RADCLIFFE, Alexander (d.1476), of Ordsall, Lancs.

The Radcliffes of Ordsall, where they established themselves in the mid fourteenth century, were one of the main branches of a great Lancashire clan. They extended their estates into Cheshire through the marriage of Alexander’s great-grandparents, Richard Radcliffe (d.1380) and Maud, daughter and heir of Sir John Legh of Sandbach. By the time of our MP his family held in Lancashire, aside from the manor of Ordsall near Salford, the nearby manors at Hope, Shoresworth and Flixton, with outlying lands further to the north at Tockholes near Blackburn; and in Cheshire they had manors at Sandbach and Sproston with a further significant holding, lying about halfway between Ordsall and Sandbach, at Mobberley. G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, iii (1), 56; VCH Lancs. iv. 211. In the subsidy returns of 1451 Alexander was assessed on an income of £40 p.a., but, even though his lands were then still burdened by the dower interest of his stepmother, this underestimated his wealth. PL3/3. In his inq. post mortem of 1476, his Cheshire lands, excluding his manor at Sproston, were alone valued at £40 p.a.: CHES2/148, rot. 9.

The family’s high standing was both reflected in and enhanced by Radcliffe’s marriage. By the autumn of 1431, when his father subinfeudated to the couple a moiety of the manor of Flixton to hold at a nominal rent, he had married into the leading Lancashire family of Haryngton, whose main estates lay at the opposite end of the county from Ordsall. A further endowment may have followed, for actions in the palatinate court in 1441 suggest that Alexander had also been given the family property at Tockholes before his father’s death. Lancs. Final Concords (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. l), 96-97; PL15/3, rots. 3, 12; 5, rot. 7.

It was, however, Radcliffe’s family connexion with the Haryngtons rather than his lands that explain why his active career began even before he had inherited his patrimony. On 24 June 1433 he appeared with his father-in-law, Sir William, as attestor to the parliamentary election held at Lancaster, and on Christmas eve 1436 he and Sir William attested the election of Sir William’s son, Thomas I. Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 218, 220. Thereafter Radcliffe and his brother-in-law were found in frequent association. On Sir William’s death in February 1440 they acted together as his executors, attempting to recover 160 marks against the testator’s cousin, William, Lord Harington, as the arrears of an annuity. DKR, xxxiii. 39; C1/1/45. They also co-operated in an economic speculation of a different nature. In April 1440 they leased from the Bridgettine nunnery at Syon, which had been endowed by Henry V with the possessions of the alien priory of Lancaster, the tithes of corn in Gressingham and other Lancashire vills for the term of 12 years. Judging by the number of actions of debt Radcliffe and Haryngton brought against those to whom they sublet the tithes, this was not a profitable investment: e.g. PL15/14, rots. 22d, 25d; 16, rot. 16. Soon after, when Thomas was granted herbage and pasture of the duchy of Lancaster park of Quernmore, Radcliffe stood as one of his sureties, and it was Haryngton, as a parker there, who then farmed to our MP the duchy mill at Skerton near Lancaster for £10 p.a. PL14/155/3/21; VCH Lancs. viii. 59. Radcliffe had the farm of the mill by Mich. 1440: DL29/100/1790. Later, on 15 Jan. 1442, Radcliffe was again at Lancaster to attest his brother-in-law’s election to Parliament, and it is fair speculation that they were friends, albeit with Radcliffe the less important figure. Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 221. Interestingly, the election coincided with a session of the peace, and all three of the sitting j.p.s. – Thomas Urswyk I*, John Urswyk and William Ambrose – were among the attestors. They also attended to a matter of personal concern to our MP, taking an indictment in respect of the theft of 20 oxen from him at Tockholes: PL15/5, rot. 18.

