Frances Radclyffe

Lady Frances Radclyffe (died 1602) was an English noblewoman, who early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England became one of her Maids of Honour. It was at the royal court when Frances attracted the attention of visiting Irish chieftain Shane O'Neill, who was searching for a "proper English wife" and made her a proposal of matrimony, which she refused to consider. She later married Sir Thomas Mildmay, by whom she had two sons. Family Lady Frances was born on an unknown date, the youngest daughter of Henry Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Sussex by his second wife, Anne Calthorpe, a lady-in-waiting to Queen consort Catherine Parr. Frances had a brother Egremont, a sister, Maud who died at a young age. She had also two half.brothers Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex and Henry Radclyffe, 4th Earl of Sussex, by her father's first marriage to Elizabeth Howard. Frances's childhood was unsettled. When she was an infant, her father had thrown her mother out of the house for allegedly having entered into a bigamous marriage with Sir Edmund Knyvet. In September 1552, her mother was sent to the Tower of London for practising sorcery, and upon the accession of Queen Mary I, Anne, who was a Protestant fled to the Continent to avoid the Marian persecutions. It was during Anne's absence that Frances's father divorced her mother and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to have Parliament bastardise both her and Egremont. There is the possibility that Sir Edmund Knyvet was indeed Frances's natural father. Shane O'Neill Early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Frances went to court where she served the new queen as one of her Maids of Honour. It was in this capacity that she attracted the attention of Shane O'Neill, the chief of the Irish clan of O'Neill, who arrived in London in January 1562 to negotiate with the Queen for his late father's title of Earl of Tyrone.