Rochford, Hugh (1607–c.1651), politician, was eldest son of James Rochford, a prominent Wexford landowner, and Alice, daughter of Michael Keating of Baldwinstown, Co. Wexford. Hugh entered Middle Temple in 1628, and King's Inns in Dublin after his return to Ireland in 1635. He married Catherine Williams, who brought a dowry of £1,500 with her, making him a wealthy man in his own right. Rochford represented the borough of Fethard in the 1640 parliament, and became sheriff of Co. Wexford the following year. In 1641 he became increasingly prominent among the leaders of the parliamentary opposition and, in a critical division in the commons on 23 June, was elected chairman of a grand committee which met to contest the king's denial of the Irish parliament's right to impeachment. In the first weeks of the Ulster rebellion, Rochford and the other catholic members of parliament sought to arrange a truce with the insurgents, before eventually joining the uprising. Expelled from parliament in June 1642, Rochford provided money, arms, and other vital supplies to the rebels. Together with his brother John, who later served as a lieutenant-colonel in the confederate forces, he raised a company of soldiers, laying siege to the strategic fortress at Duncannon. He sat on the Wexford county council throughout the 1640s, and attended the confederate general assembly in Kilkenny on a regular basis. Rochford opposed the 1646 peace treaty with the royalist lord-lieutenant, James Butler (qv), marquess of Ormond, and was appointed to the confederate judiciary by the papal nuncio, GianBattista Rinuccini (qv), as a result.
A political moderate, he supported the efforts of his fellow lawyers and ex-parliamentarians, Nicholas Plunkett (qv) and Patrick Darcy (qv), to fashion a compromise settlement between the various confederate factions. At the general assembly in early 1647 he negotiated a temporary truce with the royalists, before securing his own election to the supreme council. When civil war erupted in the confederate ranks the following year, Rochford worked closely with Randal MacDonnell (qv), marquis of Antrim, organising armed opposition to the peace faction in Wexford. Arrested in October 1648, he none the less accepted the second Ormond peace treaty, signed three months later. Appointed recorder of Wexford in 1649, he also served as commissioner to judge prizes in the county ports. In early 1650 Rochford sailed to Jersey (on whose authority is unclear) to open communications with Charles II, but nothing came of the initiative. Returning to Ireland shortly afterwards, he supported various intrigues aimed at overthrowing Ormond's administration. In February 1651 he travelled to the Low Countries with Nicholas French (qv), bishop of Ferns, seeking urgent military assistance from the duke of Lorraine. The two men carried credentials from the catholic bishops and the mayors of Galway and Limerick, but the new royalist lord deputy, Ulick Burke (qv), marquis of Clanricarde, refused to be party to the negotiations. Two months later Rochford arrived at La Rochelle, with plans to fortify Inisbofin off the coast of Galway as a potential base for an invasion force from the Continent. He disappears from all records at this time, and his subsequent fate is unknown. His wife, Catherine, died in 1641 and was buried at St Michans in Dublin.