SHEFFIELD 



SHEKEL 



383 



clergy in 1662, of whose churches the Upper Chapel 

 in Norfolk Street is now the lineal representative. 

 Sheffield was first enfranchised by the Reform Bill 

 of 1832 ; and by the bill of 1885 the borough was 

 divided into five parliamentary districts, each 

 being represented by one member. In March 1864 

 a new embankment, constructed for the Sheffield 

 Water Company, at Bradfield, gave way, and let 

 out a body of water 95 feet high from a reservoir 

 78 acres in extent. The destruction of life and 

 property by this flood was unprecedented in Eng- 

 land : 250 persons perished ; mills, houses, and 

 hamlets were swept away from their foundations, 

 and, apart from the ruin of the Bradfield Dam, 

 damage was done to private property to the extent 

 of close upon 300,000. In 1893 Sheffield was con- 

 stituted a city, and in 1897 her chief magistrate for 

 the first time was entitled Lord Mayor. 



See Joseph Hunter's HaUamMre (1819; new ed. by 

 the present writer, 1869); the latter 1 s Sheffield, Past 

 and Prrjieut (1873); K. E. Leader's Jieminitcences 

 of Old Sheffield (1875); and Harper' i Magazine (June 

 1884). 



Sheffield, JOHN, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM- 

 SHIRE, was born in 1648, and succeeded to the 

 title of his father, the second Earl of Mulgrave, 

 in 1658. He served in the navy against the 

 Dutch in 1666, and commanded a ship in 1672 ; 

 but subsequently joined the army. He was lord 

 chamberlain to James II., and a cabinet-councillor 

 under William III., who in 1694 made him Marquis 

 of Normanby. Anne raised him to the dignities of 

 Duke of Normanby and Duke of Buckinghamshire 

 (1703); but for his opposition to Godolphin and 

 Marlborough he lost all his offices. After 1710 

 under the Tory regime he was lord steward of the 

 household ami lord president till the death of 

 Anne, when he lost all power, but intrigued zeal- 

 ously for the restoration of the Stuarts. He wrote 

 two tragedies, a metrical Essay on Satire, an 

 Essay on Poetry ( his principal work ), and some 

 smaller poems, all of them much talked of at the 

 time, but of little poetic value. He died 24th 

 February 1721. 



Sheffield, JOHN BAKER HOLROYD, EARL OF 

 (1735-1821), is chiefly known as the friend of 

 Gibbon (q.v.) and editor of his miscellaneous 

 works. He wrote numerous pamphlets on the 

 slave-trade, the corn laws, the navigation laws, 

 and on commercial and agricultural questions. 



Sheikh (Arab., 'elder,' 'aged person'), a title 

 applied to the chieftain of an Arab tribe, to the 

 principal preacher in a Mohammedan mosque, to 

 the head of a religious order, and to a learnea man 

 or a reputed saint of Islam. The Sheikh ul-Islam 

 at Constantinople is the head of the Mohammedan 

 church ; he is possessed of very great influence and 

 power (see MUFTI). Sheikh al-Jebel (Old Man 

 of the Mountain ) was the name of the chief of the 

 Assassins (q.v.). 



Shell, RICHARD LALOR, Irish patriot and orator, 

 was born atDrumdowney, County Tipperary, 17th 

 August 1791, son of a prosperous Cadiz merchant, 

 who had returned to Ireland about the time that 

 the most odious of the Catholic disabilities began 

 to be relaxed. He passed his earliest years at his 

 father's estate of Bellevue near Waterford, and in 

 due time went to school, first to Kensington, then 

 in Stony hurst, whence he passed in 1807 to Trinity 

 College, Dublin. Soon after this his father failed, 

 hut young Sheil was enabled through the help of 

 friends to graduate B.A. in July 1811, and to enter 

 Lincoln's Inn in November of the same year. He 

 was called to the Irish bar in Hilary term, 1814. 

