Ralph Sheldon (1623–1684) was an English
Roman Catholic Royalist and an antiquary. In his will he bequeathed his library and manuscripts to the
College of Arms, his country's authority over
heraldry
Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
and pedigree.
Family
Sheldon was born on 1 August 1623 at
Beoley
Beoley is a small village and larger civil parish north of Redditch in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire. It adjoins Warwickshire to the east. The 2001 census gave a parish population of 945, mostly at Holt End. The parish includes the ...
,
Worcestershire, the eldest son of the landowner William Sheldon (1589–1659) of Beoley and of Weston in
Long Compton
Long Compton is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England near the extreme southern tip of Warwickshire, and close to the border with Oxfordshire. It is part of the district of Stratford-on-Avon; in the 2001 census had a population of ...
,
Warwickshire, and his wife Elizabeth (1592–1656), daughter of
William, Lord Petre. He was a nephew of
Edward Sheldon
Edward Brewster Sheldon (Chicago, Illinois, February 4, 1886 – April 1, 1946, New York City) was an American dramatist. His plays include ''Salvation Nell'' (1908) and ''Romance'' (1913), which was made into a motion picture with Greta Garbo.
...
, a translator of Catholic religious works.
The family was among the wealthiest gentry in the region, but their Catholicism precluded them from prominence in public life.
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
John Savage, 2nd Earl Rivers (25 February 1603 – 10 October 1654) was a wealthy English nobleman, politician and Royalist from Cheshire.
Family
A member of the Savage family, John was the first son of Thomas Savage, 1st Viscount Savage, and E ...
(c. 1603–1654), a wealthy Catholic politician and Royalist from Cheshire. Beoley Hall was burnt down in the
English Civil War, apparently to stop it falling into
Roundhead hands. The estate was
sequestrated.
After the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
of 1660, Sheldon was nominated for a contemplated Order of the Royal Oak, to mark his family's devotion to Royalism.
Scholarly activities
Sheldon's wife died childless in 1663, perhaps of the plague, 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''.
[E. A. B. Barnard: ''The Sheldons'' (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2014 936] He created a library at Weston that was catalogued by his fellow antiquary
Anthony Wood. He also kept a cabinet of curiosities. Sheldon again travelled to Rome in 1667, to spend three years there expanding his collection. He was described by Wood as "a munificent favourer of learning and learned men".
Sheldon granted a stipend to the antiquary John Vincent and bought from him a major collection of manuscripts which had belonged to his father,
Augustine Vincent
Augustine Vincent (c. 1584–1626) was an English herald and antiquary. He became involved in an antiquarian dispute between his friend William Camden and Ralph Brooke.
Life
Vincent was born presumably in Northamptonshire, about 1584, third and y ...
, the
Windsor Herald (c. 1584–1626). This and many of his own possessions he bequeathed to the College of Arms.
His library was sold in 1781.
Tapestry maps
After the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
, Sheldon ordered copies to be woven of two of the tapestry maps, those of Worcestershire and Oxfordshire, first commissioned around 1590 by his great-grandfather, also named Ralph Sheldon (1537–1613). Each of the four originals centred on a county in which members of the family lived, held land and had friends: Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. The copies of each map itself were almost exact, while the decorative borders were updated in style.
The two later maps and the earlier one of Warwickshire were sold at auction with the contents of Weston in 1781, to
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician.
He had Strawb ...
. They were presented to
Lord Harcourt, who built a room for them at
Nuneham Courtenay
Nuneham Courtenay is a village and civil parish about southeast of Oxford. It occupies a pronounced section of the left bank of the River Thames.
Geography
The parish is bounded to the west by the River Thames and on other sides by field bound ...
. They later passed to the
Yorkshire Philosophical Society. The Oxfordshire map is now displayed at the
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...
, Oxford and that of Warwickshire is in the
Market Hall Museum, Warwick
__NOTOC__
Market Hall Museum is an historic museum located in Warwick, in Warwickshire, England. The Market Hall forms part of The Warwickshire Museum. The Warwickshire Museum is operated by Heritage and Culture Warwickshire. The collections on d ...
. That of Worcestershire is in store in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
[. It includes illustrations. Hilary L Turner, ''No Mean Prospect: Ralph Sheldon's Tapestry Maps'', Plotwood Press, 2010.]
Death
Sheldon died at Weston on 24 June 1684 and was buried, as his wife had been, in the family chapel at Beoley.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sheldon, Ralph
1623 births
1684 deaths
17th-century antiquarians
English antiquarians
Cavaliers
English Roman Catholics