In the same year Radcliffe inherited his patrimony. His father died on 26 July and on the following 30 Aug. the escheator of Cheshire was ordered to give him seisin of the family lands in that county. CHES2/115, m. 9. A major crisis in his affairs soon ensued. He became involved in a violent feud with his neighbour, Sir Thomas Booth of Barton-on-Irwell, which although minor in its apparent cause was extremely severe in its consequences. It appears to have revolved around a close in Pendleton (in Salford) held by Radcliffe but claimed by Booth as the lessee of the Augustinian priory of St. Thomas the Martyr near Stafford. PL15/8, rots. 5, 15d. If a narrative indictment taken before the royal justices at Lancaster on 20 Aug. 1444 is to be taken at face value, the Booths were the aggressors. The jurors claimed that, on the previous 29 Mar., Sir Thomas came to a close called ‘le Hope’ and, as an assertion of ownership against Radcliffe, cut down an oak tree. Three weeks later, on 20 Apr., Radcliffe came to reclaim the felled tree, loading it onto a carriage, but was then confronted by three of Sir Thomas’s sons at the head of 60 armed men. Violence was temporarily averted by the mediation of one of the Lancashire j.p.s., the lawyer Christopher Hilton, but when, under the terms of this mediation, Radcliffe and his men were on their way home to Ordsall with the tree, the Booths, now at the head of some 140 men, attacked them. The result, seemingly out of all proportion to the point at issue, was the death of four of Radcliffe’s companions, including his brother John, and one of Booth’s. PL15/7, rot. 16; 11, rot. 30d.

This narrative was entirely in favour of Radcliffe, laying the whole blame on the Booths. Whether or not this was the case is impossible to judge. On 5 June 1445 Radcliffe was required to find surety of the peace in £200 before the royal justices at Lancaster, suggesting that the violence was not all on one side. (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I, Sir John Pilkington of Pilkington (Lancs.), Sir Edmund Trafford of Trafford (Lancs.) and Henry Halsall* offered surety in £100 each on his behalf: PL15/8, rot. 36. By this date our MP’s son and heir, William, may already have married a daughter of Trafford: Hampson, 146. Yet subsequent events, at least as far as they are recorded in the surviving sources, imply that he was the largely passive victim of the aggression of the Booths. They were powerful opponents and were made the more so by their kinship with the county’s sheriff, Sir John Byron*, the husband of one of Sir Thomas Booth’s sisters. According to a petition presented by Radcliffe to the council of the duchy of Lancaster, Byron exploited his official position in support of his kin. At the sheriff’s tourn held at Liverpool at Michaelmas 1445, Radcliffe and 180 of his tenants, servants and well-wishers were indicted, in his submission falsely and ‘per grandem maliciam, excitacionem et abbettamentum’ of Sir Thomas. In response to Radcliffe’s complaint, the Crown issued a commission on 2 Jan. 1446 to deliver those imprisoned on these indictments, but Byron negated the commission by refusing to deliver the indictments to the commissioners. DL37/15/54; PL1/7/4.

Thereafter, however, Radcliffe was able to gain the initiative. On the following 15 June his brother-in-law Haryngton was among those commissioned to inquire into Byron’s misdeeds as sheriff, of which the alleged false indictments were but one. PL1/7/7. Another similar comm. was issued on 26 July: PL1/7/9. Later, on 6 Feb. 1447, after Radcliffe had found surety of the peace before the councillors of the duchy of Lancaster, the Crown ordered both Byron and the royal justices at Lancaster to cease process on the indictments against him and his supporters. Further, although on 13 Mar. Sir Thomas Booth was acquitted for his supposed role in the events of 1444, two of his sons, Henry and Nicholas, were outlawed. DL37/15/54-55; PL15/9, rot. 31; 11, rot. 30d. Such was as much legal redress as one could expect.

Radcliffe’s apparent initiative at law may have been a factor in another outbreak of violence. In the summer of 1449 he again petitioned for surety of the peace against the Booths, but this did not prevent a violent clash in the following March. On this occasion another of his unfortunate brothers, Hugh, met his death. This seems to have brought the cycle of violence to an end. In the following August, before the royal justices at Lancaster, Radcliffe appealed the murderers, naming Sir Thomas as an accessory, and a year later he secured a comprehensive series of sureties of the peace from his adversary. PL15/14, rots. 33, 34; 16, rot. 7; 17, rots. 25d, 26d, 27; KB27/762, rot. 92. Thereafter no more is recorded of the matter which, on the smallest of apparent pretexts, had cost the lives of six men. It was a different matter, now unknown, that, on 12 June 1453, occasioned the summons of Radcliffe to appear before the council of the duchy at Westminster: DL37/21/55. Those summoned with him had had no involvement in the dispute with Booth.

