Rohese de Vere, Countess of Essex

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Rohese de Vere, countess of Essex (c. 1110-1167 or after) was daughter of Aubrey de Vere II and Adeliza/Alice of Clare. She married twice. Her first husband, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex, became earl in 1140, and Rohese thereafter was styled countess. The couple had at least three children: Geoffrey III, William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex, and Robert. The first two became earls of Essex. When Earl Geoffrey became an outlaw during the civil war of King Stephen's reign (1143-1144), Rohese's whereabouts are not known but at least their eldest son seems to have been sent to Devizes, a stronghold of the supporters of the Empress Matilda. Earl Geoffrey died while outlawed and excommunicate in 1144, and his widow remarried swiftly. Her second husband, Payn de Beauchamp, lord of Bedford, had opposed King Stephen earlier in the reign. The couple founded a double monastery at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, for nuns and canons of the Gilbertine Order. They had one son, Simon de Beauchamp II. With her son Simon, Countess Rohese moved the secular canons of Bedford moved to Newnham, Bedfordshire.

According to the Walden Chronicle, when the countess's eldest son, Geoffrey de Mandeville III, earl of Essex, died in 1166, Countess Rohese was at Chicksands Priory enjoying a visit by her sister Alice of Essex. One member of the entourage who was escorting the earl's body to Walden Abbey, founded by her first husband, rode to Chicksands and informed Rohese of her son's death. He suggested that she send knights to seize the earl's body for burial at Chicksands. She rejected that suggestion, but when she later attended her son's funeral at Walden, she did seize the altar goods and other objects that her son had given to Walden and gave them to Chicksands Priory.

She is sometimes confused with another, contemporary 'Countess Rohese,' who was the wife of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln. While Earl Geoffrey's eldest son Ernulf de Mandeville is sometimes listed as the child of Countess Rohese, there is strong evidence that he was the earl's illegitimate son, born before Geoffrey's marriage to Rohese.