SHEFFIELD BUCKINGHAMSHIRE' OHN SHEFFIELD, descended from a long series of illus- 1 trious ancestors, was descended fro, the song serum und earl JOH of Mulgrave, who died 1658. The young lord was put into the hands of a tutor, with whom he was so little satisfied that he got rid of him in a short time, and, at an age not exceeding twelve years, resolved to educate himself. Such a purpose, formed at such an age and successfully prosecuted, delights as it is strange, and instructs as it is real. His literary acquisitions are more wonderful, as those years in 2 which they are commonly made were spent by him in the tumult of a military life or the gaiety of a court. When war was declared against the Dutch, he went at seventeen on board the ship in which prince Rupert and the duke of Albemarle sailed, with the command of the fleet 5; but by contrariety of winds they were restrained from action. His zeal for the king's service was The Works of the Duke of Buckingham, 1740, 2 vols., contain his Memoirs by himself (vol. ii. pp. 1-40), and A Short Character of him (pp. 321-44). 'The life of this peer takes up fourteen pages and a half in folio in The General Dictionary, where it has little pretensions to occupy a couple; but his pious relict was always purchasing places for him, herself, and their son in every suburb of the Temple of Fame.' HORACE WALPOLE, Works, i. 435. For his title see post, SHEFFIELD, 17. For his pedigree see his Works, ed. 1740, ii. 351. In his epitaph he is described as 'Ex illustri Sheffyldiorum stemmate (quod a Rege Hen. III haeredibus masculis directo semper gradu se invicem excipientibus ad hanc usque aetatem duravit) oriundus.' Atterbury Corres. iv. 315. Walpole includes one of his an cestors, Edmund, Lord Sheffield, in his Catalogue of Noble Authors (Works, i. 306). 'He was made a baron by Edward VI, and had his brains knocked out by a butcher at an insurrection in Norfolk.' He wrote a book of sonnets in the Italian measure.' 3 He was born on April 7, 1648. Dict. Nat. Biog. 4 Johnson infers the age, incorrectly I think, from a passage in his Works, ii. 324. 5 Dryden praised him for 'undergoing the hazards, and, which was worse, the company of common seamen. Works, v. 193. Buckingham says that his grandfather [Sir John Sheffield, drowned in the Humber, Dec. 1614] and three of his greatuncles had been drowned at sea. Works, ii. 7. 'A sudden storm parted the two fleets just ready to begin.' lb. p. 4. recompensed by the command of one of the independent troops of horse, then raised to protect the coast 1. 3 Next year he received a summons to parliament, which, as he was then but eighteen years old, the earl of Northumberland censured as at least indecent, and his objection was allowed. He had a quarrel with the earl of Rochester, which he has perhaps too ostentatiously related 3, as Rochester's surviving sister, the lady Sandwich, is said to have told him with very sharp reproaches. 4 When another Dutch war (1672) broke out, he went again a volunteer in the ship which the celebrated lord Ossory commanded; and there made, as he relates, two curious remarks: 5 'I have observed two things which I dare affirm, though not generally believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon-bullet, though flying never so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and, indeed, were it otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was that a great shot may be sometimes avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoak, it was so clear a sun-shiny day that we could easily perceive the bullets (that were half spent) fall into the water, and from thence bound up again among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any side; though, in so swift a motion, 'tis hard to judge well in what line. the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may by removing cost a man his life, instead of saving it".' 6 7 His behaviour was so favourably represented by lord Ossory, that he was advanced to the command of the Katherine, the best second-rate ship in the navy'. He afterwards raised a regiment of foot, and commanded it as colonel. The land-forces were sent ashore by prince Rupert, After the Dutch had burnt the ships at Chatham. Works, ii. 7. Ib. p. 8. 3 Ante, ROCHESTER, 3, 16. Dryden perhaps refers to this quarrel in his Dedication (ante, DRYDEN, 77), when, praising Sheffield's courage, he continues: He who is too lightly reconciled after high provocations may recommend himself to the world for a Christian, but I should hardly trust him for a friend. The Italians have a proverb to that purpose:"To forgive the first time shews me a good Catholic, the second time a fool."' Dryden's Works, v. 192. The third Earl of Sandwich The eldest son of the Duke of 'snatched in manhood's prime By unequal fates, and providence's crime.' 1 Works, ii. 18. and he lived in the camp very familiarly with Schomberg'. He was then appointed colonel of the old Holland regiment together with his own', and had the promise of a garter, which he obtained in his twenty-fifth year3. He was likewise made gentleman of the bed-chamber". He afterwards went into the French service to learn the art 8 of war under Turenne, but staid only a short time. Being by the duke of Monmouth opposed in his pretensions to the first troop of horse-guards he, in return, made Monmouth suspected by the duke of York'. He was not long after, when the unlucky Monmouth fell into disgrace, recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the government of Hull 3. Thus rapidly did he make his way both to military and civil 9 honours and employments; yet, busy as he was, he did not neglect his studies, but at least cultivated poetry in which he must have been early considered as uncommonly skilful, if it be true which is reported, that, when he was yet not twenty years old, his recommendation advanced Dryden to the laurel 1o. ''In 1672 Schomberg was invited into England to command the newraised army on Blackheath.' Works, ii. 23. He was at that time in the French service. Burnet (Hist. i. 384) says that Charles II 'showed a design to govern by the French model. A French general was brought over to command our armies.' Rupert, commander-in-chief of an expedition against Holland, fired upon the colours of Sheffield's regiment hung up by Schomberg on his ship to show the head quarters.' In the end Rupert 'commanded away all the land-forces to Yarmouth, where they lay encamped all summer by the sea-side.' Works, ii. 24. 