proceeded first on a visit to his father at Twyford, near Winchester, and subsequently through Shrewsbury, Wrexham, and Ruthin to his residence near St. Asaph.
The interest which the trial evoked, coupled with the power of Erskine's eloquence, was the means of somewhat tardily inducing the House of Commons to transfer the decision of what is libellous from judge to jury by Fox's Libel Act of 1792 (32 Geo. III, c. 60), a measure which completed the freedom of the press in this country.
Shipley's actions were, however, closely watched by the tory party in Flintshire for many years afterwards, and a vague proposal to recommence proceedings against him is mentioned in November 1796 in a letter addressed to Lord Kenyon by Thomas Pennant, who communicates some spiteful stories of the dean, charging him not only with ‘profligacy,’ ‘impudence,’ and ‘incorrigibility,’ but also with breaches of the peace (Kenyon MSS., quoted in Bye-Gones for 1895–6, pp. 438, 488).
The dean is said (Gent. Mag. vol. xcvi. pt. ii. p. 642) to have written a preface to the edition of his father's works published in 1792, when he took occasion to vindicate the bishop's espousal of the cause of the American colonists in their conflict with the British government, but this preface does not appear in the ordinary copies of the work. He is also said to have assisted his sister in collecting the letters and other literary remains of Sir William Jones (Nichols, Literary Illustrations, iii. 155), which were published in 1799.
Shipley died at his residence, Bodrhyddan, near St. Asaph, on 7 May 1826. He was buried at Rhuddlan, where there is a tablet to his memory, and a life-size statue of him by Ternouth, provided by public subscription in the diocese, at the cost of 600l., was also placed in St. Asaph's Cathedral. He married, 28 April 1777, Penelope Yonge, elder daughter and coheiress of Ellis Yonge of Byrn Iorcyn, near Wrexham (as to this family see Foley, Jesuits, i. 629), and next of kin of Sir John Conway, last baronet of Bodrhyddan, whose maternal great-granddaughter she was (Burke, Extinct Baronetage and Landed Gentry, s.v. ‘Conway’). She died on 5 Nov. 1789, leaving issue five sons and three daughters, the eldest son being Lieutenant-colonel William Shipley (1779–1820), whig M.P. for Flint boroughs from 1807 to 1812 (Taylor, Historic Notices of Flint, pp. 174–176; Williams, Parl. Hist. of Wales, p. 93), whose son, on the death of the dean in 1826, assumed the name of Conway, which is still borne by his descendants, the present owners of Bodrhyddan. The eldest daughter, Penelope, was married to Dr. Pelham Warren [q. v.]; the second, Anna Maria, to Colonel Charles A. Dashwood; and the third, Amelia, was married in April 1809 to Reginald Heber [q. v.] It was while on a visit to his father-in-law that Heber composed, at the old vicarage, Wrexham, his popular hymn ‘From Greenland's icy mountains.’
The dean's third son, Conway Shipley (1782–1808), entered the navy in 1793, and in 1804, when in command of the corvette Hippomenes, captured a French privateer, L'Egyptienne, of much greater tonnage. He was consequently posted, and commanded the Nymphe frigate in the expedition to the Tagus under Sir Charles Cotton [q. v.] He was killed in a cutting-out expedition on the Tagus in April 1808. A monument was erected on the river-bank by his fellow-officers (cf. Gent. Mag. 1808, i. 467, 555).
[A full memoir appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xcvi. pt. ii. pp. 641–3 (cf. pt. i. 645); see also Foster's Alumni Oxon. 2nd ser. p. 1289; Willis's Survey of St. Asaph, 2nd ed. i. 182; D. R. Thomas's Hist. of St. Asaph, pp. 206, 244; P. B. Ironside Bax's Cathedral Church of St. Asaph, pp. 14, 50; A. N. Palmer's Hist. of the Parish Church of Wrexham, pp. 45, 57, 67–70; Life of Reginald Heber, by his widow, i. 254. For a full account of the trial, see Howell's State Trials, xxi. 847–1046, and Gurney's Verbatim Reports of the Arguments at Wrexham, and of the Trial at Shrewsbury; Erskine's Speeches, i. 137–393; Erskine May's Constitutional History, 2nd ed. ii. 112.]
SHIPMAN, THOMAS (1632–1680), royalist poet, eldest son of William Shipman (1603–1658), an ardent royalist with a small estate in Nottinghamshire, by his second wife, Sara, daughter of alderman Parker of Nottingham, was born at Scarrington, near Newark, and baptised there in November 1632. He was educated at Sleaford school and at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted 1 May 1651 (Mayor, Reg. p. 100).
Though a careful economist, he was no stranger to London life, and associated with such wits as Denham, Oldham, and Sir Fleetwood Sheppard. A more intimate friend, the poet and painter, Thomas Flatman [q. v.], in an epistle prefixed to Shipman's verses, praises the writer's ingenuity and his wit in saving a small estate amid ‘the calamities of the last rebellion.’ During his ‘quiet recess’ Shipman produced the poems contained in ‘Carolina,’ some of which suggest that the severe morals of the roundheads were even less to his taste than their
