ford in 1559, and two years later was nominated to the responsible post of lieutenant of Leix and Offaly. He managed to keep the district quiet, but in 1564, when commissioners were sent from England to report on the condition of the Irish government, charges of corruption in dealing with funds appointed for the payment of the soldiers were brought against Radcliffe. He was ordered to refund at once 8,000l, and on his refusal was committed to prison (January 1565). His release was ordered by the home government, and he left Ireland permanently soon afterwards (cf. Cal. State Papers, Ireland, Eliz. i. 136, 253-4). In 1577 he was granted some property there, in cos. Kilkenny and Wexford (ib.; Morrin, Patent Rolls, 482, 539). In England he had already been appointed constable for life of Porchester Castle, and lieutenant of Southbere Forest (14 June 1560). In 1571, when he was elected M.P. for Hampshire, he received the office of warden and captain of the town, castle, and isle of Portsmouth, and he was actively employed in that capacity until his death. He succeeded his brother as fourth earl of Sussex on 9 June 1583, and on 5 Nov. 1589 wrote a piteous letter to the queen, stating that, unless she showed him some mercy, he was hopelessly bankrupt; his brother's estate brought in 450l., but was burdened with a debt to the crown which entailed the payment of 500l. a year (Lodge, Illustrations, ii. 319). In August 1586 he was tracking out an alleged catholic conspiracy at Portsmouth, and was watching suspicious vessels off the coast. During 1588 he was busy in furnishing with stores and gunpowder the ships commissioned to resist the Spanish Armada (Laughton, Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Naval Records Soc., passim). For such services he was made K.G. on 22 April 1589. He died on 14 Dec. 1593, and was buried at Boreham, Essex, beside his brother and his wife Honora, daughter of Anthony Pounde, esq., of Hampshire, whom he married before 24 Feb. 1561. His only son,
Robert Radcliffe, fifth Earl of Sussex (1569?-1629), was known as Viscount Fitzwalter from 1583 until he succeeded his father as fifth earl on 4 Dec. 1593. In August next year he was sent as ambassador-extraordinary to Scotland to assist at the baptism of James's eldest son, Henry, and to 'treat respecting the catholic earls, the Earl of Bothwell, and other matters ' (Cal. State Papers, Scotland, 1509-1603, ii. 657, 659, 661). In 1596 he served with the army sent against Cadiz as colonel of a regiment of foot, took a prominent part with Vere in the capture of the town, and was knighted there by the Earl of Essex on 27 June 1596. On 28 Nov. 1597 he appealed to Lord Burghley for military employment on the continent. 'He had much rather,' he said, 'make a good end in her majesty's service abroad than to live in a miserable poverty at home' (Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd ser. iv. 149). He acted as earl marshal of England during the parliaments which sat in the autumns of 1597 and 1601, and was colonel-general of foot in the army of London in August 1599, raised in anticipation of a Spanish invasion (Chamberlain, Letters, p. 58). He was one of the peers commissioned to try the Earl of Essex in 1601, and was made lord lieutenant of Essex on 26 Aug. 1603. He was also governor of Harwich and Landguard Fort. On 20 July 1603 he petitioned the queen to relieve him of some of the pecuniary embarrassments due to the debts to the crown contracted by the third and fourth earls (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, pp. 426-7). In July 1622 he sold to the Marquis of Buckingham his ancestral estate of Newhall for 22,000l., and resigned to him the lord-lieutenancy of Essex. He was reappointed joint lord lieutenant in 1625. Sussex was frequently at court. He carried the purple ermined robe at the creation of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, 4 Nov. 1616, and bore the orb at the coronation of Charles I on 2 Feb. 1625-6. He died at his house in Clerkenwell on 22 Sept. 1629, and was buried with his father and uncle in the church of Boreham.
Sussex was a patron of men of letters. In 1592 Robert Greene dedicated to him as Lord Fitzwalter 'Euphues Shadow,' by Thomas Lodge. Chapman prefixed to his translation of Homer's ' Iliad,' 1598, a sonnet to him, 'with duty always remembered to his honoured countess.' A sonnet was also addressed to the earl by Henry Lok, in his ' Sundry Christian Passions,' 1597, and Emanuel Ford [q. v.] dedicated to him in 1598 his popular romance 'Parismus' (p. 596). Sussex was twice married. His first wife, Bridget, daughter of Sir Charles Morison of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, was, according to Manningham, 'a very goodly and comely personage, of an excellent presence, and a rare wit' (Diary, pp. 60-1). In her honour Robert Greene gave his 'Philomela' the subtitle of 'The Lady Fitzwa[l]ter's Nightingale,' 1592, 4to. To her was also dedicated a popular music-book, 'The New Booke of Tabliture,' 1596. Manningham reports in his 'Diary,' 12 Oct. 1602, that the earl treated her with great cruelty, owing to the demoralising influence of his intimate friend Edward White-