The next significant episode in Radcliffe’s career involved a disturbance that had a far wider resonance. On 28 May 1454 he was allegedly involved in the sack of the Derbyshire manor of Elvaston, the property of the powerful esquire, Walter Blount*. Sir Nicholas Longford of Longford in Derbyshire and Withington in Lancashire, accompanied by other leading gentry of those counties and Cheshire, led an armed band of 1,000 men to Derby. There they rejected a proclamation to disband made by the sheriff, (Sir) John Gresley*, a close friend of the Blounts, before moving on to Elvaston, where they ransacked Walter’s manor. In the indictments laid against the raiders a motive rooted in national politics is ascribed to them: they allegedly quartered tapestries charged with the Blount arms, justifying their action on the grounds that their victim ‘was gone to serve Traytours’, in other words, the duke of York and the Nevilles. KB9/12/1/13; Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxxiv. 39-49. The real cause, however, is probably to be sought in the internal divisions prevailing among the great gentry families that dominated Derbyshire politics, but, whatever the motive and purpose of the raid, it is hard to see why Radcliffe should have troubled to involve himself. He was a neighbour of Longford, who appears to have been the principal protagonist, but there is no evidence to suggest that the two men were friends. Further, if the raiders were provoked to action by hostility to York, the evidence of Radcliffe’s later career shows that he did not share that hostility. By the mid 1450s his friend and brother-in-law, Haryngton, was one of the prominent retainers of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. Moreover, the timing of his single election to Parliament – on 30 June 1455 in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans – is also difficult to reconcile with such hostility. Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 225. Radcliffe did not suffer for his involvement in the events of 1454. A writ for his outlawry was issued on 5 July, but he was able to make fine: KB9/12/1/13; 2/201.

However this may be, little is known of Radcliffe’s activities in the late 1450s. On 24 July 1459 he stood surety for the appearance of his son, William, before the King and council, but it is not known why William had been summoned. On the following 14 Sept. Haryngton, as he prepared to participate in the campaign that ended with the rout of Ludford, named him as one of his executors, and in a further expression of the close friendship the two men enjoyed, he bequeathed Radcliffe’s daughter, Isabel, 40 marks to her marriage and excused a debt of 60 marks due from Radcliffe himself so the sum could be made up to 100 marks. CCR, 1454-61, p. 399; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 251-2. It is not known whether Radcliffe went on to support Haryngton in that campaign or was with him when he was killed in the Yorkist ranks at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. 1460. All that can be said is that he was viewed favourably by the new King Edward IV. At a date not precisely known (but before 2 Feb. 1464), he was one of several leading Lancashire gentry to be awarded a royal annuity. Several knights were given £20 p.a. and our MP, as an esquire, had 20 marks p.a. All the grantees secured exemption from the Act of Resumption of 1465: PROME, xiii. 198-9.

Now a royal annuitant, Radcliffe was belatedly added to the Lancashire bench. He had been so nominated by 20 Apr. 1465, when he sat as a j.p. at Manchester. PL15/28, rot. 25. He also appears on the enrolled comm. of Feb. 1469: DKR, xxxvii (1), 178. Yet this new status did not make his appearances in the records any more numerous, and his career in its later stages is almost undocumented. He was an active litigant, although most of his actions were sued not on his own account but as one of Haryngton’s executors. PL15/23, rots. 5, 6, 7d. A notable exception came in Lent 1467 when he sued several members of the family of Grimshagh of Clayton-le-Moors for assaulting him at nearby Altham, but there is no evidence to show what lay behind this alleged attack. PL15/31, rots. 6, 16d. He made other appearances before the justices at Lancaster as surety of the peace, most interestingly in August 1465 for Thomas, a younger son of Sir John Pennington*, from a family compromised by its support for Henry VI. PL15/28, rot. 27.

By the 1470s Radcliffe must have been an old man. None the less, despite his age, he was involved in one more of those violent episodes that had characterized his career. On 22 Aug. 1474 he was indicted before the Lancashire j.p.s. at Wigan for leading an assault on various minor figures at Manchester six days before. He was acquitted on 6 Mar. 1476 and died on the following 11 June. He was succeeded by his son and heir, William.HHe was PL15/43, rot. 15d; CHES2/148, rot. 9. The family had a distinguished later history, providing Lancashire with two further MPs in the persons of Sir John Radcliffe† (d.1590) and his son, Sir John† (d.1627).