Anglo-Indian officer, and spent some years in travelling about the continent. He eventually retired to the Charterhouse, where he died on 29 May 1882. Sheehan's chief literary work is included in Doran's edition of the ‘Bentley Ballads’ (1858), and in his own enlarged edition of the same work (1869).
[Jerrold's Final Reliques of Father Prout; O'Donoghue's Life of William Carleton; O'Callaghan's Green Book; Gent. Mag. 1874–5; O'Donoghue's Poets of Ireland.]
SHEEHY, NICHOLAS (1728–1766), Irish priest, born at Fethard, Tipperary, in 1728, was educated in France. On his return to Tipperary he became parish priest of Clogheen. There he acted as a staunch adherent of the party hostile to English rule. He openly condemned the collection of church rates, and was especially zealous in the defence of prisoners charged with political offences. His parish was a centre of the Whiteboy organisation, and there can be no doubt that he had a full knowledge of their schemes, and lent his assistance to many of their undertakings. More than once he was unsuccessfully prosecuted under the Registration Act. In 1764, however, matters came to a crisis. An informer named Bridge disappeared in a manner which left little doubt that he had been murdered. Soon after some troopers conveying a prisoner to Clonmel gaol were attacked near Sheehy's house. He was charged with high treason, but he escaped those sent to arrest him, and a reward of 300l. was offered for his capture. He agreed to surrender, provided he might be tried in Dublin and not in Clonmel. The condition was accepted, and at his trial in 1765 the evidence broke down; he proved an alibi, and was acquitted. He was, however, immediately rearrested and, with his cousin Edmund, charged with complicity in Bridge's murder. In violation of the spirit of the government pledges, he was sent to Clonmel to be tried. There, in spite of the fact that the informer's body had never been discovered, he and his brother were found guilty, and were executed on 15 March 1766. There were serious flaws in the evidence against Sheehy, though a general complicity in Whiteboy proceedings was proved. In a letter to Major Joseph Sirr [see under Sirr, Henry Charles], who had befriended him, Sheehy admitted his knowledge of Bridge's murder, but asserted his innocence of the crime.
[Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography, p. 473; Froude's English in Ireland, ii. 32; Musgrave's Memoirs of the Rebellions in Ireland, i. 37, ii. App. i.; Amyas Griffith's Miscellaneous Tracts, pp. 56, 71; Curry's Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland, ii. 274; Irish Parliamentary Debates, vii. 342; Mr. O'Leary's Defence, 1787; Madden's United Irishmen, 1858, i. 29–88.]
SHEEPSHANKS, JOHN (1787–1863), art amateur and public benefactor, was born in 1787 at Leeds, of which city his father, Joseph Sheepshanks, was a wealthy cloth-manufacturer. His mother was Ann Wilson of a Westmoreland family. Richard Sheepshanks [q. v.], the well-known astronomer, was his younger brother. Until middle age he was a partner in his father's firm of York & Sheepshanks.
While engaged in business he developed a taste for picture collecting, at first acquiring copies of the Italian masters, but he soon resolved to form a representative collection of modern pictures by British artists. At the time there were practically only two others collecting on similar lines, John Julius Angerstein [q. v.] and Robert Vernon [q. v.] In 1857 Sheepshanks made over his collection to the nation as a free gift. It consisted of 233 pictures in oil, besides 289 drawings and sketches, many of the latter being developments at various stages up to elaborate completion of the painter's early ideas. Among artists represented are Turner, Stothard, Landseer, Linnell, Mulready, Constable, Leslie, Roberts, Stanfield, Wilkie, Creswick, Bonnington, Crome, and Nasmyth. The deed of gift was framed with a view to rendering the pictures a source of education to the rising generation of artists, and, with this end in view, they were housed in the South Kensington Museum, where they are accessible to students and the public. In a truly altruistic spirit he stated that it was not his desire that his collection should ‘be kept apart or bear his name as such;’ and there is a notable proviso that ‘so soon as arrangements can be properly made,’ the collection shall be open on Sunday afternoons. This provision was first carried out in 1896.
On retiring from business Sheepshanks settled in London, moving to Hastings about 1833, and then to Blackheath, where he devoted himself to horticulture, becoming a fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society. Later he built himself a house in Rutland Gate, in which the last years of his life were spent. He was of a retiring and unostentatious disposition, but his house was the resort of men famous in art and literature. He died unmarried on 5 Oct. 1863.
