Ordsall Hall Museum - Richard de Radclyffe

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Richard de Radclyffe, the son and heir of Sir John, was known as 'Le Puigne' to distinguish him from his cousin Richard of the Tower. In addition to the Ordsall estates he succeeded to his father's offices of Bailiwick of Rochdale and the Stewardship of Blackburn. By his marriage he vastly enhanced his noble status and landed possessions. His wife was Matilda, daughter and heir of Sir John Legh of Booths and Sandbach. In this lady flowed some of the noblest blood in the land. She was descended in the paternal line from Hamon de Legh, Lord of the Mediety of High Legh in the reign of Henry the Second, whose descendants had absorbed by marriage the notable families of Swineshead, Oughtrington, Corona, and Sandbach. By her grandmother, Margaret de Arderne, she was descended from Ralph, Viscount of Bayeux, from the family of Averanches Earls of Chester, and from the noble lines of St. Hillery, Montalt, Orreby, Glanville, and Sackville. The quarterings of this distinguished ancestry were now brought into the Radclyffe shield, and Matilda brought to her husband the manor of Sandbach, a moiety of Mobberley, and other extensive possessions of the Arderne inheritance in the county of Chester

Richard was one of the greatest landowners in the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, for in addition to the wide domains that his wife brought him, he had acquired other portions of the former lands of his own family. Besides Ordsall, he held the manor of Hope within Pendleton, a messuage and 60 acres of land, held by knight's service and a rent of four pounds and two shillings, and Shoresworth, which with Hope had come to the Radclyffes from Margaret de Shoresworth. On his father's death, Richard petitioned for the restitution of lands in Livesey and Tockholes in Blackburnshire, which had been granted to Roger de Radclyffe by Thomas of Lancaster, and had been seized by the Crown on account of the debts which Robert, son of Roger, had left unpaid at his death

Richard was drowned in Rossendale Water, while exercising his official duties, on the Thursday before the feast of St. Margaret in 1380. He had issue by Matilda of a son and a daughter:

Richard was married twice, his second wife being Sybil, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert de Clitheroe of Salesbury, by whom he had a daughter, Joan, married in 1401 to Sir Henry de Hoghton. After Richard's death Sybil was married again to Sir Richard de Maulverer, to whom she bore a daughter, Isabella, who was married to John de Talbot, and whose descendents had Salesbury for their inheritance. The son of John and Isabella was sir John de Talbot, who married Joan, daughter of Sir John de Radclyffe of Ordsall. Sybil's third husband was Sir Roger de Fulthorpe, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland. In 1388 Sir Roger was convicted at Westminster of 'divers betrayals of trust' and his lands were made forfeit to the King. These included 10 messuages and 100 acres in Flixton, held by knight's service and a rent of seventeen shillings and sixpence, lands called Shagh in Saddleworth Frith of an annual value of ninety shillings, and 6 messuages and 80 acres of meadow with appurtenances, of an annual value of eighty shillings in the township of Quyck in co. York, all held in right of his wife as dower from the inheritance of Richard de Radclyffe. These properties on the death of Sybil reverted to the Lord of Ordsall. Sybil was living in 1406, when the Bishop of Lichfield granted her a licence as Lady of Salesbury for Mass to be celebrated 'submissa voce' within her manor of Salesbury

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