Ralph Sheldon was an English Roman CatholicRoyalist and an antiquary, who bequeathed his library of books and manuscripts to the College of Arms, the country's authority over heraldry and pedigree.
Family
Sheldon was born on 1 August 1623 at Beoley, Worcestershire, the eldest son of the landowner William Sheldon of Beoley and of Weston in Long Compton, Warwickshire, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William, Lord Petre. He was a nephew of Edward Sheldon, a translator of Catholic religious works. The Sheldons were among the wealthiest gentry families in their region, but their Catholicism precluded them from any prominent position 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, a wealthy Catholic politician and Royalist from Cheshire. In the English Civil War, Beoley Hall was burnt down, apparently to stop it falling into the hands of the Parliamentarian forces. The estate was sequestered. After the Restoration of 1660, Sheldon was nominated for a contemplated Order of the Royal Oak, in honour of his family's devotion to Royalism.
Scholarly activities
Sheldon's wife died childless in 1663, possibly 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. He created a fine library at Weston, which was catalogued by his fellow antiquary Anthony Wood. He also kept a cabinet of curiosities. Sheldon again travelled to Rome in 1667 and spent three years there expanding his collection. He was described by Wood as "a munificent favourer of learning and learned men". Sheldon granted a pension to the antiquary John Vincent and purchased from him an important collection of manuscripts which had belonged to his father, Augustine Vincent, the Windsor Herald. This and many of his own possessions were left in his will to the College of Arms.
Tapestry maps
After the Restoration, 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. Each of the four original maps was 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 along with the contents of Weston in 1781, and bought by Horace Walpole. They were presented to Lord Harcourt, who built a room specially for them at Nuneham Courtenay. They were later acquired by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. The Oxfordshire map is now on display at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, that of Warwickshire is in the County Museum, Warwick, while that of Worcestershire is in store in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Death
Sheldon died at Weston on 24 June 1684 and was buried, as his wife had been, in the family chapel at Beoley.
