for a reduction of duty on horses (suggesting a heavy tax on the employment of foreign servants be used to replace the revenue). He bestowed all of his significant land holdings in Exuma, Bahamas, to his slaves, in gratitude for which a number of towns on Great Exuma have been named after him, such as Rolleville and Rolletown. A large proportion of the inhabitants today are surnamed Rolle, some of the famous ones amongst whom are Esther Rolle, actress; Myron Rolle and Magnum Rolle, American football and basketball players respectively. Peerage The 1790s saw him attempting to obtain a peerage for himself or his father who had returned to the life of an English country gentleman after the failure of his American colonisation schemes. His father was uninterested but Pitt made a firm promise to Rolle himself, so long as a problematic by-election in Devon was not thereby caused by his removal to the House of Lords. At the dissolution of Parliament in 1796, Rolle was duly ennobled as Baron Rolle, of Stevenstone in the County of Devon. In 1797 Rolle's father died and he inherited all of the family's extensive estates, which were reckoned in 1809 to be worth £70,000 per annum. He was an active member of the House of Lords, and became increasingly Conservative: he was one of 22 'stalwarts' to vote against the Third Reading of the Reform Bill of 1832. During a parliamentary debate in July 1834 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham, attacked Rolle in a speech. When Brougham sat down, Rolle came up to him at the Woolsack and told him: "My Lord, I wish you to know that I have the greatest contempt for you both in this House and out of it". Coronation accident On 28 June 1838, the infirm Lord Rolle attended the coronation of Queen Victoria. What happened was later described by the Queen in her diary: Poor old Lord Rolle, who is 82 (sic) and dreadfully infirm, in attempting to ascend the steps fell and rolled quite down, but was not the least hurt; when he attempted to re-ascend them I got up and advanced to the end of the steps in order to prevent another fall. The diarist Charles Greville, who was present at the coronation, described the scene: [Lord Rolle] fell down as he was getting up the steps of the throne. Her first impulse was to