Rokeby, Thomas (d. 1357), knight, justiciar of Ireland, and sheriff of Yorkshire, was son of Alexander Rokeby of Rokeby, Yorkshire, England. He first appears in 1321 as part of a group attacking the duke of Brittany's castle of Bowes during the conflict between Edward II and Thomas of Lancaster. He rose to prominence in July 1327 during the Anglo–Scottish war, when he was rewarded with £100 on being the first to bring news of the approaching Scottish army to the king.
Most of his career was spent on the Anglo–Scottish march in royal service. In 1331, through royal favour, he became a substantial landholder in the north-east of England. He acted as sheriff of Yorkshire (1335–7, 1342–9), keeper of Stirling and Edinburgh castles (1336–42), and intermittently escheator of Yorkshire, and also served on numerous royal commissions. Throughout the 1330s and 1340s he was handsomely recompensed for his service against the Scots. In 1346, as one of the commanders of the victorious English army at the battle of Neville's Cross, he was advanced to the status of a banneret and endowed with 200 marks a year. In January 1347 he was charged with escorting the captive David II of Scotland from York to London.
He was appointed justiciar of Ireland on 17 July 1349 and at first glance seemed an unusual choice, particularly because of his relatively poor social standing. However, his greatest asset was his obvious ability on the field of battle, and given the apparent similarities between campaigning in Ireland and skirmishing on the Anglo–Scottish border, his selection, initially at least, proved successful. His first period of office (20 December 1349–9 August 1355, with a brief hiatus in 1352 from 4 March to 15 June), was marked by the absence of strife with Anglo-Irish magnates, rapprochement having been achieved by Edward III in the late 1340s. His first act on arriving in Ireland, conscious as he was of hopes that the Irish exchequer might finally realise a surplus, was the arrest of the treasurer, Robert Embleton (qv), who was accused of embezzlement and a host of other crimes. Embleton was not the only exchequer official to feel his wrath: William Barton was removed from the Irish exchequer on the unusual grounds that he suffered vile convulsions and there was a danger his apparent illness might be contagious. In addition to the powers that normally accrued to the justiciar, Rokeby was also given licence to issue pardons and grant charters receiving men into the king's peace.
From January to September 1350 he campaigned vigorously in the south and east of the lordship. He also entered into agreements with many of the more notable Irish lords of the south-east, paying them retainers in return for the promise of military service. In addition, he supervised the election of the clan chiefs of three Wicklow families and brought two Leinster lords into royal service, Aodh Ó Tuathail (qv) and Ruadhrí Ó Mordha. In 1350 he held a great council at Kilkenny, which levied taxation on both the laity and clergy, and in October 1351 he presided over two great councils at Dublin and Kilkenny which laid down comprehensive ordinances for the defence and administration of the colony; he also introduced the English statute of labourers. In response to the loss of cultivated territories to ‘the land of war’, he proposed the recolonisation of these lands in order to remove the burden of local defence from the central administration, though the policy was highly impractical given the depopulation following the Black Death.
From September 1352 to September 1353 he campaigned in Munster; dealing diplomatically with the burgesses of Cork, he persuaded them to pay the wages of his troops for six months and to grant a tax to rebuild a nearby castle. He attempted to reinvigorate the region around Cork by confiscating lands that had gone to waste and granting them to individuals willing to undertake their rehabilitation. While in Munster he defeated Diarmaid Mac Carthaigh with the aid of other branches of the Mac Carthaigh lineage; he also rebuilt Bunratty castle. His policy of détente with the Irish of Leinster had disintegrated by 1353, and in 1353–4 he was forced to lead punitive expeditions against the O'Byrnes. In the spring of 1355 he introduced an elaborate system of garrisons and fortifications in and around the marches of Leinster to protect Dublin and its hinterland.
Before and after the re-emergence of problems in Leinster, Rokeby's reforming zeal waned; he sent a number of petitions to the king complaining of England's indifference to the problems of the Irish lordship, though he promised further successes in the matter of Ireland's profitability. By 1354 he had had enough and asked to be released from his position so that he could return to the less intractable problems and comparatively more rewarding opportunities of the Scottish march. Shortly after 9 August 1355, when he returned to England, the mayor and citizens of Cork wrote to the king asking for his reappointment, because ‘with great prudence he recalled discordant elements and rebels to unity and concord; to consolidate his work he built various castles in the marches; by his industry he earned repute and love from friends and enemies’.
Their wish was granted on 24 July 1356 and he arrived back in the lordship by October that year. Not only were the citizens of Cork gladdened by his reappearance, the normally waspish Anglo-Irish annalist was also pleased: ‘he fought the Irish well and paid for his victuals, saying, "I prefer to eat and drink only from wooden vessels and to spend gold and silver on supplies, clothing, and soldiers’ wages"’. On his arrival he first went to Munster to assess the situation there and prepare for another expedition against Mac Carthaigh, but matters in Leinster were more urgent. In February 1357 he led a campaign against the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes, and O'Nolans. There is also some evidence to suggest an attempt to resurrect the system of alliances that he had initially created in 1350. Yet before this could be brought about he died at Kilkea castle, Co. Kildare, on 23 April 1357.
The results of his active and relatively long justiciarship were mixed; while present in Ireland he managed to bring some measure of stability to the lordship, particularly in Leinster and Munster, despite the problems of 1353. He also succeeded in bringing about a temporary revival in the fortunes of the Irish exchequer, in the main through his constructive activities in Munster. Ultimately, however, these successes were ephemeral; the flexibility he showed in matters of policy (a result of his experiences in Scotland) led to a conflict with the bureaucratic rigidity of the central administration, and his personal relationship with some of the Irish lords did not transfer to his successors. His policy of fortification worked only in the short term, though it did forestall some of the erosion of central control over the Leinster and Munster marchlands.
His marriage to Juliana (family name unknown) does not seem to have produced any children. His lands in England, and those in Ireland granted for his services in the lordship, passed to his nephew, Thomas Rokeby, son of his brother, Robert. Thomas had served his uncle while he was justiciar of Ireland, and later was part of the retinue of William Windsor (qv).