Although the eldest son, William was sent to the Inner Temple not to make a profession of law but in order to understand his own affairs, and according to his son it was against his will that he was made serjeant, and judge, by Henry VIII (Sir Richard Shelley, Letters, p. 15). From the beginning of Henry's reign he appears on commissions of the peace for Sussex and other counties; in 1517 he was autumn reader in the Inner Temple, and about the same time became one of the judges of the sheriff's court in London. In 1520 he was appointed recorder of that city, and in May 1521 was placed on the special commission of oyer and terminer to find an indictment against Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham [q. v.] In the same year he took the degree of the coif. In 1523 he is erroneously said to have been returned to parliament for London (Foss; but cf. Off. Ret. i. 369). In 1527 he was raised to the bench as judge of the common pleas, and in 1529 he was sent to demand from Wolsey the surrender of York House, afterwards Whitehall. Soon afterwards he entertained Henry VIII at Michelgrove. He was summoned to parliament on 9 Aug. 1529, and again on 27 April 1536. He was hostile to the Reformation, and is said to have suffered from Cromwell's antipathy; but his name appears in most of the important state trials of the period—in that of the Charterhouse monks and Fisher (1535), of Weston, Norris, Lord Rochford, and Anne Boleyn (May 1536), and Sir Geoffrey Pole, Sir Edward Neville, and Sir Nicholas Carew (1538–9). In 1547 he was consulted by Henry VIII's executors about the provisions of his will. He died between 3 Nov. 1548 and 10 May 1549.
Shelley married Alice (d. 1536?), daughter of Sir Henry Belknap, great-grandson of Sir Robert de Bealknap [q. v.] of Knelle in the parish of Beckley, Sussex. By her he had four sons: John (d. 15 Dec. 1550) was father of William (not to be confused with William Shelley of Hertford, also a prisoner in the Tower in 1580), who was attainted 15 Dec. 1582 for complicity in Charles Paget's treasons, but not executed, and died 15 April 1597, being succeeded by his son John, created a baronet in 1611; the second son of the judge was Sir Richard Shelley [q. v.]; the third, Sir James, was, like Sir Richard, a distinguished and widely travelled knight of St. John (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. viii. 192, x. 201–2); the fourth, Sir Edward, a master of the household of Henry VIII, treasurer of the council of the north, and captain of Berwick, was killed at Pinkie on 10 Sept. 1547 (cf. Addit. MSS. 32647 ff. 66, 70, 32648 f. 12, 32653 f. 161; Chron. of Calais, p. 176, &c.; Lit. Rem. of Edward VI, Roxb. Club, pp. ccc; Cal. Hamilton Papers, passim).
[Foss's Judges of England; Lower's Sussex Worthies; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner, passim; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Rymer's Fœdera, orig. ed. vol. xiv. passim; Letters of Sir R. Shelley, 1774; Cavendish's Wolsey, p. 155; Sussex Archæol. Collections, passim; The Shelley Pedigree (separately published, also in Miscell. Genealog. et Herald. new ser. iii. 422–7, and in Pref. to Buxton Forman's Prose Works of Shelley); Collins's Baronets, i. 60–5; Berry's Sussex Genealogies; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage; Horsfield's Lewes; Holloway's Hist. of Rye, 1847; Gent. Mag. 1785 ii. 713, 1852 i. 517.]
SHELTON, JOHN (d. 1845), colonel, was commissioned as ensign in the 9th foot on 21 Nov. 1805, became lieutenant on 26 Aug. 1807, and captain on 17 June 1813. He served with his regiment in Portugal in 1808, being present at Roliça, Vimiero, and Coruña; in the Walcheren expedition of 1809; and again in the Peninsula in 1812–1813. He was at the siege and capture of Badajoz, at Salamanca, Burgos, Vittoria, and San Sebastian, where he lost his right arm. In 1814 he served in Canada. In 1817 he exchanged into the 44th foot, which went to India in 1822, and was employed in Arracan during the first Burmese war. He became regimental major on 6 Feb. 1825, and lieutenant-colonel on 16 Sept. 1827. For the next thirteen years he commanded the 44th in India, respected but not liked by the officers and men, for he was harsh and imperious, ‘not a pleasant man on parade.’ At the end of 1840 he was put in charge of a brigade, consisting of his own and two native regiments, to relieve a part of the force in Afghanistan. He reached Jellalabad with his brigade in January 1841, made a punitive expedition into the Nazian valley in February, had to return through the Khyber to the Indus in May to open the road for Shah Soojah's family, and at length arrived at Cabul on 9 June.
Shelton was encamped at Seah Sung, two miles east of the city, when the Afghan outbreak began, on 2 Nov. 1841, with the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes [q. v.] He was ordered to occupy the Balla-Hissar (the citadel of Cabul) with part of his brigade, with a view to reinforcing the shah's troops; but when he had been there a week he was summoned to the cantonments to assist General Elphinstone and infuse some vigour into the defence [see Elphinstone, Will-
