James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater

James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater (26 June 1689 – 24 February 1716) was an English Jacobite, executed for treason. His death is remembered in an English traditional ballad, "Lord Allenwater", collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1904 from the singing of Emily Stears.

He was the son of Edward Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater and Lady Mary Tudor, the natural daughter of Charles II by Moll Davis. He was brought up at the exile court of St Germain as a companion to the young prince, James Francis Edward Stuart (the 'Old Pretender' after his father James II died), and remained there at the wish of Queen Mary of Modena, until his father's death in 1705. He succeeded to the family titles and estates in Northumberland on the death of his father in 1705.

After that he travelled on the continent, sailed from Holland for London in November 1709, and then set out to visit his Cumberland estates for the first time early in 1710. He spent the next two years at Dilston Hall, Northumberland, the mansion built by his grandfather on the site of the ancestral home from 1521; the estates were sequestrated after the Civil War due to the recusancy of his grandfather the first Earl. He regained those and began the construction of a grand mansion to replace the old Hall, a task that was never completed.

He joined the conspiracy of 1715; he was suspected by the government, and on the eve of the insurrection the secretary of state, Stanhope, signed a warrant for his arrest. A messenger was sent to Durham to secure him, but Radclyffe went into hiding. He heard that Thomas Forster had raised the standard of the Pretender, and Radclyffe joined him at Greenrigg, on 6 October 1715, at the head of a company of gentlemen and armed servants from Dilston Hall. His following, at most 70, was under the immediate command of his brother, Charles Radclyffe. [see below]. Their plan was to march through Lancashire to Staffordshire, where they looked for support, and the expedition was left mainly in the hands of Colonel Henry Oxburgh, who had served under the Duke of Marlborough in Flanders.

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