SHEFFIELD, James (1619-aft. 1655), of Butterwick, Yorks.

James Sheffield was a younger son of the 1st earl of Mulgrave. He was educated at Cambridge University (as ‘the son of the noble’), although it is not clear which college he attended, and his degree of Master of Arts, granted in 1636-7, may have been an honorary award.7Al. Cant. In April 1639 Sheffield married the daughter of the former lord mayor of London, Sir William Cokayne, who was also a landowner in Northamptonshire, and on 19 March 1640 he was provided with a parliamentary seat, at St Mawes in Cornwall.8Northants. RO, Rushton par. regs.; C219/42/28. The reasons for Sheffield’s election are unknown. His father’s landed interests (and those of his father-in-law) were in the north and east of England, and he had no contacts with the local gentry interests that controlled the patronage of St Mawes. Nor was this a political deal. Although Mulgrave was to become a signatory of the Petition of the Twelve Peers in September 1640, his opposition to the crown was not generally known six months before, and as a result his son’s candidacy was unlikely to have been influenced by politics.9Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, 150. In any case, there is no evidence that Sheffield was an active member of the Short Parliament, and he was not re-elected for the seat in the more highly-charged elections in the following October.

On the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Mulgrave sided with Parliament, perhaps influenced by his friend and cousin, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, lord general of the army raised against the king. Sheffield was commissioned to lead one of the unregimented troops of horse in Essex’s army on 22 July 1642, and almost certainly fought at the inconclusive battle of Edgehill in October.10SP28/140/15; SP28/2/271, 404, 473. After Edgehill, Sheffield’s troop went into winter quarters at Windsor, and in the spring of 1643 moved to Shenfield Green and Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.11SP28/140/15. In June 1643 Sheffield was involved in the parliamentarian defeat at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, where he was wounded and taken prisoner, and his behaviour afterwards caused controversy, as Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon, later recorded.

Among the prisoners there were taken also Colonel Sheffield, a younger son of the earl of Mulgrave, and one Colonel Barclay, a Scotchman; who, being both visibly wounded, acted their hurts so well, and pretended to be so ready to expire, that upon their paroles neither to endeavour or endure a rescue, they were suffered to rest at a private house in the way … But the king’s forces were no sooner gone, than they found means to send to their comrades, and were the next day strong enough to suffer themselves to be removed to Thame by a strong party sent from the earl of Essex.

For Clarendon, this was decidedly ungentlemanly behaviour, and ‘as much against the law of arms as their taking arms was against their allegiance’.12Clarendon, Hist. iii. 59-61. The parliamentarians evidently disagreed, as on 17 July 1643 Sheffield was promoted to colonel of horse, with his younger brother Thomas serving under him as captain and then major.13SP28/140/15; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 175; LJ vii. 278b. During the months that followed, Sheffield’s regiment was ‘before Basing House’, taking part in the protracted siege of that Hampshire stronghold, but in the early summer of 1644 he led his men into the west, mustering with the rest of Essex’s army at Tiverton in Devon.14SP28/140/15; Symonds, Diary, 73. He served with Essex during the catastrophic Lostwithiel campaign, and was among those who led the escape of the parliamentarian cavalry across the Tamar to Plymouth. Essex singled Sheffield out for praise in his letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms of 14 September, saying that of those ‘officers and soldiers [who] did very gallantly’, the bravest was Sheffield, ‘who is, as reported by men of quality, killed, having previously wounded 14 men with his own hands’.15CSP Dom. 1644, p. 503. Sheffield was not in fact killed in the retreat, but he may have been badly wounded in it, as there is no further record of his activities until the beginning of 1645, when he was with his regiment at Abingdon, and at the beginning of March he was ordered to join Major-general Lawrence Crawford’s brigade to move into the north-west in support of Sir William Brereton*.16CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 281, 336, 345.

Sheffield’s regiment was one of those transferred wholesale to the New Model army in the spring of 1645, and in the officer-list drawn up by the House of Lords on 18 March he was named as colonel, with his brother as major.17LJ vii. 278b. The old orders were rescinded, and the regiment was instructed instead to join the new general, Sir Thomas Fairfax*. At the beginning of April it was reported to be awaiting orders in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.18Luke Letter Bks, 234, 476, 500, 502, 506. At some point after that, James Sheffield was replaced as colonel by his brother, Thomas, but the exact date has always been unclear. It has been said that James Sheffield was colonel of the regiment at Naseby in June 1645, and also that he was killed in action at Tiverton in the following October, but both accounts are mistaken.19G. Foard, Naseby: the decisive campaign (Barnsley, 1995), 235, 266-7, 270; Temple, ‘Original Officer List’, 63. By his own statement Sheffield dated the termination of his commission as colonel to 5 May 1645, adding that he then gave up his horses to Major-general Philip Skippon*, ‘who then reduced my regiment into Colonel Thomas Sheffield’s regiment’.20SP28/140/15. This confirms the rumour heard by Sir Samuel Luke in the middle of April 1645, that Sheffield was among a coterie of officers, led by Major-general Crawford, who ‘have laid down their commissions and there is room for new officers’.21Luke Letter Bks, 514. It also explains the apparent reluctance of Sheffield to follow orders from Fairfax in the weeks before, despite repeated requests from the Committee of Both Kingdoms.22CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 366, 393-4.

Sheffield’s decision to snub the New Model, perhaps as a demonstration of his loyalty to the earl of Essex, was followed by retirement. It was not until the autumn of 1646 that he was able to process his military accounts through the various Whitehall committees, and he was supported by statements from Sir William Balfour and Major-general Skippon. Although Sheffield’s men had received fairly regular pay from Essex’s commissariat, he claimed that additional sums were paid from his own pocket to cover arrears and contingencies, which may have been necessary to keep his unit together.23SP28/140/15. He also stated that his personal pay, as colonel and captain, had fallen into arrears, with nearly £2,000 owing to him when he resigned his commission.24SP28/1/30, 59, 111, 115; SP28/2/117, 271, 404, 473; SP28/3/351; SP28/4/170; SP28/5/15, 183, 344; SP28/7/104, 440; SP28/8/151; SP28/9/56, 154, 245; SP28/10/225; SP28/11/414; SP28/12/205; SP28/14/274; SP28/15/141, 232; SP28/17/108; SP28/18/21; SP28/19/60; SP28/140/15. Sheffield’s accounts were finally signed off by the Committee of Accounts on 10 October 1646, and his public career was at an end, perhaps hastened by the death of Essex in September, the death of Mulgrave in October, and the increasing notoriety of Thomas Sheffield, who emerged in the early months of 1647 as a leading opponent of the radical element in the New Model army, and resigned as colonel in May of that year.25SP28/140/15; CP; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 178. James Sheffield was able to salvage some of his financial fortunes in June 1649, when the Committee for Compounding agreed to allow a charge on the estate of his brother-in-law, the royalist Viscount Cullen (Charles Cokayne†), in the right of his wife, which may have been the unpaid part of the marriage portion agreed before the civil wars.26CCC 1383. Nothing is known of Sheffield’s later career, although he was clearly still alive in October 1655, when his three sons, Edmund, Robert and William, were granted passes to travel to France, perhaps through the influence of their cousin, the Cromwellian councillor, Edmund, 2nd earl of Mulgrave.27CSP Dom. 1655, p. 600.