Ralph Sheldon (born 1537-1613) was a member of parliament, justice of the peace and one-term sheriff of Worcestershire. Once considered a staunch Catholic, in modern times he has been described as a 'Church Papist'.
He owned extensive lands in the county and in Gloucester-, Oxford- and Warwickshire together with salt bullaries (salt works) at Droitwich and coal diggings in Leicestershire.Birmingham Heritage and Archives (BAH) MS 3061/1/277, 1530; BAH MS 3061/1/206,1529; BAH MS 3061/1/53, Dec 1528, damaged; coal TNA C 1/892/23.
Early life and education
Ralph Sheldon was born in 1537 to the upwardly mobile William Sheldon of Beoley, Worcestershire, and his wife Mary, daughter of William Willington of Barcheston, Warwickshire, Merchant of the Staple.Bindoff, Members of the House of Commons, 1509-1558; available on-line. Ralph served as MP, JP and one-term sheriff of Worcestershire.Hasler, Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603, sv Sheldon; this entry contains several inaccuracies; available on-line.
In November 1556 he was enrolled at the Middle Temple, one of the four inns of Court in London, to embark on at least some part of a legal training.No documentary evidence supports information that he attended Oxford University or that he was ever a courtier. A single reference testifies to his presence at Louvain in November 1555 in the company of Sir Philip Hoby, CSP Venetian 1555-56, nos. 284, 285, but that he travelled abroad in France and elsewhere sounds an unlikely itinerary for a Protestant in the 1550s and un-necessary for a Catholic. Sturgess, Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, vol. i, p.22, 1556.
Public service
After Queen Elizabeth's accession in November 1558 both William and Ralph helped Robert Dudley, created earl of Leicester in 1564, to regain the forfeit Dudley lands in Warwickshire, no doubt in the hope of future links to and favours from a rising man already close to the monarch.Adams, 'Because I am of that Countrye and Mynde to Plante Myself There"; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and the West Midlands', Midland History, 20, 1995, 21-74, reprinted in Adams, Leicester and the Court. Ralph's increasing leaning towards the Old Faith eventually cost him Leicester's support.
Ralph served as an MP at least in the first session of the first parliament of the reign (January-Easter 1563), but possibly not in the second (September-Christmas 1566).Hasler, Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603. When his father died at Skilts in December 1570 Ralph organized a funeral procession to Beoley headed by the herald Clarenceux King of Arms, Sir Robert Cooke, who had granted the family the right to a coat of arms.A copy of the funeral certificate is at the College of Arms, London, MS Vincent 90, f. 209; Barnard, The Sheldons, p. 17-18. His presence was a mark of respect and an indication of the family's local status in Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Ralph inherited estates at Beoley, Skilts and in the hinterland of Evesham, Worcestershire; in Barcheston, Brailes and Long Compton in Warwickshire and extensive holdings up the valley of the Kneebrook stream south of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. He also inherited houses at Beoley, Skilts, a building of some sort at Weston in Long Compton together with apartments within the liberty of the former Whitefriars site in London.Calendar of Patent Rolls 1547-48, p.114; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1558-1560, p. 79; TNA C 66/943, m. 28. He was appointed JP in Worcestershire in 1572; he served until 1587 when, like many others in the anxious months spent in fear of Spanish attack, he was removed from the bench on account of his wife's recusancy – her refusal to attend services in a parish church.Strype, Annals of the Reformation, vol. 3(ii),455,item no24; available on-line.
Relations with State and Church
Panicked by the landing in June 1580 of two English Jesuits, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion, sent with papal approval to reassure English Catholics, the Privy Council summoned some fifty men to present themselves in London in mid-August. All were prominent in their counties, most were known or suspected sympathizers of the Old Faith. Amongst them was Ralph Sheldon.Acts of the Privy Council ( APC), APC 12 1580-81, pp. 156. The Council's intention was that they 'should be reformed'.APC 12 1580-81, p. 166; available on-line. After questioning Ralph was immediately detained in the Marshalsea prison on London's south bank, released after two months on a plea of serious illness made by his wife and moved into house arrest with the Dean of Westminster, Gabriel Goodman.APC 12 1580-81, p. 254-55. Two months later, on January 8, 1581, he stood before the Council and undertook to attend services in his parish church. He also swore allegiance to the Queen.APC 12 1580-81, p. 301-02. Except for Thomas, Lord Paget, the others remained in custody until May 1581, released only on punitive restrictions.APC 13 1581-82, p.42, 8 May 1581.
