lieutenant-colonel in 1848, and gazetted colonel of the 88th foot in 1854. He served with distinction during the Crimean war, taking part in the battles of Alma and Inkerman with his regiment. At the siege of Sebastopol he was general officer of the trenches in the attacks on the quarries on 7 and 18 June, and was commended by Lord Raglan for his ‘arduous services.’ In the storming of Sebastopol on 8 Sept. he was wounded and invalided home. He was appointed a C.B. in 1856 and a K.C.B. in 1869. In 1862 he obtained field-rank, in 1871 was promoted to a lieutenant-general, and in 1877 became a general. He died, unmarried, on 7 April 1879, at his house at Puddletown, Dorset.
[Ward's Men of the Reign, p. 810; Times, 15 April 1879; Dorset County Chronicle, 17 April 1879; Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 6th edit. ix. 99, 114, 124; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Rugby School Register, ed. 1881, i. 140.]
SHIRLEY, JAMES (1596–1666), dramatic poet, was born on 18 Sept. 1596 (Robinson, Register of Merchant Taylors' School, 1882, i. 60) in or near the parish of St. Mary Woolchurch, since incorporated in that of St. Mary Woolnoth, Walbrook. The coat of arms inserted in his portrait in the Bodleian has been said to imply his descent from the Shirleys of Sussex or Warwickshire, but he appears to have no claim to connection with the former [see Shirley, Henry]. Other Shirleys or Sherleys in Leicestershire and Huntingdonshire are mentioned among compounding royalists in the Commonwealth period; but there is no proof—and seemingly no likelihood—that James Shirley was of gentle blood. He was admitted on 4 Oct. 1608 into Merchant Taylors' school, where on 11 March 1612 he was eighth boy or last monitor, and in the same year he entered at St. John's College, Oxford. Wood relates that Laud (who had recently become president of the college) was much attracted by Shirley and by the promise of his talents, but declared himself definitively adverse to his taking orders on account of his disfigurement by a mole on his left cheek (cf. Cibber, Lives of the Poets, 1753, ii. 26). Shirley, while still an undergraduate, migrated to Catharine Hall, Cambridge, whence he graduated B.A. in or before 1618 (no traces of him have been discovered in university or college records at either university). At Catharine Hall one of his contemporaries was Thomas Bancroft (fl. 1633–1658) [q. v.], who afterwards referred to ‘some precious yeeres’ spent by Shirley and himself under St. Catharine's wheel (see his Epigrams, 1639, dedicated to Sir Charles Shirley, bart., and William Davenport, esq.). In 1618 Shirley, designating himself as B.A., printed his earliest poem, ‘Eccho, or the Infortunate Lovers.’ No copy is extant under that title, but it is believed to be identical with his poem ‘Narcissus, or the Self-Lover,’ and published in 1646 with the motto ‘Hæc olim’ (‘Narcissus’ is a palpable, and indeed almost confessed, imitation of ‘Venus and Adonis’). In 1619, again as B.A., he added in manuscript to the ‘Lacrymæ Cantabrigienses’ on the death of Queen Anne a ‘drop of water’ (four lines), and an ‘Epitaphium’ (reprinted by Dyce, vi. 514–515). Soon afterwards Shirley took orders and qualified for preferment by proceeding M.A. Wood says that he ‘became a minister of God's word in or near St. Albans in Hertfordshire.’ From 1623–5 he held the mastership of Edward VI's grammar school in that borough (Clutterbuck, Hertfordshire, 1815, i. 48 n. 83), having, according to Wood, previously ‘changed his religion for that of Rome’ and ‘left his living.’ His voluminous writings suggest that he was during the remainder of his life a conscientious and fervent Roman catholic. From the glorification of the Benedictine order in ‘The Grateful Servant’ (act iii. sc. 3), it has been concluded that Shirley's confessor belonged to this order. St. Albans was a Benedictine monastery. Shirley afterwards wrote a tragedy called ‘St. Albans,’ entered in ‘Stationers' Register,’ 14 Feb. 1639, but not known to have been printed (see, however, Fleay, English Drama, ii. 244). If the Matthias Shirley, son of James Shirley, baptised on 26 Feb. 1624, was his eldest son (see the reference by Collier to the register of St. Giles', Cripplegate, cited by Hunter, Chorus Vatum, Addit. MS. 24489, Brit. Mus.), an early marriage may have played its part in the crisis of his life.
In or before 1625 Shirley abandoned the scholastic life and moved to London, where, according to Wood, he lived in Gray's Inn, and ‘set up for a play-maker.’ The prologue to his first play, licensed on 4 Feb. 1625–6 under the title of ‘Love Tricks, with Complements,’ however, deprecates any intention on the part of the author
… to swear himself a factor for the scene;
while it announces the piece as
The first fruits of a Muse, that before this
Never saluted audience,
But the rapid succession of the plays which followed between 1626 and 1642 shows him to have speedily recognised that he had found his vocation. The beginnings of his career as a playwright coincided with the
