(Vol. ix., pp. 30, 31.)
My collections are arranged for illustrating, in the manner alluded to in
the above notice, upwards of four hundred families. In Tyrconnel's _Horse_,
I find a Dominick _Sheldon_, Lieut.-Colonel. His name appears in the
"Establishment" of 1687-8 for a pension of 200l. Early in the campaign, he
was actively opposed to the revolutionary party in Down and Antrim; and was
afterwards joined in an unsuccessful negotiation for the surrender of
Derry. At the battle of the Boyne he commanded the cavalry, and in a
gallant charge nearly retrieved the day, but had two horses shot under him.
When Tyrconnel left Ireland for France, to aid the cause of the Stuarts, he
selected this colonel as one of the directory, who were to advise the young
Duke of Berwick, to whom Tyrconnel had committed the command of the Irish
army, and who was afterwards so distinguished in the wars of the brigades
abroad. After the capitulation of Limerick in 1691, Sarsfield, then the
beloved commander of the last adherents of the cause of the royal exile,
intrusted to Colonel Sheldon the care of embarking all who preferred a
foreign land to the new Government; and King James (for, in justice to my
subject, I must still style him _King_) especially thanked him for his
performance of that duty. When his own regiment was brigaded in France, it
was called, _par excellence_, "the King's Regiment;" and Dominick Sheldon,
"an Englishman," was gazetted its Colonel. The successes of his gallant
band are recorded, in 1702, at the confluence of the Mincio and the Po; in
1703, against the Imperialists under Visconti, when he was wounded; in the
army of the Rhine, and at the battle of Spire within the same year, &c. He
appears, throughout his career, an individual of whom his descendants
should be proud; but I cannot discover the house of this _Englishman_.
In the Outlawries of 1691, he is described on one as "of the city of
Dublin," on another, as "of Pennyburn Mill, co. Derry." No other person of
his name appears in my whole _Army List_; although the "Diary" preserved in
the _Harleian Miscellany_ (old edit., vol. vii. p. 482.) erroneously
suggests a subaltern of his name. In the titular Court of St. Germains, two
of the name of Sheldon were of the Board of Green Cloth. Dr. Gilbert
Sheldon was Archbishop of Canterbury in the middle of the seventeenth
century; and the Sheldons are shown by Burke to be still an existing family
at Brailes House in Warwickshire, previously in Oxfordshire, and _semble_
in Staffordshire. I have made application on the subject to Mr. Sheldon of
Brailes House, the more confidently as the Christian name of "Ralph" is
frequent in the pedigree of that family, and Colonel Dominick Sheldon had a
brother Ralph; but Mr. Sheldon could not satisfy me.
One of the adventurers or soldiers in Cromwell's time, in Ireland, was a
William Sheldon; who, on the Restoration, in the royal policy of that day,
obtained a patent for the lands in Tipperary, which {402} the usurping
powers had allotted for him by certificate. Could Colonel Dominick have
been his relative?
I pray information on this subject, and any others connected with the _Army
List_, with any documentary assistance which, or the inspection of which,
the correspondents of "N. & Q." may afford me; and such services will be
thankfully acknowledged. If I were aided with such by them, and by the old
families of Ireland, the work should be a gem.