RADCLIFFE, Richard (c.1379-c.1442), of Radcliffe, Lancs.

Radcliffe was the representative of a family established at Radcliffe since the late twelfth century. By his time, it had diversified into several branches, of which the senior line was no longer the most important. Indeed, Richard had a very obscure career, overshadowed by the achievements of his younger brother, Sir John, who began a long and distinguished military career by fighting for Henry IV at the battle of Shrewsbury and went on to become one of the principal English captains in the French wars until his death in 1441. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 155-9. By contrast, the elder brother makes only intermittent appearances in the records after succeeding their father in the family estates, namely the manors of Radcliffe and Oswaldtwistle with a share of the manor of Culcheth. On 8 Mar. 1410 he was granted livery of this significant estate, valued, when in the hands of his son and heir, James, in 1451, at £60 p.a. Lancs. Inqs. i (Chetham Soc. xcv), 94-95; DKR, xxxiii. 8; PL3/3/28. He may also have inherited a residence undergoing significant improvement and development. On 15 Aug. 1403, perhaps in reward for serving in the royal army at the battle of Shrewsbury a few weeks earlier, his father had been granted licence to enclose the manor-house at Radcliffe ‘with walls of stone and within them to make a hall with two towers of stone and to crenellate the walls, hall and towers and hold the manor as a fortalice’. CPR, 1401-5, p. 255; A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, i. 243-4; VCH Lancs. v. 60-61.

One can only speculate as to why Radcliffe failed to develop a career from apparently promising beginnings. Its first part appears to have been the most active. On 9 May 1413 he was one of a large number of the Lancashire gentry who came to Wigan to elect the county’s MPs. One of those returned was Sir John Assheton†, who may have been his brother-in-law. On the following 23 Mar. he took out a 20-year lease of the duchy of Lancaster park of Musbury, not far from his manor of Oswaldtwistle, at an annual farm of as much as £8 6s. 8d., and he again appeared as an attestor to the county election of 15 Oct. 1414, held, as it generally was, in the north of the county at Lancaster. His addition to the county bench in 1418 demonstrated that he was considered as one of the county’s leading gentry, as too did his return, at an election conducted by his cousin, Sir Richard Radcliffe of Winmarleigh, to represent the county in the Parliament of 1425. Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 160, 206, 209, 210, 214-15; DKR, xl. 539.

What little is known of Radcliffe’s connexions also implies that he was a man of standing. Between 1427 and 1433 he acted in a complex series of transactions by which Richard, Lord Strange of Knockin, transferred his lordship of Dunham Massey in Cheshire to the important Lancashire family of Booth; and on 12 June 1427 he headed the jurors at the inquisition post mortem taken at Manchester on the death of Thomas, Lord de la Warre. John Rylands Lib., Grey (Stamford) of Dinham mss, EGR1/1/1/6-14; DKR, xxxvii (2), 690; CIPM, xxii. 789. Yet, for all this he remains a shadowy figure, perhaps because he was content to take no greater part in public affairs than that demanded by his position. He last appears in a public role on 30 Sept. 1440 when he sat as a commissioner of inquiry at Manchester before whom it was found that title to the manor of Whittleswick lay with Hugh Mascy and his wife Agnes. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 92-94. A transcript of his lost inquisition post mortem shows that he died on 15 May 1442. VCH Lancs. v. 59n.

In 1517 the Radcliffe patrimony came, by a settlement in tail male, to Robert Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, the great-grandson of our MP’s younger brother, Sir John Radcliffe. He was created earl of Sussex in 1529. Ibid. 59-60; Hampson, 33; CP, v. 484-7; xii (1), 517-20.