Henry Radcliffe, second Earl of Sussex (1506?–1557), born about 1506, served Wolsey on his embassy to France in 1527 as a gentleman attendant. From 1529 till his father's death he was known as Viscount Fitzwalter. He was made K.B. on 30 May 1533, and on 31 May 1536 had the valuable grant of the joint stewardship of the royal estates in Essex. On 26 Nov. 1542 he succeeded as second Earl of Sussex, and exercised the family office of lord sewer at the coronation of Edward VI. He was one of the lords and gentlemen who put Somerset in the Tower by the order of the council in October 1549. He declared for Queen Mary, and was captain-general of her forces and privy councillor in 1553, and lord sewer at her coronation. He took part in the trials of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford Dudley, and was made knight of the Garter on 24 April 1554. In October 1556 he was engaged in Norfolk in trying to force the gospellers to go to mass. Execution for debt was stayed against him in the Star-chamber the same month by the queen's orders. He died on 17 Feb. 1556–7 in Cannon Row, London, and was buried at the church of St. Lawrence Pountney. His remains were subsequently removed to the church of Boreham, Essex. His estates passed to Sir William Radcliffe of Ordsall (cf. Stanley Papers, Chetham Soc., pt. ii. p. 172). He married, first, before 21 May 1524, Lady Elizabeth Howard, fifth daughter of Thomas, second duke of Norfolk, and by her had three sons, Thomas [q. v.] and Henry, successively earls of Sussex, and Robert who was killed in Scotland in his father's lifetime; secondly, Anne, daughter of Sir Philip Calthorpe, styled in his will his ‘unkind wife.’ By her, whom he divorced, he had Egremont Radcliffe [q. v.]; Maud, who died young; and Frances (1552–1602), who married Sir Thomas Mildmay. It is to the descendants of Frances that the barony of Fitzwalter ultimately descended.
[Letters and Papers, Henry VIII; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Add. 1547–65, pp. 443, 447; Proc. of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, i. 3–35, ii. 344; Doyle's Official Baronage, iii. 480; Baines's Hist. of Lancashire, ii. 421, &c.; Froude's Hist. of Engl. vi. 18, &c.; Zurich Letters, iii. 179; Bale's Selected Works, pp. 220, 242; Cranmer's Works, ii. 324, 490 (Parker Soc.); Strype's Memorials of the Reformation, I. i. 235, 565, 598, II. i. 6, ii. 162, &c. III. i. 128 n., ii. 414, and Cranmer, 396, &c.; Froude's Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, p. 176; Chron. of Calais (Camd. Soc.), pp. 10, 11, 31, 175, 184–5, 187; Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 25114, f. 288.]
RADCLIFFE, THOMAS, third Earl of Sussex (1526?–1583), eldest son of Sir Henry Radcliffe, second earl of Sussex [see under Radcliffe, Robert, first Earl of Sussex], by his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk, was born about 1526 (Dugdale, Baronage, ii. 286). He was educated apparently at Cambridge (Cooper, Athenae Cantabr. i. 462), and was admitted a member of Gray's Inn on 22 Jan. 1561 (Foster, Admission Register, p. 29). Known by the title of Lord Fitzwalter from 1542, when his father succeeded to the earldom, he took part in the expedition against France in the summer of 1544 (Rymer's Foedera, vol. vi. pt. iii. p. 121). He was probably knighted by Henry VIII at his departure from France on 30 Sept., and was one of the six lords who bore the canopy at his funeral on 14 Feb. 1547 (Strype, Eccl. Mem. II. ii. 298). He commanded a number of demi-lances at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh on 10 Sept., but was unhorsed during the fight, and only escaped with difficulty (Holinshed, Chronicle). He accompanied the Marquis of Northampton to France in 1551 to arrange a marriage between Edward VI and Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. i. 123), and was elected a knight of the shire for the county of Norfolk to the parliament which assembled on 1 March 1553. His name appears among the witnesses to the will of Edward VI, whereby the crown was settled on Lady Jane Grey; but he soon gave in his adhesion to Queen Mary, and rendered her essential service in the suppression of Wyatt's rebellion, for which he was apparently rewarded by a grant of land worth 50l. a year (Journal of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 99, 187).
In February 1554 he was sent on a mission to Brussels relative to the proposed marriage between Mary and Philip (Lodge, Illustrations, i. 235), and on his return was associated with John, earl of Bedford, in an embassy to the court of Spain for the purpose of obtaining Philip's ratification of the articles of marriage (Instructions in Cott. MS. Vesp.C. vii. f. 198). The envoys returned to England laden with presents, in time to receive Philip on his landing near Southampton on 20 July (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. ii. 74, 77, 106; Wiffen, House of Russell, i. 390). Radcliffe was present at the marriage and at the subsequent festivities at court; and having, apparently during his absence, been summoned to the upper house as Baron Fitzwalter, he took his seat in that assembly on 22 Nov. He was present, with other noblemen, at the consecration of Reginald Pole [q. v.] as archbishop of Canterbury in the church of the Grey Friars, Greenwich, on 20 March 1557 (Strype, Eccl. Mem. in. i. 474), and a day or two afterwards was
