Tendons/cables are able to transmit motor motion into the linear displacement in tendon-driven surgical instruments, which are widely used in the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK). It is crucial to derive the joint-cable-motor kinematics in such instruments while designing joint controllers for them, since coupling phenomenon between joints due to instrument mechanical design normally exists in the tendon-driven instrument. Previous work built the kinematics for their own designs, however, few efforts have been made to post a systematic and fast modelling method. Here we present a general way to model the joint-cable-motor kinematics for a class of coupled tendon-driven surgical instrument using the rolling joint, based on the representation (Fig. 1) describing the kinematics relationships among three spaces. Moreover, the retractor instrument with coupled wrist joints (Fig. 2) we designed is employed to validate the proposed kinematics modelling approach.