Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Radcliffe, Egremont
RADCLIFFE, EGREMONT (d. 1578), rebel, was son of Henry Radcliffe, second earl of Sussex [see under Radcliffe, Robert, first Earl], by his second wife, Anne, daughter of Sir Philip Calthorpe. When quite a young man he took part in the rebellion of 1569, and was so active that special instructions were given for his capture on its suppression. He managed, however, to escape over the border, and was for some time, with other rebels, the guest of the Scotts of Buccleugh at Branksom. A ship was provided to convey the party to Flanders, but news of the efforts the English government were making to intercept them having reached them, they seem to have sailed by way of Orkney. Once at Antwerp, Radcliffe received a pension of eight hundred ducats from the king of Spain. In the early part of 1572 he went on a mission to Madrid, where he was thrown into prison for debt at the end of 1573; in 1574, having returned to the Low Countries, he went to France, and quitted ‘the king of Spain's entertainment.’ He wrote a good many letters to Burghley and others about his pardon, and in February 1574–5 Dr. Wilson, writing to Burghley, spoke of him as ‘marvellously repentant;’ he offered to serve in Ireland, and later in the same year he sent a letter to Wilson ‘full of submission, with great moan of his necessity.’ To be nearer the gates of mercy he had moved in 1575 to Calais. He came in November 1575 to London; but when he showed himself at court he was sent to the Tower. There he remained for some years. About April 1577 he made petition to be allowed to take exercise in the little garden facing his prison, and to have a servant. He was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, where his name, with the date 1576 and the motto ‘pour parvenir’ may be seen cut in the wall of one of the cells.
On 10 May 1578 he was secretly released from prison, and exiled. He went to Flanders, incurred suspicion of being mixed up in a plot to poison Don John of Austria, presumably as the agent of the English government, and was consequently in the same year (1578) beheaded in the market-place of Namur (cf. Estate of the English Fugitives). De Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in England, describes him as ‘a rash and daring young man, ready for anything.’ He was author of ‘Politique Discourses translated out of French,’ London, 1578, 4to, dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham; this he undertook while in the Beauchamp Tower.
[Cals. of State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 545; 1566–79, Add., For. 1569–75, Spanish, 1568–79, specially note to p. 672; Froude's Hist. ix. 529; Sharp's Mem. of the Rebellion of 1569, pp. 71, &c.; Hatfield MSS. ii. 100; Sadler Papers, ii. 217, &c.; Gent. Mag. 1857, i. 199; Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage.]