Sussex, Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd earl of
Sussex, Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd earl of (c.1525–83). Radcliffe was well connected. His mother was a daughter of the 2nd duke of Norfolk: his grandfather had married the niece of Elizabeth, Edward IV's queen. He fought with distinction in the French campaign of 1544 and at Pinkie in 1547. Though he signed the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey in 1553, his father was one of the first to declare for Mary and was in command of her forces at Framlingham. Radcliffe's wobble does not seem to have done him harm. He was summoned to Parliament in his father's barony of Fitzwalter, made captain of the gentlemen pensioners, and entrusted by Mary with the suppression of Wyatt's rising. He succeeded his father as earl in 1557 and was given the Garter. In 1556 he was sent by Mary to Ireland as lord keeper with instructions to promote the catholic cause. He was active against the O'Neills in Ulster and led a punitive expedition against their allies, the Scots of the Islands. Elizabeth reappointed him, making him lord-lieutenant, but his renewed campaign against the O'Neills made little progress. He resigned in 1565 and from 1568 to 1572 was lord president of the Council of the North, helping to put down the rising of the northern earls in 1569. From 1572 until his death he was lord chamberlain. At court he was a rival to Leicester, of whom he spoke scathingly.
J. A. Cannon
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