John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield

John Baker Holroyd, 1st Baron Sheffield (1781), 1st Baron Sheffield (1783), 1st Baron Sheffield (1802), 1st Viscount Pevensey (1816) and 1st Earl of Sheffield (1816).

John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield (21 December 1735 – 30 May 1821)^[1] was an English politician who came from a Yorkshire family, a branch of which had settled in the Kingdom of Ireland.

Biography

His grandfather was Isaac Holroyd (1643–1706), a merchant who emigrated to Ireland after the Restoration. His father Isaac (1708–78) lived at Dunamore in County Meath.^[2]

He inherited considerable wealth, and in 1769 bought Sheffield Place in Sussex from Lord De La Warr. Having served in the Army, he entered the House of Commons in 1780, and in that year was prominent against the anti-Catholic Lord George Gordon and the Gordon rioters.

In 1781 he was created a Peer of Ireland as Baron Sheffield, of Dunamore in the County of Meath, and in 1783 was further created Baron Sheffield, of Roscommon in the County of Roscommon, with a special remainder in favour of his daughters. In 1802 he was created a Peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Sheffield, of Sheffield in the County of York. In 1816, he was created Viscount Pevensey and Earl of Sheffield in the Peerage of Ireland. He was a great authority on farming, and in 1803, he was appointed President of the Board of Agriculture. But he is remembered chiefly as the close friend and literary executor of Edward Gibbon (author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), whose Memoirs and other miscellaneous works he subsequently edited and published.

He married Abigail Way, daughter of Lewis Way of Richmond, Surrey and they had two children. Abigail died in 1793 and he remarried to Lady Anne North (1782?-18 January 1832), the daughter of the former Prime Minister Lord North on 20 January 1798. His son and grandson succeeded as second and third Earls of Sheffield, the latter being a well-known patron of cricket, at whose death the earldom became extinct.

The 1st Earl of Sheffield is buried in a mausoleum attached to the north transept of the Church of St Mary and St Andrew, Fletching, East Sussex. When Edward Gibbon died in 1794, he was buried in the mausoleum as a mark of respect. The Holroyd family are commemorated in the surrounding panels.^[3]

The 1st Earl of Sheffield's daughter Maria Josepha married John Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley in 1796, and therefore the Irish barony, under special remainder, later passed to Edward Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley, who thus became also fourth Baron Sheffield.

Notes

1. Cannon, John (2004–2013). "Holroyd, John Baker". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13608. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. Lundy, Darryl. "p. 24201". The Peerage.
3. Sheffield Mausoleum

References

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990,
• Jacques-Alphonse Mahul, Annuaire nécrologique, ou Supplément annuel et continuation de toutes les biographies ou dictionnaires historiques, 3e année, 1822, Paris : Ponthieu, 1823, p.324-331

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sheffield, John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of". Encyclopædia Britannica 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
•  Williams, James (1891). "Holroyd, John Baker". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 27. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages