Sheldon, Bishop, & Gillett
Three Families Which Shaped Our Ancient Cotswold Village
Over the last six hundred years, three families in particular have left their names in the history of our village. They are Sheldons, the Bishops, and the Gilletts. Our Primary School still assigns students to one of three houses with these namesakes but the memory of why has been fading. Part of the reason for this site is to if not restore but to capture as best we can the living memory but also remind ourselves of the historical heritage of the village, and those who played a prominent role in its growth & sustenance.
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Sheldon – Estates & Farming
The SHELDONs were wealthy landowners, their wealth being based on sheep farming and the marketing of wool, supplemented by judicious marriages and land purchases. Their surname derived from the place name Sheldon, which comes from two Old English words meaning ‘shelf’ and ‘hill’. [source]
The SHELDON arms and pedigree were first recorded in the Herald’s Visitation of Worcestershire for 1569, and subsequently in later Visitations of that county and of Warwickshire, in Sir William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (p.584), and in Collections for the History of Worcestershire (pp.64,145) by Dr Treadway Nash, vicar of St Peter’s, Droitwich, in 1781.
The arms, which pun on the family name, were ‘Sable, a fess between three sheldrakes Argent’, i.e. a black shield with a horizontal silver band between three silver sheldrake ducks.
The story of the Sheldon’s arguably begins around the year 1086 when SHELDON (known then as Machitone) was held by the Saxon overlord Turchill (Thorkill) and Alnoth was its tenant. In the Domesday Book the manor was known as Machitone, later Mackadown.
The earliest record is of Owen de SCHELDON, who is listed in the Warwickshire Pipe Rolls of 1189/90 and the earliest record of the name’s use in Warwickshire. Perhaps Owen was the father or an ancestor of Ansel. The Anglo-Saxon Alnoth was succeeded by Ansel de SCHELDON, lord of “Makinton” in 1220, who held 1/2 knight’s fee from at least 1235-1242.
The next Sheldon is a William son of Osbert de Sycheldon mentioned in a 13th century Conveyance. [source] According to https://wheatonwood.com/ map below he Sheldons of Brailes may have first settled around the mid 1500s.
So we can say the Sheldons were an ancient family who came originally from Sheldon, a parish on the western outskirts of what is now Birmingham. In the 15th century the family acquired the manor of Beoley in Worcestershire and made it their main residence.
William Sheldon, 1500-1570
Ralph Sheldon, 1537-1613
Edward Sheldon, 1558–1643
William Sheldon, 1588-9-1659
Ralph “The Great Sheldon”, 1623-1684 [source]
William Sheldon (c.1500-1570) married Mary daughter of William Willington of Barcheston; in 1533 he bought the nearby manor of Weston in Long Compton. In 1539, Henry VIII sold the Manor of Brailes to Thomas Wymbush, who sold it circa 1547 to the Sheldon family in whose possession it remained until the estate was sold in 1920.
There are a number of Sheldons and the family tree splits off and adjusts depending on whose children have inherited the name and titles. Another William SHELDON was born in 1589, and in 1611 he married Elizabeth the daughter of William the second Lord Petre of Chelmsford in Essex. They had five children, Ralph, Edward, who became a Benedictine monk at Douay, George, Elizabeth and Catherine.
William and Elizabeth’s eldest son Ralph SHELDON (1623-1684) achieved fame as an antiquarian. The research he sponsored has been of great benefit to genealogists, and his bequest of documents was the largest that the College of Arms has received. His life has been described by Barnard and in the Dictionary of National Biography, and Nash said he was a man ‘of such remarkable integrity, charity, and hospitality, as gained him the universal esteem of all the gentlemen of the county; insomuch that he usually went by the name of The Great Sheldon. His estate was the second largest in Warwickshire. [source]
Ralph “The Great Sheldon” had no children so his estate was left to a namesake, Ralph Sheldon, of Steeple Barton, his next heir-male, son of Edward Sheldon, Ralph’s first cousin. This Ralph Sheldon was like born around 1652 and died in 1720. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward SHELDON (1679-1736). Upon the death of Edward Sheldon the estates passed to his eldest son, William SHELDON (1716-1780).
William’s own son, Ralph SHELDON (1741 – 1822), of Weston in Long Compton in Warwickshire, was a convert from Anglicanism to the Church of England, and an MP for Wilton from 1804 to 1822.
