KING JAMES'S IRISH ARMY LIST, 1689.
(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
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.
John D'Alton.
48. Summer Hill, Dublin.