NICOLAS ROSCARROCK
Nicolas Roscarrock was the fifth son of Richard Roscarrock, of Roscarrock, in S. Endelion, by Isabell, daughter of Richard Trevenor. His grandmother was a Boscawen. His father during his lifetime had settled upon him the estates of Penhall, Carbura, and Newtown, in the parishes of S. Cleer and S. Germans.
He first studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1568. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, p. 299, tells us of "his industrious delight in matters of history and antiquity."
In 1577 Roscarrock was admitted student of the Inner Temple. In the same year was published by Richard Tottell The Worthies of Armorie ... collected and gathered by John Bossewell, to which were prefixed ninety-four verses, entitled Cilenus, Censur of the Author of his High Court of Herehautry, by Nicolas Roscarrocke.
In the Inner Temple he seems to have been associated with Raleigh, for in 1576 appeared The Steepleglas, a satyre, and among commendatory verses are some signed "N. R." and the rest by "Walter Rawely of the Inner Temple."
In 1577 he was in Cornwall, where he suffered much annoyance because of his faith, as he refused to conform to the English liturgy, and maintained the Papal supremacy. It was in 1570 that Pope Pius V had issued a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, deprived her of her title to the crown, and absolved her subjects from their oaths of allegiance. This violent and ill-judged proceeding at once converted all those who held by the Pope into suspected traitors; and measures were adopted against them, the more so as the Jesuits and their agents were more than suspected of forming plots for the assassination of the Queen.
Nicolas Roscarrock was accused at Launceston Assizes on September 16th, 1577, "for not going to church." He was in London later, and was an active member of the "Young Men's Club," 1579-81.
From the State Papers, 1547-50, we learn that two spies were employed by the Government to discover Nicolas Roscarrock. He had, however, probably fled to Douay, where a Roscarrock is entered in the Douay Diary as landing on September, 1580.
But he was again in England in 1581, when he was sent to the Tower, where by a refinement of cruelty he was placed in a cell adjoining that of a friend who had been racked, that the moans of the latter might intimidate Roscarrock into giving evidence of plots against the life of the Queen. On January 14th, 1581, Nicolas was himself tortured on the rack. He remained for five years in prison in the Tower, and in the Fleet again till 1594, in all fourteen years.