Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/80

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Sherbrooke
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Sherbrooke

May 1522 he accompanied Thomas Grey, second marquis of Dorset [q. v.], to Calais to meet Charles V and conduct him to London. In April 1525 he was commissioned by Wolsey to visit the Premonstratensian monastery at Bigham and examine into the scandals there. In the same year he sent Wolsey books for his new college at Oxford, of which he was in other ways a benefactor (Letters and Papers, iv. 1708, 2340). In September 1528 he again met Campeggio on his arrival to try the divorce of Catherine of Arragon. He acquiesced in the Reformation, but probably with secret reluctance. He signed the letter of the lords spiritual and temporal to Clement VII on 13 July 1530 begging him to grant Henry's desire for a divorce, and pointing out the evils of delay. In 1532 accusations against him were laid before Cromwell, but he was able to clear himself, and on 26 Feb. 1534–5 he renounced the jurisdiction of the pope. On Sunday 13 June following he preached ‘the Word of God’ in his cathedral, promulgating the king's commands as to his supremacy of the church, but asked to be relieved of further proceedings in the matter, owing to age and feeble health. He was examined by Richard Layton [q. v.], the visitor of the monasteries, on 1 Oct. 1535; and early in June 1536 resigned his bishopric, to which Henry wished to appoint Richard Sampson [q. v.] He died in the following August. His will, dated 2 Aug., was proved on 24 Nov. At Chichester he kept a state second only in magnificence to that of Henry and Wolsey, and he left property worth nearly 1,500l. He founded the prebends of Bursalis, Exceit, Bargham, and Wyndham, to be held by alumni of New College or Winchester College (cf. Laud, Works, v. 485–6). He also founded about 1520 a grammar school at Rolleston, Staffordshire (Shaw, Staffordshire, i. 34).

[Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, vols. i. and ii. passim; Letters and Papers of Henry VII, Campbell's Materials, and Andreas's Hist. (Rolls Ser.); Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner, 1509–36, passim; Rymer's Fœdera, vols. xii. and xiii.; Lansd. MS. 979, ff. 146–8; Godwin, De Præsulibus, ed. Richardson; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 746; Dodd's Church Hist. i. 184; Burnet's Hist. Ref. ed. Pocock; Churton's Founders of Brasenose, pp. 27, 361; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Gent. Mag. 1853, ii. 289.]

A. F. P.


SHERBROOKE, Viscount. [See Lowe, Robert, 1811–1892.]


SHERBROOKE, Sir JOHN COAPE (1764–1830), general, born in 1764, was third son of William Coape, J.P. of Farnah in Duffield, Derbyshire, and Arnold, Nottinghamshire, who had taken the name of Sherbrooke on his marriage in 1756 to Sarah, one of the three coheiresses of Henry Sherbrooke of Oxton, Nottinghamshire. He was commissioned as ensign in the 4th foot on 7 Dec. 1780, and became lieutenant on 22 Dec. 1781. He was given a company in the 85th foot on 6 March 1783, but the regiment was disbanded in the course of that year. On 23 June 1784 he became captain in the 33rd foot, then stationed in Nova Scotia. The incident known as the Wynyard ghost occurred while Sherbrooke was quartered in Cape Breton in 1784–5. He and Lieutenant Wynyard saw, or supposed themselves to see, a figure pass through the room in which they were sitting, and Wynyard recognised it as his brother, who (as he afterwards learned) died in England at that time. A singular feature of the case was that it was Sherbrooke, not Wynyard, that first saw, and called attention to, the figure (Martin, ii. 594; cf. Stanhope, Conversations with Wellington, p. 256). The 33rd returned to England in 1785. On 30 Sept. 1793—the date on which Arthur Wellesley became its lieutenant-colonel—Sherbrooke was promoted major; and a second lieutenant-colonel being added to its establishment, he attained that rank on 24 May 1794. In July the regiment landed at Ostend to join the Duke of York's army in the Netherlands. It served in the latter part of the campaign of 1794, and in the winter retreat from Holland to Bremen.

In April 1796 it went to the Cape, and thence to India, where it took part in the Mysore war of 1799. At the battle of Malavelly Sherbrooke was in command of the pickets, which were first engaged. At the storming of Seringapatam he commanded the right column of assault. He was knocked down by a spent ball as he mounted the breach, but quickly recovered, and Baird said in his report: ‘If where all behaved nobly it is proper to mention individual merit, I know no man so justly entitled to praise as Colonel Sherbrooke.’

His health suffered so much in India that in January 1800 he had to go home, and in 1802 he was placed on half-pay. He had become colonel in the army on 1 Jan. 1798, and on 9 July 1803 he was appointed to the command of the 4th reserve battalion in the eastern counties. On 1 Jan. 1805 he was promoted major-general, and in June he was sent to Sicily, where he was given command of the troops at Messina. In May 1807 he went to Egypt to negotiate with the Beys, after the failure of Fraser's expedition. During the first half of 1808 he was in temporary command of all the British troops in Sicily.