2 lb. p. 33: 3 He received the promise of the Garter when he was at Yarmouth. The refusal of it at the same time to Schomberg 'contributed to his leaving us.' Ib. p. 30. Ib. p. 325. It is excellently said of Charles II by a great hand which writ his character, "that he was not a king a quarter of an hour together in his whole reign."' The Spectator, No. 462. In a note it is stated that Works, ii. 33. 8 Ib. p. 39. 9 Macaulay describes how Sheffield, at the age of seventeen, served six weeks on a ship, and was then given a troop of horse. Six years later he was appointed captain of a ship of eighty-four guns, reputed the finest in the navy.... As soon as he came back from sea he was made colonel of a regiment of foot.' Hist. of Eng. i. 313. Sheffield described his ship as 'the best of all the second-rates.' Works, ii. 18. 10 Ante, DRYDEN, 26. Dryden, in his Dedication to Sheffield (Works, v. 191), mentions 'the care you have taken of my fortune; which you have rescued, not only from the power of others, but from my worst of enemies, my own modesty and laziness.' According to Biog. Brit. p. 3653, Dryden 10 11 12 The Moors having besieged Tangier1 he was sent (1680) with two thousand men to its relief. A strange story is told of danger to which he was intentionally exposed in a leaky ship, to gratify some resentful jealousy of the king, whose health he therefore would never permit at his table till he saw himself in a safer place'. His voyage was prosperously performed in three weeks, and the Moors without a contest retired before him. In this voyage he composed The Vision; a licentious poem, such as was fashionable in those times, with little power of invention or propriety of sentiment 3. At his return he found the King kind, who perhaps had never been angry; and he continued a wit and a courtier as before. 13 At the succession of king James, to whom he was intimately known, and by whom he thought himself beloved, he naturally expected still brighter sun-shine; but all know how soon that reign began to gather clouds. His expectations were not disappointed; he was immediately admitted into the privy council, and made lord chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high commission 3, without knowledge, as he declared after the Revolution, of its illegality. Having few religious scruples he attended the king to mass and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive the Romish Faith or to force it upon others; for when the priests, encouraged by his appearances of compliance, is 'acknowledging his favour for the Laureate's place.' Malone thinks Johnson's authority is Dr. Birch, who supposed that Sheffield was at the time Lord Chamberlain, in whose department_the office is. Malone's Dryden, i. 88. It was given in 1662 as part of the portion of the bride of Charles II. 'After an immense charge the Court grew weary of it, and in the year 1638 [1683] they sent a squadron of ships to bring away the garrison, and to destroy all the works.' Burnet's Hist. i. 191. 2'After a week's time one of the company (thinking it was forgetfulness) put him in mind of it. He answered smiling that he knew it very well, but he must first get out of his rotten ship before he could make that health go merrily round.' One of the King's sons, the Earl of Plymouth, was on board. Works, ii. 325. For the Earl of Plymouth see ante, OTWAY, 8. 3 Eng. Poets, xxxii. 51. 4 Works, ii. 351. ... 5 In his Character this part of his life is briefly treated-'During the reign of James II he remained in several great posts. . . . As several unjustifiable measures were taken by the Court he constantly and zealously advised against them.' Ib. ii. 329. For the High Commission see ante, SPRAT, 10; Macaulay's Hist. ii. 348, iii. II. In an undated Letter to Dr. Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury (afterwards Archbishop), he says:-'I was so unhappily conversant in the midst of a perpetual Court flattery as never to have heard the least word of any illegality in that Commission before I was unfortunately engaged in it.' Works, ii. 125. See also Birch's Life of Tillotson, 1752, p. 146. attempted to convert him, he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in God, who made the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded 'that man was quits, and made God again '.' A pointed sentence is bestowed by successive transmission on 14 the last whom it will fit: this censure of transubstantiation, whatever be its value, was uttered long ago by Anne Askew, one of the first sufferers for the Protestant Religion, who in the time of Henry VIII was tortured in the Tower3; concerning which there is reason to wonder that it was not known to the Historian of the Reformation *. In the Revolution he acquiesced, though he did not promote 15 it. There was once a design of associating him in the invitation of the prince of Orange; but the earl of Shrewsbury discouraged the attempt, by declaring that Mulgrave would never concur. This king William afterwards told him, and asked what he would have done if the proposal had been made. 'Sir,' said he, 'I would have discovered it to the king whom I then served.' To which King William replied, 'I cannot blame you ".' Finding king James irremediably excluded he voted for the 16 conjunctive' sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the titles of the prince and his consort equal, and it would please the prince their protector to have a share in the sovereignty. This |