of his death is unknown. He is said to have married a natural daughter of James II. He left two children: a daughter, who married Colonel Guillaume, aide-de-camp of William III; and a son, Thomas Sheridan the younger (d. 1746), who was appointed about 1739 tutor to Prince Charles Edward (the young Pretender); he accompanied the young chevalier to Scotland in 1745, and was knighted by him. He was one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’ who landed with the prince and was present at the battle of Falkirk, which he described in a letter dated 21 Jan. 1746 (‘Copia d' una Lettera del Cavalier Sheridan to Mr. D. O'Brien, scritta da Bannochburn,’ Roma, 1746; Jesse, Memoirs of the Pretenders, 1858, pp. 102, 241, 268). After the battle of Culloden he escaped on 4 May from Arisaig in Inverness-shire on board a French man-of-war. He proceeded to Rome, where he died before the end of the year (Gent. Mag. 1746, pp. 264, 668).
Besides ‘Mr. Sheridan's Speech after his Examination before the late House of Commons’ (London, 1681, fol.) the elder Sheridan published ‘A Discourse on the Rise and Power of Parliaments’ (1677, 8vo); reprinted in 1870 by Saxe Bannister, London, 8vo, under the title ‘Some Revelations in Irish History.’ This work is of especial interest, both on account of the light it throws on Irish political life, and because of the singularly bold and enlightened manner in which the author proposes to meet the difficulties of administration by a system of conciliation and toleration. Sheridan was also the author of a manuscript ‘History of his Own Times,’ now in the royal library at Windsor, and he is said to have translated ‘A Survey of Princes,’ by Jean Louis Guez, Sieur de Balzac, London, 1703, 4to (manuscript note on title-page of copy in British Museum).
[Notes kindly supplied by Fraser Rae, esq., and by Richard Bagwell, esq.; Sheridan's Works; Fraser Rae's Sheridan: a Biography, 1896; Fitzgerald's Lives of the Sheridans, 1886, i. 424–8; Lang's Pickle the Spy, pp. 31, 90; Bannister's Preface to Powers of Parliament; L. T.'s Short Account of Mr. Sheridan's Case, London, 1681; True Relation of the Life and Death of William Bedell, ed. Jones, 1872 (Camden Soc.), pp. 203–10; Songs, Poems, and Verses of Lady Dufferin, ed. Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, 1894, pp. 421, 431; Ware's Irish Writers, ed. Harris, 1764, p. 270; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 429; Hyde Correspondence, ed. Singer, 1828 i. 442, ii. 12, 25, 69, 138, 151, 175; Bodleian Library, Rawl. MSS. A. 183 f.139 b.]
SHERIDAN, THOMAS (1687–1738), schoolmaster, and friend of Swift, was born at Cavan in 1687, and was the son of James Sheridan, fourth and youngest son of the Rev. Dennis Sheridan, who assisted Bishop Bedell in translating the bible into Erse (Appendix to Life of Bedell, by T. W. Jones, p. 210). Thomas Sheridan (fl. 1661–1688) [q. v.], the Jacobite, and William Sheridan [q. v.], bishop of Kilmore, were his uncles. On 18 Oct. 1707 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a pensioner, his uncle, the bishop, helping with funds. He graduated B.A. in 1711, and M.A. in 1714; in 1724 he became B.D. and in 1726 D.D. Shortly after graduating he married Elizabeth, the only child of Charles MacFadden of Quilca House, co. Cavan, and this house became his on MacFadden's death. The property was originally in the possession of the Sheridans, and was forfeited for their adhering to James II, while Charles MacFadden acquired it for his services to King William.
Sheridan, on his marriage, opened a school in King's Mint House, Capel Street, which was attended by sons of the best families in Dublin, and from which he derived an income of 1,000l. Swift made Sheridan's acquaintance in 1713, on arriving in Dublin to take possession of the deanery of St. Patrick's. They became constant companions. A room in the deanery was reserved for Sheridan, while Swift often lived for months together at Quilca, where he planned the ‘Drapier's Letters,’ wrote a part of ‘Gulliver's Travels,’ and edited ‘The Intelligencer’ in concert with his friend. When Sheridan was incapacitated by illness from being present in his school, Swift took his place. When Carteret was lord-lieutenant, Swift appealed to him on Sheridan's behalf, and in response he appointed him, in 1725, to be one of his chaplains and to a living in the county of Cork. Before he was inducted, however, Sheridan preached a sermon at Cork on the text ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ a sermon which he had often preached before without complaint. On this occasion Sunday fell on 1 Aug., the day of Queen Anne's death. Richard Tighe, a whig and courtier, heard it; he thought that the sermon confirmed the prevailing notion that the preacher was a Jacobite, and he represented this to the lord-lieutenant, who struck Sheridan's name from the list of his chaplains and forbade his appearing at court. Archdeacon Thomas Russell, in whose pulpit the offending sermon was delivered, presented the absent-minded preacher, by way of compensation, with the manor of Drumlane, co. Cavan, yielding 250l. a year.
Dr. Sheridan was offered the head-mastership of the royal school at Armagh, but elected to remain in Dublin, at the advice of his
