Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/348

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Shadwell
340
Shadwell

of doors from November to March (Roget, History of the ‘Old Water Colour’ Society, 1891, ii. 210–11). He was in the habit of bathing every day, whatever the weather, in one of the creeks of the Thames near Barn Elms, and while thus engaged is said to have granted an injunction on one occasion in the long vacation. In his early days he was an active pedestrian (see Arnould, Memoir of Lord Denman, 1873, i. 17, 25), and in 1797 he served as a member of the light-horse volunteers (Lord Colchester, Diary and Correspondence, 1861, i. 114). He was elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn on 30 Jan. 1822, and acted as treasurer in 1833.

His portrait, painted in 1842 by Thomas Phillips, R.A., is in the possession of his inn. His decisions will be found in the ‘Reports’ of Nicholas Simons (ii. 41 to xvii. 166).

The vice-chancellor's eighth son, Lawrence Shadwell (1823–1887), born in July 1823, was educated at Eton, and entered the army as ensign in the 98th foot on 26 April 1841. He served in the China expedition of 1842, the Punjab campaign of 1848–9, and in the Crimean war of 1854–6. He held the appointment of assistant quartermaster-general in the Crimea during the greater part of the war. After his return to England, he was assistant quartermaster-general to the troops in the northern district from April 1857 to September 1861, in Nova Scotia from January to August 1862, and in the south-western district of England from April 1864 to February 1866. From 1866 to 1871 he was military assistant at the war office. He was promoted to the rank of major-general on 6 March 1868, and was created a companion of the Bath on 2 June 1869. He was granted a reward for distinguished and meritorious services in January 1874, and was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-general on 27 April 1879, and to that of general on 1 July 1881. He retired from the army on 25 July 1881, and died at Reading on 16 Aug. 1887, aged 64. Lawrence Shadwell married, on 2 Aug. 1853, Helen Frances, daughter of the Rev. Edward Coleridge, vicar of Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, and fellow of Eton College.

[Foss's Judges of England, 1864, ix. 261–4; Hardy's Memoirs of Lord Langdale, 1852, ii. 258–68; Georgian Era, 1833, ii. 552; Law Times, xv. 467; Legal Observer, xl. 305; De Gex and Smale's Reports, vol. iv. pp. ix–xi; Illustrated London News, 17 Aug. 1850 (with portrait); Brayley and Britton's Surrey, 1850, iii. 437, 438; Ann. Reg. 1850, app. to chron. pp. 251–2; Gent. Mag. 1805 i. 83, 1814 i. 628, 1845 ii. 423, 1854 ii. 644; Baker's History of St. John's College, Cambridge, 1869, pt. i. pp. 311, 312; Grad. Cantabr. 1856, p. 341; Stapylton's Eton School Lists, 1864, pp. 14, 21, 172; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. p. 309; Haydn's Book of Dignities, 1890; Lincoln's Inn Registers; Army Lists.]

G. F. R. B.

SHADWELL, THOMAS (1642?–1692), dramatist and poet-laureate, was grandson of George Shadwell, and son of John Shadwell of the parish of Broomhill, Norfolk. He claimed descent from the family of Shadwell of Lyndowne, Staffordshire. John Shadwell, who had eleven children, was of the Middle Temple, and lost much of his property at the civil war. He was a justice of the peace for Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and after the Restoration was appointed recorder of Galway and receiver there to the Duke of York, and subsequently was attorney-general at Tangier under William O'Brien, second earl of Inchiquin [q. v.] He was buried at Oxburgh, Norfolk, on 2 March 1684 (Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 197; Oxburgh Register).

Shadwell was born in 1640 or 1642 at Broomhill House in the parish of Weeting (cf. Caius College Register; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. iv. 109). He was educated at home for five years, and afterwards for a year at the school of Bury St. Edmunds. On 17 Dec. 1656 he was admitted a pensioner to Caius College, Cambridge, ‘then aged 14,’ but he left without taking any degree, and entered the Middle Temple. After studying there for some time, he travelled abroad, and on his return turned his attention to literature.

Shadwell's first play, ‘The Sullen Lovers,’ based on Molière's ‘Les Fâcheux,’ was brought out at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 5 May 1668. It was acted twelve days (Shadwell's wife taking the part of the heroine, Emilia), and was revived when the court was at Dover in 1670 (Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, 1708, p. 29). In the preface Shadwell avowed himself a disciple of Ben Jonson, his endeavour being to represent variety of humours, as was the practice of his master. In September 1668 Pepys asked Shadwell to dinner; but when Shadwell's second play, ‘The Royal Shepherdess,’ which was adapted from Fountain's ‘The Rewards of Virtue,’ was produced before a crowded house in February 1669, Pepys said it was ‘the silliest for words and design and everything that ever I saw in my whole life.’ A much better play, ‘The Humourists,’ produced at the Theatre Royal in 1670, is said by Gildon to have met with many enemies on its first appearance. ‘The Miser,’ 1671, is an adaptation from Molière, but contains