Rose was made an honorary DCL of the University of Oxford in 1865. He became Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Ireland with the local rank of general in July 1865, in which role he assisted the Irish government to deal with the Fenian conspiracy, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Strathnairn, of Strathnairn in the County of Nairn and of Jhansi in the India on 28 July 1866. He was promoted to the substantive rank of full general on 4 February 1867 and was made an honorary LL.D. of Trinity College, Dublin when he retired from the Irish Command in 1870. Back in England he lived in retirement at Newsells Park in Hertfordshire. Rose was keen on horses and had an obelisk erected there in memory of his favourite charger which he had ridden during the Indian Mutiny.