Family and Education

b. c.1566, o.s. of Robert Sheffield of Epworth and Margaret, da. of Edward Frodsham of Elton, Cheshire.1 educ. Peterhouse, Camb. 1584; I. Temple 1585.2 m. 6 June 1587, Anne, da. of Gabriel Fairfax of Steeton, Yorks., 1s.3 suc. fa. 1599;4 kntd. 23 July 1603.5 admon. 7 Nov. 1615.6

Offices Held

Commr. sewers, Lincs. 1608, 1611, Yorks. 1611.7

Biography

A gentleman copyholder on the Lincolnshire estates of the Lords Sheffield by 1564, Sheffield’s father was charged to provide a light horseman for the defence of the county in 1585. His relationship to his noble patron has not been resolved, but links were strengthened by his marriage to Margaret Frodsham of Cheshire, whose aunt had served the dowager Lady Sheffield in the 1580s.8 In 1604 it was presumably Edmund, 3rd Baron Sheffield, newly appointed president of the Council in the North, who nominated Sir Edmund for a parliamentary seat at Aldborough, although the latter was also related to a local landowner, Thomas Tankard of Brampton Hall, who had himself married a Frodsham. Sheffield left little trace on the records of his only Parliament. On 12 May 1604 he was named to a committee for the bill to naturalize the Scottish family of the courtier Sir Roger Aston*, whose family came from Cheshire; he was also named to the committee for a bill to enable the under-age Yorkshireman (Sir) John Hotham* to make a jointure in the event of his marriage (25 Jan. 1606); while on 14 May 1606 he was one of a delegation ordered to deliver the Commons’ grievances to the king.9

Sheffield is sometimes confused with a namesake, one of lord president Sheffield’s sons, who was dubbed knight of the Bath in 1610 and drowned crossing the Ouse on 3 Dec. 1614: this man’s widow subsequently married Sheffield’s son William*. Sheffield himself died during the summer of 1615; letters of administration were granted to his widow and son at York on 7 November.10

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Authors: John. P. Ferris / Simon Healy

Notes

• 1. Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. lix), 103, 155.
• 2. Al. Cant.; I. Temple database of admiss.
• 3. Her. et Gen. vi. 611; HMC Portland, ix. 62.
• 4. PROB 11/198, f. 275.
• 5. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 122.
• 6. Borthwick, City of York act bk. 1, f. 129.
• 7. C181/2, ff. 75v, 119v, 145v; Yorks. ERRO, DDBE/27/2.
• 8. Yorks. Fines (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lvii), 72-3, 81, 213; HMC Cowper, i. 3; HMC Portland, ix. 62, 70; R.B. Turton, Alum Farm, 23-6.
• 9. BOROUGHBRIDGE; CJ, i. 208b, 260a, 309a.
• 10. Borthwick, City of York act bk. 1, f. 129.