conduct in 1650, characterises him nevertheless as ‘a man very capable of business; and if the prosperity of his former fortune had not raised in him some fumes of vanity and self-conceitedness, very fit to be advised with, being of a nature constant and sincere’ (Life, i. 244).
Radcliffe married, 21 Feb. 1621–2, Anne, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Trappes of Harrogate and Nidd, Yorkshire. She died on 13 May 1659, in her fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey (Chester, Westminster Registers, p. 151; Whitaker, p. 288). He left a son Thomas, who died at Dublin in 1679, leaving no issue (ib. p. 295).
[A short life of Radcliffe is given in David Lloyd's Memoirs of Excellent Personages, 1668, p. 148; his correspondence was edited in 1810 by Dr. T. D. Whitaker, who adds a fuller memoir; Letters of Radcliffe are printed in Carte's Life of Ormonde, in the same author's Collection of Original Letters, 1739, in the Nicholas Papers, edited by Mr. G. F. Warner (Camden Soc. 1886, 1892), and in the Thurloe Papers; other authorities mentioned in the article.]
RADCLIFFE or RADCLYFFE, JAMES, third Earl of Derwentwater (1689–1716), born in Arlington Street, London, on 28 June 1689, was the eldest son of Edward Radclyffe, the second earl (d. 1705), by Lady Mary Tudor, a natural daughter of Charles II, by Mary Davis or Davies [q. v.], the actress. Lady Mary was granted precedence of a duke's daughter by her father, married Radclyffe, to whom she was unfaithful, on 18 Aug. 1687, and died in Paris on 5 Nov. 1726 (Hist. Reg. 1726, Chron. Diary, p. 42). The second earl was eldest son of Sir Francis Radclyffe (d. 1697), who was created Viscount Radclyffe and Langley and Earl of Derwentwater on 7 March 1688, this being one of the few peerages created by James II. Sir Francis was the grandson of another Sir Francis Radclyffe, created a baronet by James I in 1619, who was a lineal descendant of Sir Nicholas, the grandfather of Sir Richard Radcliffe [q. v.], the adherent of Richard III. This Sir Nicholas acquired the Derwentwater estates in 1417, by marriage with the heiress of John de Derwentwater (see Surtees, Hist. of Durham, i. 32; Nicolson and Burn, Hist. of Westmorland, ii. 78; and Whitaker, Hist. of Whalley, 3rd edit. pp. 412–14).
James was brought up at the exiled court of St. Germain, as a companion to the young prince, James Edward, remaining there, by the special desire of Queen Mary of Modena, until his father's death in 1705. After that he travelled on the continent, sailed from Holland for London in November 1709, and thence set out to visit his Cumberland estates for the first time early in 1710 (Hodgson, Hist. of Northumberland, I. ii. 225). He spent the next two years at Dilston Hall, the mansion built by his grandfather, and on 10 July 1712 he married Anna Maria, eldest daughter of Sir John Webb, third baronet, of Odstock, Wiltshire, by Barbara, daughter and coheiress of John Belasyse, first baron Belasyse. A generous and impulsive youth, a Roman catholic, and a distant kinsman of the exiled house of Stuart, he joined the conspiracy of 1715 without much reflection. His disloyal sentiments to the house of Brunswick were suspected by the government, and on the eve of the insurrection the secretary of state (Stanhope) signed a warrant for his arrest, and a messenger was sent to Durham to secure him. But Derwentwater's tenantry were devoted to him, and the news of his meditated arrest reached him long before the messenger's arrival. He consequently went into hiding until he heard that Thomas Forster (1675?–1738) [q. v.] had raised the standard of the Pretender, whereupon he joined him at Green-rig, on 6 Oct. 1715, at the head of a company of gentlemen and armed servants from Dilston Hall. His following did not exceed seventy persons, the troop being under the immediate command of his brother, Charles Radcliffe [see below]. The subordination of Derwentwater to Forster was apparently due to the Pretender's anxiety to conciliate his protestant adherents. Neither he nor Forster had any military experience. Their plan was to march through Lancashire to Staffordshire, where they looked for support, and the conduct of the expedition was left mainly in the hands of Colonel Henry Oxburgh [q. v.], who had served under Marlborough in Flanders. When the rebels occupied Preston, Derwentwater showed much activity in encouraging the men to throw up trenches; but he seems to have acquiesced in Forster's pusillanimous decision to capitulate to the inferior force of General Wills, who, moreover, had no cannon. He was escorted with the other prisoners to London by General Henry Lumley [q. v.], and lodged in the Devereux tower of the Tower of London, along with Earls Nithsdale and Carnwath, and Lords Widdrington, Kenmure, and Nairn. He was examined before the privy council on 10 Jan. 1716, and impeached with the other lords on 19 Jan. Derwentwater pleaded guilty, urging in extenuation his inexperience, and his advice to those who were about him to throw themselves upon the royal clemency.
