Robert Radcliffe, 5th Earl of Sussex

Robert Radclyffe, 5th Earl of Sussex, KG (12 June 1573 – 22 September 1629) was an English peer.

He was the only son of Henry Radclyffe, 4th Earl of Sussex and his wife Honora Pounde, and was known as Viscount Fitzwalter from 1583 until he succeeded his father as Earl on 4 December 1593. In August next year he was sent as ambassador-extraordinary to Scotland to assist at the baptism of James VI's eldest son, Henry, and with a diplomatic mission.

In 1596 he served with the army sent against Cadiz as colonel of a regiment of foot, took a prominent part with Horace Vere in the capture of the town, and was knighted there by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex on 27 June 1596. In November 1597 he appealed to Lord Burghley for military employment on the continent. He acted as Earl Marshal of England during the parliaments which sat in the autumns of 1597 and 1601, and was colonel-general of foot in the army of London in August 1599, raised in anticipation of a Spanish invasion; in 1599 also he became a Knight of the Garter. Although implicated in Essex's rebellion of 1601, he was one of the peers commissioned to try him, and was made lord lieutenant of Essex on 26 August 1603. He was also governor of Harwich and Landguard Fort. On 20 July 1603 he petitioned the queen to relieve him of some of the pecuniary embarrassments due to the debts to the crown contracted by the third and fourth earls.

In July 1622 he sold to the Marquis of Buckingham his ancestral estate of Newhall, Essex for £22,000, and resigned to him the lord-lieutenancy of Essex. He was reappointed joint lord lieutenant in 1625. Sussex was frequently at court, carried the purple ermined robe at the creation of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, 4 November 1616, and bore the orb at the coronation of Charles I on 2 Feb. 1626. He died at his house in Clerkenwell on 22 September 1629, and was buried with his father and uncle in the church of Boreham.

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