Nothing is known for certain about Rose’s family, but he may have been a kinsman of the John Rose† who represented Totnes in the Parliament of 1399, and at one time appears to have resided in that borough.
Rose was a tailor by occupation, and the substantial debts, totaling more than £75, which his executors sought to collect after his death suggest that he may have been a man of some substance. As some of these debts were owing from merchants of Barnstaple and Taunton, as well as the influential Tavistock burgess John Julkin*, it is possible that Rose himself was also active in trade. Certainly, he had connexions outside his own borough. His first wife, Joan (as well as her sister and nephew), were assigned legacies of money by the will of Robert Lingham, the rector of the Exeter church of St. Mary Major in 1428, and not long after Rose himself was acting as a feoffee for property in Totnes. The date of Rose’s death is obscure, but he was dead by Easter 1445. He was survived by his second wife, who, the executrix of his will, then married William Bythewater.