in Kent. Solomon took orders, and was apparently employed by Henry III in a legal capacity. In 1274 he was appointed justice in eyre for Middlesex, and in the following year for Worcestershire. From this time forward he was constantly employed in this capacity, and among the counties included in his circuits were Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Cornwall. He was frequently placed on commissions of oyer and terminer, and for other business, such as taking quo warranto pleas, and inquiring into the concealment of goods forfeited by the Jews. In 1276 he was present at council when the king gave judgment against Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, and he was also summoned to councils held in November 1283 and October 1288. In the following year he was, like all the other judges except two, dismissed for maladministration of justice and corruption. He was probably one of the worst offenders, as he was fined four thousand marks, a sum much larger than that extorted from several of the other judges (Oxenedes, p. 275). On 4 Jan. 1290 his name appears on a commission of oyer and terminer, but he does not appear to have had any further employment. In the parliament of 1290, as a consequence of Rochester's fall, numerous complaints were preferred against his conduct as a judge, one of them being from the abbey of Abingdon, from which he had extorted a considerable sum of money to give to his brother Gilbert.
Rochester now aimed at ecclesiastical preferment. He already held the prebend of Chamberlain Wood in St. Paul's Cathedral, and on the death of Thomas Inglethorp, bishop of Rochester, in May 1291, he made fruitless efforts to induce the monks to elect him to that see. Their refusal deeply offended him, and in a suit between the monks and the bishop of Rochester in 1294 Solomon persuaded the judges in eyre at Canterbury to give a decision adverse to the monks. According to Matthew of Westminster, the monks were avenged by the sudden death of their chief enemies, and the judges in terror sought their pardon, alleging that they had been ‘wickedly deceived by the wisdom of Solomon.’ Solomon himself was one of the victims; on 14 Aug. 1294 one Guynand or Wynand, parson of Snodland in Kent, entered Solomon's house, ate with him, and put poison into his food and drink, so that he died fifteen days afterwards (Placit. Abbreviatio, p. 290). According to Matthew of Westminster, Guynand only made Solomon drunk. He was charged with the murder, but pleaded his orders, and was successfully claimed as a clerk by the bishop of Rochester. Finally he purged himself at Greenwich, and was liberated. Solomon de Rochester had a house at Snodland, and another in Rochester, which in 1284 he was licensed to extend to the city walls and even to build on them.
[Matthew of Westminster, iii. 82–3, Reg. Epistol. Johannis Peckham, iii. 1009, 1041, Cartul. de Rameseia, ii. 292, Bartholomew Cotton's Hist. Anglicana, pp. 166, 173, Annales de Dunstaplia, de Oseneia, de Wigornia, and John de Oxenedes (all in Rolls Ser.); Placita de Quo Warranto, passim, Cal. Rot. Pat. p. 52 b, Placi-
