RADCLIFFE, Sir John (d.1441), of Attleborough, Norf.

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 155-9.

While constable of Bordeaux, Radcliffe was the defendant in a Chancery suit brought by Giles de Taville, a merchant of the Algarve in Portugal. De Taville complained that the constable and others of the ‘fleet of England’ (‘del flote dengleterre’) had seized a Spanish vessel carrying a cargo of French wine belonging to him, which wine was subsequently disposed of by sale at Fowey in Cornwall. The outcome of this suit, by which de Taville sought redress as a subject of the king of Portugal and therefore an ally of England, is unknown. C1/4/29.

Two contemporary accounts of the siege of Calais in July 1436 provide further evidence relating to Radcliffe’s time there as lieutenant and both praise his conduct in that office. One of them is to be found in the well-known chronicle titled The Brut. A vivid account and possibly the testimony of an eyewitness, it depicts Sir John as a charismatic commander, ‘welbelouet amonges þe sawdiours’ of the local garrison, and describes the defensive arrangements he made for the town in the months preceding the siege. Assisted by the garrison and the municipal authorities, he constructed a ‘broad dike’ to the south of Calais, threw up earthen bulwarks and strengthened the town’s walls and towers. He also commanded those living outside Calais but within the local English Pale to demolish their houses and to evacuate with their goods to the town, although many of them disobeyed the order and stole away into Picardy or Flanders instead. On St. George’s Day he had the town’s alarm bell rung suddenly at noon, partly in jest, for the ‘sport’ of seeing the soldiers and citizens scrambling in alarm for their weapons and positions, but also with the serious purpose of testing how well the men under his command ‘wolde bokkelle and dresse heme to þeire harneys’ when the time came. The register of William Curteys, abbot of Bury St. Edmunds from 1429 to 1446, contains the second, far less well-known, account. This credits Radcliffe with breaking the siege by leading an attack on an enemy bastille (mobile siege tower), although other sources maintain that Edmund Beaufort, count of Mortain, and Roger, Lord Camoys, commanded the successful assault. If Radcliffe’s role is exaggerated here, it was possibly because the account was written from the point of view of the captain of Calais, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Perhaps piqued to find that the siege had ended by the time he arrived at Calais with a large relieving force on 2 Aug., Gloucester may have preferred the credit to fall upon his own deputy rather than Mortain. Such a hypothesis would fit with another, namely that Gloucester’s decision the previous April to divert Mortain and his men from Maine to Calais arose out of concern about the Beauforts’ territorial ambitions in Normandy. The Brut (EETS, cxxxvi), 573-4; Add.14848, ff. 192-3; J.A. Doig, ‘New Source for the Siege of Calais in 1436’, EHR, cx. 404-16.

It is possible that Radcliffe’s association with the bishop of Durham, Thomas Langley (d.1437), was closer than previously suggested, since ‘dominus’ John Radcliffe features in the bishop’s will as treasurer of the episcopal household. Langley bequeathed to his servant 20 marks, a small silver cup and a book of the epistles of St. Paul. Hist. Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, pp. ccxli-ccxlv.

Radcliffe’s will has not survived but other records, including those of the Exchequer, E159/219, brevia Mich. rot. 18d. reveal that his executors were his son Thomas Radcliffe and Robert Lethum of Witton. The latter, who earned some notoriety as a retainer of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, was the subject of a petition that Radcliffe’s brother Henry submitted to the King and Lords in the Parliament of 1449-50. In the petition, dating from June 1450, Henry Radcliffe recounted how he had served as his late brother’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, for which service he and his men were owed a considerable sum in unpaid wages that Lethum was now withholding from them. SC8/86/4253. Presumably it was also about this time that Henry sued Lethum in the Chancery over the same matter, by means of a bill in which he claimed that he and his men were owed no less than 2,000 marks, a sum which it was within the executor’s capacity to pay because Lethum had received ‘great sums’ from the Crown towards settling its debts to the deceased. C1/73/76. The outcomes of Henry’s petition and Chancery suit are not known.

A tax assessment provides evidence of Radcliffe’s landed wealth shortly before his death. For the purposes of the subsidy of 1436, his estates in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire were valued at £334 p.a. While not necessarily accurate, the assessment does at least indicate that he was a landowner of considerable standing. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (xii). Yet it evidently included the lands in the latter two counties that he then held in the right of his second wife, Katherine, with whom he was obliged to acknowledge the claims to the Burnell estates of the heir male, William, 7th Lord Lovell, not long afterwards.