Edward Ralph Charles SHELDON (2 March 1782 – 11 June 1836), Ralf’s only son, was an English politician. For some years he was one of the Brailes churchwardens, and took a great and active interest in the restoration of St. George’s Church. He represented the constituency of South Warwickshire from 1835 until his death. As Catholics the Sheldons suffered greatly during the Civil War, but managed to keep their home in Weston until 1819. Edward and the senior branch of the Sheldon family moved to Brailes, building the present Brailes House, in Warwickshire in 1822, the year of Ralph Sheldon’s death. He became a magistrate for the counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, a Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire, and major of the militia of Warwickshire. He was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament for South Warwickshire in 1835, representing the seat until his death the next year. Sheldon married Marcella, daughter of Thomas Meredith Winstanley, of Lissen Hall, County Dublin, on 14 August 1817. They had eight children, five of whom died in childhood. Sheldon himself died on the 11th of June 1836, aged 54. His wife survived him by thirteen years, dying on the 23rd of July 1849.
Edward’s son, Henry James SHELDON (Ralph Sheldon’s Grandson), was High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1860. He married Alicia Mary the daughter of General Sir Evan Lloyd. He was the last of the Sheldon family and watched his estates fall into bankruptcy and sale, before his death on the 24th of December 1901. The Sheldon estate was completely broken up and sold by 1920. He is buried in St. George’s churchyard.
The end of the Sheldon story is actually told in the inscription upon the tomb of this Sheldon, who proudly claimed to be seventeenth in direct descent from Edward III. The tomb is in Brailes churchyard, and its inscription was copied in 1922. There are also commemorated thereon Alicia Mary Sheldon, and two infant daughters of Edward Ralph Charles Sheldon and Marcella, his wife. The inscription in question is:
“To the loving memory of Henry James Sheldon of Brailes House who died Dec. 24th, 1901, aged 78. This monument was erected by his only sister, Isabel Calmady, the last of the Sheldons.”
(Note: Brailes House was built circa 1830; before that a much older farmhouse stood on the site. In 1920, when Mr. Flick bought the house and grounds, he pulled down the ‘Nursery Wing’ of twelve bedrooms, possibly built by E.W.C. Sheldon and his wife, Marcella)
Below is the final sale auction of Brailes House Estate in 1920. Click the images to read and zoom in.
Bishop – Faith & Education
Dr William Bishop (c. 1553 – 13 April 1624), the son of John Bishop, who died in 1601 at the age of 92, was born in Brailes. William was an English Catholic prelate who served as the 1st Catholic bishop in England after the Reformation, appointed as Vicar Apostolic of England in 1623.
As a child he was sent to Gloucester Hall, Oxford aged 16 around 1570. After remaining there three or four years he settled his paternal estate, which was considerable, on his younger brother, and went over to the English College at Rheims, where he began his theological studies; he then spent time at Rome. He returned to Rheims, was ordained priest at Laon in May 1583, was consecrated in Paris as the Titular See of Chalcedon in Asia Minor as Catholicism was illegal in England at the time, and was sent to England by the Pope ‘for the comfort of Roman Catholics’ to exercise spiritual oversight of all of that faith. He was thus the first Englishman to receive episcopal orders from the Holy See after Henry VIII’s break with Rome and establishment of the Church of England.
Catholicism had been banned in England in 1559. Arrested on his landing, he was taken before secretary Francis Walsingham and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea with other priests.
Towards the close of the year 1584 he was released, and went to Paris, where he studied for several years at the Sorbonne, and was made a licentiate of divinity. He returned to England on the mission, 15 May 1591; after about two years he returned to Paris to complete the degree of D.D., and then came back to England. William subsequently went on travels again and he arrived back in England for the final time, again secretly, on 31 July 1623 at age 70 and had to walk 12 miles to find refuge. He identified and selected 20 archdeacons to take charge over geographical districts whilst in discrete lodgings in London over the winter, but fell sick and died in spring 1624.
The Rectory Farm, dating from the mid-16th century, belonged to the Augustinian friars of Kenilworth who leased it to John Bishop. After the Dissolution, in 1539 Rectory Farm passed to Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and after the attainder of Henry, Duke of Suffolk, John Bishop bought the farm and established a secret Mass centre in the attic. There was a priest’s hide in the house. John’s eldest son, William, was born there in 1554 and educated at the clandestine Catholic school in the village. Throughout the recusant period, Mass was said regularly and a school was maintained. St Margaret’s Catholic School in Friars Lane was built by Lady Bedingfeld in 1881 and closed in 1952. The local community showed generous tolerance to the Catholic community and no Catholic in Brailes was ever betrayed. The present chapel was constructed in 1726 by Father George Bishop, over fifty years before the Act of 1791 which first made Catholic chapels legal.
