202 Wild Darell of Littlecote. 



(though accompanied by the error that she was the heir of her 

 brother,) we are not in a position to state. It will have been 

 remarked (vol. iv. p. 228, note 18) that Sir Edward Darell, the 

 father, mentions this daughter, Ellen, in his will, but makes no 

 mention of his younger son Thomas. However as the father 

 and reputed son would seem, the one to have been born and the 

 other to have died, in the same year, the son may have been post- 

 humous. Still this omission tends to confirm the assertion made by 

 Mary, Lady Darell as she called herself, in the Chancery proceed- 

 ings, viz., that this son though legitimate, was at all events, not the 

 son of Sir Edward Darell. The mention also of herself in the will 

 of Sir Edward by her maiden name of Daniell is even more con- 

 firmatory of the suspicion that she was not his lawful wife. Ellen 

 Darell was living in 1574, as appears from an award made in a mat- 

 ter between "Hyde and Dorrell," relative to the affairs of the latter, 

 and in which the charge on his property of £200, payable to her 

 under his father's will, is mentioned; but she is only spoken of as 

 " DorrelFs sister;" whether married or unmarried does not appear. 

 Several of Ratcliffe's letters are given in Strype's History of the 

 Reformation, in not one of which is there a solitary allusion to his 

 having any wife. The only additional unpublished notice of him 

 which has been met with is among the Flanders papers at the State 

 Paper Office, in a letter from Mr. John Lee to Lord Burghley 

 dated March 18, 1571, 2, wherein he states that " Mr. Egremond 

 Radcliffe would be sent with letters of great importance " by some 

 other party, of course, and that " his" ( E. R.'s) "man had promised 

 to open the letters by the way, and reveal their contents." Rat- 

 cliffe's mode of life, his continued residence abroad, or his short stay 

 in his own country, and while there as a prisoner, appear to cast 

 doubts on the truth of this marriage. TVe must therefore leave 

 Ellen Darell in darkness, though not necessarily in suspicion. If, 

 as Mr. Bayley affirms, Ratcliffe was married to her "at an early 

 age," it must have been before the rebellion of 1569 in which he 

 took part, and then it would be strange that, having no issue by 

 her, the result of an incestuous intercourse with her brother, 

 twenty years afterwards, should be the birth of the infant whose 



