The sheriff has administrative and limited judicial authority. He sometimes serves for combined counties, as in England for Cambridge and Huntingdon. (J. W.)
SHERIFFMUIR, a battlefield situated on the verge of the extreme north-western iiank of the Ochils, Perthshire, Scotland,
watered by Wharry Burn, an affluent of the Allan. It lies
within the bounds of the parish of Dunblane, 212 m. E. by N.
of the town. It was the site of an indecisive battle (13th of
November 1715) between the Jacobites, about 12,000 strong,
under John Erskine, 6th or 11th earl of Mar, and 4000 Royalists
under Archibald Campbell, afterwards 3rd duke of Argyll.
Both sides, each of which lost 500 men, claimed the victory,
although in point of fact Mar deemed it prudent to retreat.
The “battle stone” enclosed by a railing marks the scene of
the encounter.
SHERIF PASHA (1818–1887), Egyptian statesman, was a Circassian who filled numerous administrative posts under Said and Ismail pashas. He was of better education than most of
his contemporaries, and had married a daughter of Colonel
Sèves the French non-commissioned officer who became Soliman
Pasha under Mehemet Ali. As minister of foreign affairs he
was useful to Ismail, who used Sherif’s bluff bonhomie to veil
many of his most insidious proposals. Of singularly lazy
disposition, he yet possessed considerable tact—he was in fact
an Egyptian Lord Melbourne, whose policy was to leave everything
alone. His favourite argument against any reform was
to appeal to the Pyramids as an immutable proof of the solidity
of Egypt financially and politically. His fatal optimism rendered
him largely responsible for the collapse of Egyptian credit which
brought about the fall of Ismail. Upon the military insurrection
of September 1881, Sherif was summoned by the khedive Tewfik
to form a new ministry. The impossibility of reconciling the
financial requirements of the national party with the demands
of the British and French controllers of the public debt, compelled
him to resign in the following February. After the suppression
of the Arabi rebellion he was again installed in office (September
1882) by Tewfik, but in January 1884 he resigned rather than
sanction the evacuation of the Sudan. As to the strength of the
mahdist movement he had then no conception. When urged by
Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) early in 1883 to abandon some
of the more distant parts of the Sudan, he replied with characteristic
light-heartedness: “Nous en causerons plus tard;
d’abord nous allons donner une bonne raclée à ce monsieur”
(i.e. the mahdi). Hicks Pasha’s expedition was at the time
preparing to march on El Obeid. (Vide Egypt No. 1 (1907),
p. 115). Sherif died at Gratz, on the 20th of April 1887.
SHERLOCK, THOMAS (1678–1761), English divine, the son of
William Sherlock (q.v.), was born at London in 1678. He was
educated at Eton and at St Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, and in
1704 succeeded his father as master of the Temple, where he
was very popular. In 1714 he became master of his old college
at Cambridge and vice-chancellor of the university, whose
privileges he defended against Richard Bentley. In 1715 he
was appointed dean of Chichester. He took a prominent part
in the Bangorian controversy against Benjamin Hoadly, whom
he succeeded as bishop of Bangor in 1728; he was afterwards
translated to Salisbury in 1734, and to London in 1748. Sherlock
was a capable administrator, and cultivated friendly relations
with dissenters.” In parliament he was of good service to his
old schoolfellow Robert Walpole. He published against Anthony
Collins's deistic Grounds of the Christian Religion a volume of
sermons entitled The Use and Interest of Prophecy in the Several
Ages of the World (1725); and in reply to Thomas Woolston's
Discourses on the Miracles he wrote a volume entitled The Tryal
of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729), which soon
ran through fourteen editions. His Pastoral, Letter (1750) on
“the late earthquakes” had a circulation of many thousands,
and four or five volumes of Sermons which he published in his
later years (1754–1758) were also at one time highly esteemed.
He died in July 1761.
A collected edition of his works, with a memoir, in 5 vols. 8vo, by J. S. Hughes, appeared in 1830.
SHERLOCK, WILLIAM (c. 1641–1707), English divine, was
born at Southwark about 1641, and was educated at Eton and at
Peterhouse College, Cambridge. In 1669 he became rector of
St George's, Botolph Lane, London, and in 1681 he was appointed
a prebendary of St Paul's. In 1674 he showed his controversial
bent by an attack on the puritan John Owen, in The Knowledge
of Jesus Christ and Union with Him. In 1684 he published
The Case of Resistance of the Supreme Powers stated and resolved
according to the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, an ably written
treatise, in which he drew the distinction between active and
passive obedience which was at that time generally accepted
by the high church clergy; in the same year he was made master
of the Temple. In 1686 he was reproved for his anti-papal
preaching, and his pension stopped. After the Revolution he
was suspended for refusing the oaths to William and Mary, but
before his final deprivation he yielded, justifying his change
of attitude in The Case of the Allegiance due to Sovereign Powers stated and resolved according to Scripture and Reason and the Principles of the Church of England (1691). During the period
of his suspension he wrote a Practical Discourse concerning Death, which became very popular. In 1690 and 1693 he published
volumes on the doctrine of the Trinity which helped
rather than injured the Socinian cause, and involved him in a
warm controversy with Robert South and others. He became
dean of St Paul's in 1691, and died at Hampstead in June 1707.
His sermons were collected in 2 vols. 8vo (4th ed., 1755).
SHERMAN, JOHN (1823–1900), American financier and
statesman, a younger brother of General W. T. Sherman, was born at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 10th of May 1823. He began
the study of law at Mansfield, Ohio, and was admitted to the
bar in 1844. For ten years he practised his profession with
success, and with only casual interest in politics., His associations
and predilections were with the Whigs, and he was a
delegate to the National Convention that nominated General
Zachary Taylor in 1848. Upon the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, he joined the
great popular movement in Ohio against the policy represented
by this bill, and was elected to Congress in the autumn of that
year as an “Anti-Nebraska” man. In the summer of the next
year he took an active part in the formal organization of the
Republican party in the state, and at the opening of Congress
in December began a long career of public servicel As a member
of the House (1855–1861), he quickly manifested the qualities
which characterized his whole political life. Though a thorough
and avowed partisan, he was within the party the counsellor
of moderate rather than extreme measures, and thus gained on
the whole a position of great influence. He was a member of
the committee sent by the House in 1856 to investigate the troubles in Kansas, and drafted the report of the majority. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate for Speaker of the House, but was obliged, after a contest that lasted two months, to withdraw, largely because of the recommendations he had inadvertently given to an anti-slavery book, The Impending Crisis of the South (18 57), by Hinton Rowan Helper' (1829–1909). He became, however, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and was instrumental in the enactment of the Morrill Tariff Act of 1860. In March 1861 he took his seat in the Senate, to which he had been elected to succeed Salmon P. Chase, when the latter became secretary of the treasury. As senator he sat continuously until he became secretary of the treasury in 1877. His interest and efficiency in financial legislation in the House led to his appointment on the Senate Committee of Finance, and after 1867 he was chairman of this iniiuential committee. He thus became associated with the enactment of all the great fiscal laws through which the strain of war and of reconstruction was sustained. He gave earnest support to the Legal Tender Act, and the substitution of the national for the state banking system. When after the end of the war the question of financial readjustment came up, he vigorously opposed Secretary Hugh McCulloch's policy of retiring the legal tenders, and urged a different plan for effecting the resumption of specie payments.; On the questions relating to political reconstruction and the
