Sir Robert Radcliffe or Radclyffe (died 1497) was an English landowner.
Radcliffe was a son of Thomas Radcliffe, and not, as is sometimes stated, a member of the Attleborough branch of the family. His estates were at Hunstanton in Norfolk. He was Steward of the Lincolnshire estates of the Duke of York.Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), p. 84.
Radcliffe married Joan Stanhope in 1472. She was a daughter of Sir Richard Stanhope and Maud Cromwell, a sister of Ralph Cromwell, 3rd Baron Cromwell. Joan Stanhope's first husband was Sir Humphrey Bourchier, son of Henry Bourchier, 1st Earl of Essex, who was killed at the battle of Barnet in 1471.Colin Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings (Manchester, 2000), p. 20 fn. 6. Joan was an heir of Ralph Cromwell and was known as "Lady Cromwell".Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta: Illustrations from Wills, vol. 1 (London, 1826), p. 434: TNA PROB 11/11/383. Robert Radcliffe became lord of the manor of Tattershall.George Nathaniel Curzon & Henry Avray Tipping, Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire: A Historical & Descriptive Survey (London, 1929), pp. 101-2.
Joan Stanhope, Lady Cromwell died on 10 March 1489–90 and was buried at Holy Trinity, Tattershall, near Ralph Cromwell's home at Tattershall Castle,James Wright, 'Tattershall Castle and the Newly-built Personality of Ralph Lord Cromwell', The Antiquaries Journal, 101 (September 2021), pp. 301-332 where there is a commemorative brass image formerly including the Radcliffe coat of arms.A topographical account of Tattershall (Horncastle, 1813), pp. 12-3. Radcliffe subsequently married Katherine Drury, a daughter of Roger Drury of Hawstead in Suffolk. Her first husband was Henry Le Strange (died after 1483) of Hunstanton.Colin Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings (Manchester, 2000), p. 20 fn. 6.
Katherine's children by Robert Radcliffe included Ann Radcliffe and Elizabeth Radcliffe. In his will, written in 1496, Robert Radcliffe bequeathed Ann four gold rings, one engraved with an image of the five wounds of Christ, with a bed of gold or gold beads. Elizabeth was given an enamelled gold jewel or beads decorated with Catherine wheels. Ann would keep an embroidered purse containing holy relics and let Elizabeth have it when needed. He gave a vestment embroidered with Joan Stanhope's arms to the church at Tattershall and also paid for the painting and gilding of an image of the Virgin Mary in the collegiate church.Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta: Illustrations from Wills, vol. 1 (London, 1826), p. 434 includes "bed of gold": Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages (Allen Lane, 1990), p. 278: See TNA PROB 11/11/383 Radcliffe left his own gown of crimson velvet (but not its fur collar) to Hunstanton Church, to make a cope with a cloth of gold orphrey embroidered with his and "Dame Kateryne's" heraldry. The tomb and brass, "latten", he mentions in his will for Hunstanton may never have been erected.J. F. Williams, 'Some Norfolk churches and their old-time benefactors', Norfolk Archaeology, 27:3 (1941), p. 341: See TNA PROB 11/11/383.
References
External links Description of the brass for Joan, Lady Cromwell at Tattershall, Nicholas Rogers