 The next few years he devoted to literature, pro- 

 ducing a series of plays, most of which proved 

 uccessful in Dublin or London : Adelaide, or The 



Emigrants ( 1814) ; The Apostate ( 1817 ) ; Bellamira 

 (1818); Evadne, partly based on Shirley's Traitor 

 (1819); The AyMMOtUMt); Montoni (1820); and 

 an adaptation of Massinger's play, The Forgotten 

 Dowry (1824). His Sketches of the Irish Bar, 

 written in conjunction with the younger Curran, 

 appeared during 1822 in the pages of the New 

 Monthly Magazine (2 vols. 1855). In 1823 Sheil 

 joined O'Connell's Catholic Association, which was 

 dissolved in 1825, and throughout gave the great 

 tribune a loyal but an independent support. After 

 the Lords threw out the Catholic Relief Bill (May 

 1825 ) he aided his chief in forming the New Catholic 

 Association, and throughout the course of the agita- 

 tion he devoted enormous labour to the prepara- 

 tion of those ornate and impassioned speeches, 

 which, despite his shrill voice and feeble gestures, 

 had often a magical effect on his audience, and many 

 of which remain to posterity among the masterpieces 

 of English oratory. After Catholic emancipation 

 was gained in 1829 Sheil devoted much more of 

 his time than before to his profession. He was re- 

 turned to parliament for Milborne Port, Somerset. 

 a pocket-lx>rough of Lord Anglesea's, and at the 

 dissolution of 1831 for Louth, and later he sat for 

 Tipperary and Dungarvan. A charge brought 

 against his honour in 1834 by Lord Althorp, that 

 he had in private supported the Coercion Bill of 

 1833 while publicly opposing it, was unanimously 

 rebutted by a Committee of Privileges. After the 

 defeat of Repeal in 1834, which years later he 

 described aa ' a splendid phantom, Sheil mostly 

 supported the Whigs, and in 1838 received a com- 

 missionership of Greenwich Hospital. In August 

 1839 under Melbourne he became vice-president of 

 the Board of Trade, and a privy-councillor the 

 first Catholic to gain that honour. Under Lord 

 John Russell in 1846 he was appointed Master of 

 the Mint, and in 1850 British minister at Florence. 

 Here his constitution, enfeebled by gout, sank 

 under the shock of the sudden death of his step- 

 son, May 25, 1851. 



See his Memoirs, by W. Torrens McCullagh (2 vols. 

 1855). His Speeches, with a memoir by T. MacNevin, 

 were published in 1845 ; the Speeches, Leyal and Political, 

 edited by M. W. Savage, in 1855 (2 vols.). 



Shekarry ( also spelt shikarry, shikaree, chick- 

 ary ; Hind, shikari), an Anglo-Indian word for 

 'hunter,' 'sportsman,' familiar to English readers 

 from the books on sport in India bv 'The old 

 Shekarry,' Major H. A. Leveson ( 1828-75). 



Shekel ( Heb. , from shakal, ' to weigh ' ), origin- 

 ally a certain standard weight in use among the 

 ancient Hebrews, by which the value of metals, 

 metal vessels, and other things was fixed. Gradu- 

 ally it became a normal piece of money, both in 

 gold and silver, marked in some way or other as 

 a coin, although not stamped. The gifts to the 

 sanctuary, the lines, the taxes, the prices of merchan- 

 dise are all reckoned in the Old Testament by the 

 shekel, not counted but weighed. Three different 

 kinds of gold, silver, and copper shekels are men- 

 tioned : the common shekel, the shekel of the 

 sanctuary (probably of double value), and the 

 shekel of royal weight. Besides these there was 

 a half-shekel and a quarter-shekel. The sacred 

 shekel was equal to 20 gerahs ('lieaiis '), and 3000 

 sacred shekels made a talent. The gold shekel is 

 reckoned approximately to contain 161 Troy grains, 

 the silver shekel 275. During the Babylonian 

 exile the Persian money (darirs) was used by the 

 captives ; nor do the Jews seem to have afterwards 

 used any but the coins of their foreign rulers. It 

 was first under the Maccabees that national money 

 began to be struck. Simon, the 'prince and high- 

 priest,' received, according to 1 Mace. xv. 16, the 

 permission from Antiochus VII. to strike coins ic 