His loyalty remained true. Ralph avoided entanglement in all the major plots of the 1580s against Queen Elizabeth, those of John Somerville and of Francis Throckmorton in 1583, both relatives, and of Anthony Babington in 1586.Mrs C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries, p. 73; John Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, p. 206-08; available on-line. He was not questioned in connection with the arrest of the priest Hugh Hall who confessed to having resided in a Sheldon property in the later 1570s.Parry, 'Catholicism and Tyranny in Shakespeare's Warwickshire' in Smuts, The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, pp. 121-138. High-handed behaviour in the parish of Tredington, where he held the right to appoint the incumbent (the advowson), led to the only formal charge of recusancy Ralph experienced. The case was heard at Worcester Assizes in September 1587. One of the Judges 'persuaded' an unwilling jury to convict him.Part printed by Davidson, 'The Recusancy of Ralph Sheldon', pp.1-5; originals in Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1581-90, p.449, no. 83; SP 12/206/, f.175, subscription on-line access; Explored in Turner, 'Ralph Sheldon (1537–1613) of Beoley and Weston: cloaked in conformity?', pp. 562–586, available on-line. Sheldon became liable to pay the fines for recusancy. Payment was recorded for only three years, the sole occasion on which the penalty was imposed.Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1581-1592, p.152. The original documents are TNA E 372/432-5, TNA E 401/1842-46; WaCRO, CR 2632, f. 185. They totalled £780.
Later it was said that the Lord Chancellor, Christopher Hatton, had quashed the charge against him.Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1591-1594, p. 545, no. 92; TNA SP 12/249 f.152-154v, esp. f. 152v. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion 1580-1625, p.102-05, 108-110.
In 1594 information about a plot to kill the Queen and put the Earl of Derby on the throne reached the Privy Council, the fourth in the same year. The instigators, soldiers in the English armies in the Low Countries, hoped that Sheldon would act as their financier. Once again he was summoned before the Privy Council for interrogation, questioned at least three times and by several inquisitors as the surviving papers reveal.Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1591-94, p. 554, nos. 1, 2, TNA SP 12/250 f.1r-1v, 3r-3v; Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, vol. 4: 618-19; available on-line. That he should be the financial backer was dismissed almost immediately; the Council was more interested in his links to Catholics living abroad and with those at home. His house was searched for incriminating books and papers and his servants questioned.Hume, Treason and Plot, was the first to investigate this plot; Edwards, Plots and Plotters, pp. 236-252; Alford, The Watchers, pp. 303–09. Turner, 'Cloaked in conformity?', available on-line, institutional access. When the case was dismissed Sheldon went free. No penalties were imposed; no further entries on the Recusant Rolls support the statement that recusancy fines were imposed.Hasler, House of Commons 1558-1603, Ralph Sheldon. The documents listed in note 20 had not then been examined. Burke, 'Submissions of Conformity', pp.1-7.
Another near brush with the law occurred in 1603 when the priest William Watson, architect of the Bye Plot against the new king, James VI, mentioned Sheldon's name in a provisional list of those who would replace the existing ministers. A letter to his nephew Francis Plowden, intercepted by an alarmed local official, again brought Sheldon to the notice of the authorities, without consequences.Edwards, The Succession, Bye and Main Plots of 1601–1603; Martin, Elizabethan Espionage, pp.230–32. Ralph had no involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Even against this background Ralph was active in two Worcestershire parliamentary elections at this time. In 1601 the Privy Council warned him against interference.APC vol.32, 1601-04, p.251; 7 October 1601; Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, pp. 295-6. His nephew was sheriff and one of the candidates his grandson. In 1604 he clearly made an attempt to wrong-foot the government's preferred choice.Thrush, House of Commons, 1604-1629, vol.2, pp. 455-58.
Declining years
In his will Sheldon expressed burning resentment of ill treatment by the man from whom he had borrowed heavily over a period of eight years.TNA PROB 11/121/345 online at http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-121_ff_221-3.pdf The circumstances have been untangled by the testimony from documents not previously read recited in the case brought against him and his creditor, Thomas Horde of Cote, Oxfordshire, by Sir Edward Coke, Attorney General, in 1606.Bryson, (ed), Cases concerning Equity and the Courts of Equity 1550-1660, pp. 345-6. Described recently as 'an upmarket money lender',Nancy Pollard Brown, 'Paperchase', pp. 120-143, 131. Horde foreclosed suddenly around 1599, leaving Sheldon with a debt Horde reckoned as £24,000, the sum due if the borrower defaulted on a recognizance (bond) but not the sum borrowed.Jones, God and the Moneylenders, pp.118-144. At most Sheldon had received no more than £12,000. On the grounds that Horde was a convicted Catholic and should have paid fines since 1592 Coke claimed the money for the Crown, leaving Sheldon to pay. His lands were temporarily taken into administration by royal officials but were returned when the debt had been cleared, shortly before his death in March 1613.Explored by Turner, But for One Matter: Ralph Sheldon 1537-1613, available at https://ralphsheldon1537-1613.info based on TNA, E 126/1 Easter 4 Jas, 15 May f. 41. 144 on-line at www.AALT.edu and ends in TNA WARD7/51/91and in CP25/2/386/10JasIMicDoubleCounties; the lands remained in the Sheldon family's possession.