The Bishops became extinct in the male line in 1840, but for 300 years they were the leading family in Brailes and closely connected with all the local activities. They were mainly responsible for keeping the Old Faith alive in this area.
Apart from their tenacity they were highly thought of for their kindness and tact, and were on good terms with the local non-Catholics, as is evidenced by the fact that they were Patrons of the Church of St. George until 1716. The members of this family who died in Brailes are buried in the chancel of St. George’s. [source]
Gillett – Weaving & Banking
Gillett’s Lane today used to be called Holly Walk or Leather Lane. It became Gillett’s Lane after William Gillett, who lived and worked as a woolcomber in the lane prior to his move to Tusbrook Home Farmhouse in 1800 where he converted one of the buildings into a plush weaving factory and began operations in 1809. His factory produced shag, hair shag, yard, worsted, jersey, and grey coating materials, which he sold to Mssrs Cobb and Company in which Gillet had shares.
William Gillett married Miss Martha Ashby of Tysoe, and his eldest son, Joseph Ashby Gillett (1795–1853) pictured left was born on the 4th of September 1795. He was educated at a Quaker school in Yorkshire named Ackworth School for two years and at the age of 13 he was apprenticed to John Burgess, a woolstapler and Quaker. He lived in Grunby Street, Leicester.
At the time of his marriage in 1821, Joseph Gillett was working in Shipston for the Stratford-upon-Avon bank of John Whitehead of Barford, Jeffery Bevington Lowe et al.; his partnership in this bank was dissolved in 1824. At the same time he was a partner in the plush business. In the early days of his marriage he acted as an agent for Cobb’s Bank: this was the so-called Banbury Old Bank, T. R. Cobb & Co. Moving to Banbury in 1823, Gillett became partner in the Banbury New Bank, as it was called, with Joseph Gibbins, his brother-in-law, and Henry Tawney.
Gillett was a manufacturer at Neithrop, near Banbury, Oxfordshire, of textiles such as shalloon and shag. The family business was broadly involved in worsted and plush. During the 1830s Gillett built 21 “working class cottages” in central Banbury. These were sold after his death. From a Quaker family, Joseph Gillett himself became secretary to the Banbury Monthly Meeting, and a Quaker minister in 1841.
Gillett’s Bank of Banbury and Oxford, 1825–1919 – The bank Gillett joined in 1825 had been founded in 1784, as Bignell, Heydon & Watt, and was bought in 1819 by Richard and Charles Tawney, who traded as R & C Tawney. From 1825 it traded as Gillett & Tawney, and was known as the Banbury Bank.[22] The other partners were Henry Tawney, the son of Richard Tawney, and Joseph Gibbins who financed the 1822 purchase of the bank from the Tawneys, with a clientele seriously affected by the Post-Napoleonic Depression.
The initial situation of the bank was difficult, with many customers moving their accounts to the Banbury Old Bank. William Holbech JP, son of William Holbech MP, was a large landowner at Farnborough Hall, and a serious loss in 1823. In the Panic of 1825, the bank stopped payments in mid-December after a bank run, to avoid a total crash in liquidity, opening again about three weeks into January 1826. William Gillett (1797–1857), Joseph’s younger brother, was in a partnership with Joseph that was dissolved in 1831. Henry Tawney was further involved as a banker, in Northampton with William Watkins, and William Gillett; William Gillett left this partnership in 1835. Later there were overtures from Northampton to make the Banbury bank a branch, but they came to nothing. The commercial depression of the 1840s affected the wool trade generally, and was reflected in Banbury’s textile trade. The largest debtor on the bank’s books was J. E. & J. Gillett, the Gillett family plush firm. With the help of Gillett’s brother-in-law Joseph Gibbins, the bank weathered the panic of 1847.
Joseph Ashby Gillett’s son Charles became a partner in the bank in 1853. Later he was chairman of the business, by then known often as Gilletts Bank, in Banbury. In 1919 it was taken over by Barclays Bank. [source]