Ralph Sheldon

Ralph Sheldon (1623–1684) was a Roman Catholic Royalist and an antiquary, who bequeathed his library of books and manuscripts to the College of Arms, the authority over heraldry and pedigree in England.

Family

Sheldon was born on 1 August 1623 at Beoley, Worcestershire, eldest son of the landowner William Sheldon (1589–1659) of Beoley and of Weston in Long Compton, Warwickshire, and his wife Elizabeth (1592–1656), daughter of William, Lord Petre. He was a nephew of Edward Sheldon, the translator of Catholic religious works.

The Sheldons were among the wealthiest families of gentry in England, but their position in public life was impeded by their Catholicism."[1]

Commonwealth period

Ralph Sheldon left England for France and Italy in 1642 and returned just before his marriage in 1647 to Lady Henrietta Maria, daughter of John Savage, 2nd Earl Rivers (c. 1603–1654), a wealthy Catholic politician and Royalist from Cheshire. In the English Civil War, Beoley Hall was burnt down, apparently to stop it falling into the hands of the Parliamentarian forces. The estate was sequestered.

After the Restoration of 1660, Sheldon was nominated for a contemplated Order of the Royal Oak, in honour of his family's devotion to Royalism.[1]

Scholarly activities

Sheldon's wife died childless in 1663, possibly of the plague,[2] after which he devoted himself wholly to genealogy, heraldry, and antiquities and drew up a Catalogue of the Nobility of England since the Norman Conquest. He created a fine library at Weston, which was catalogued by his fellow antiquary Anthony Wood. He also kept a cabinet of curiosities. Sheldon again travelled to Rome in 1667 and spent three years there expanding his collection. He was described by Wood as "a munificent favourer of learning and learned men".

Sheldon granted a pension to the antiquary John Vincent and purchased from him an important collection of manuscripts which had belonged to his father, Augustine Vincent, the Windsor Herald (c. 1584–1626). This and many of his own possessions were left in his will to the College of Arms.[3]

Tapestry maps

After the Restoration, Sheldon ordered two copies to be woven of one of the tapestry maps first commissioned around 1590 by his great-grandfather, also named Ralph Sheldon. Each of the four original maps was centred on a county in which members of the family lived, held land and had friends: Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. The copies of the map itself were almost exact, while the decorative borders were updated in style.

The maps were sold at auction along with Weston and its contents in 1781, and bought by Horace Walpole for presentation to Lord Harcourt, who built a room specially for them at Nuneham Courtenay. They were later acquired by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society[4]

Death

Sheldon died at Weston on 24 June 1684 and was buried, as his wife had been, in the family chapel at Beoley.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 Jan Broadway, "Sheldon, Ralph (1623–1684)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004 Retrieved 16 December 2015. Pay-walled
  2. 1 2 E. A. B. Barnard: The Sheldons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2014 [1936])
  3. ↑ University of Toronto Libraries, British Armorial Bindings Retrieved 16 December 2015
  4. ↑ Hilary R. Turner: "Oxfordshire in Wool and Silk: Ralph Sheldon the Great's Tapestry Map of Oxfordshire". Oxoniensia (2006, c.) Retrieved 17 December 2015. This includes illustrations.
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