 When he was near his majority, Countess Rohese and Simon converted St. Paul's, Bedford, from a house of canons secular to one of regular canons and moved them to Newnham, Bedfordshire.According to the "Walden Chronicle," when the countess's eldest son, Geoffrey de Mandeville III, earl of Essex, died in 1166, his men decided to take his body for burial at Walden Priory in Essex, founded by his father.Countess Rohese was at Chicksands Priory when a member of the entourage escorting the earl's body arrived to inform her of her son's death.