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Charles Radclyffe


Charles Radclyffe (3 September 1693 – 8 December 1746) titular 5th Earl of Derwentwater, who claimed the title Fifth Earl of Derwentwater. He was the youngest son of Edward Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater and Lady Mary Tudor.

Charles was born in Little Parndon, Essex. The Radclyffe family were ardent followers of the House of Stuart, James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater (1689–1716), being raised at the court of the Stuarts in France as companion to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender. James and his brother Charles joined the Jacobite rising of 1715 and after being captured at Preston both were tried in London on charges of treason and condemned to death. James was beheaded on Tower Hill, London on 24 February 1716, declaring on the scaffold his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion and to King James III, but Charles escaped from prison through a clever ruse and rejoined the Stuarts in France. In 1731, James Radclyffe's son, John (the fourth Earl) died and the title passed to his uncle (Charles).

He travelled to Rome and was an active participant in the Court of the Jacobite claimant James Francis Edward Stuart and was private secretary to Bonnie Prince Charlie. While a captain in Dillon's regiment Charles was re-captured by the forces of George II of Great Britain in November, 1745 while sailing to join Charles Edward Stuart, the young Pretender, in Scotland, during the Jacobite rising of 1745 known as the Forty Five. Charles Radclyffe thus became one of the few Englishmen to take part in both the Fifteen and the Forty Five. Condemned to death under his former sentence by Lord Chancellor Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, he was beheaded on 8 December 1746, aged 53.


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