Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/125

 politics. Shipman, who was a captain of trained bands for his county, died at Scarrington, and was buried there on 15 Oct. 1680. He married Margaret, daughter of John Trafford, who brought him an estate at Bulcote and survived him until about 1696. Their third son, William, settled at Mansfield, and was high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1730.

Shipman was the author of: 1. ‘Henry the Third of France, stabbed by a Fryer, with the Fall of Guise,’ a rhymed tragedy (a very pedestrian effort, given at the Theatre Royal in August 1678, and printed, London, 1678, 4to). 2. ‘Carolina, or Loyal Poems’ (London, 1683, 8vo), posthumously published, with Flatman's address; it contains, among about two hundred poems, a long piece on the Restoration, ‘The Hero’ (1678), addressed to Monmouth, some grateful acknowledgments to the writer's good friend, Abraham Cowley, a eulogy on Dugdale's ‘Baronage,’ ‘The Olde-English Gentleman,’ and many verses to his ‘poetical friend,’ William, third lord Byron.

[Godfrey's Thomas Shipman, 1890 (brief memoir, with careful genealogy); and the same writer's Four Nottinghamshire Dramatists, 1895; Thoroton's Antiquities of Nottinghamshire; Genest's Hist. of Stage, i. 229; Baker's Biogr. Dramatica; Hunter's Chorus Vatum (Add. MS. 24492, f. 173); Athenæum, 27 March 1858; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vi. 456, 4th ser. xi. 177, 6th ser. vii. 232; Shipman's Carolina (with manuscript note) in British Museum.]

 SHIPP, JOHN (1784–1834), soldier and author, younger son of Thomas Shipp, a marine, and his wife Lætitia, was born at Saxmundham in Suffolk in March 1784. His mother died in poor circumstances in 1789, his elder brother was lost at sea, and John became an inmate of the parish poorhouse; he was apprenticed by the overseers to a neighbouring farmer, a savage taskmaster, from whom he was glad to escape by enlistment as a boy in the 22nd (Cheshire) regiment of foot, at Colchester, on 17 Jan. 1797. Through the kindness of his captain he picked up some education, and, after service in the Channel Islands and the Cape, sailed for India, where, having risen to be a sergeant in the grenadier company, he served against the Mahrattas under Lord Lake [see, first ]. He was one of the stormers at the capture of Deig on 24 Dec. 1804, and thrice led the forlorn hope of the storming column in the unsuccessful assaults on Bhurtpore (January–February 1805). He was severely wounded, but his daring was rewarded by Lord Lake with an ensigncy in the 65th foot. On 10 March in the same year he was gazetted lieutenant in the 76th foot. Returning home after two and a half years' further service, he found himself constrained to sell out on 19 March 1808 in order to obtain a sum (about 250l.) wherewith to pay his debts. After a short interval he found himself in London without a shilling, and took the resolution of again enlisting in the ranks. He returned to India as a private in the 24th light dragoons, and rose by 1812 to the position of regimental sergeant-major. In May 1815 the Earl of Moira [see, first Marquis of Hastings and second Earl of Moira] reappointed him to an ensigncy in the 87th Prince's own Irish (now Royal Irish fusiliers), lately arrived in India from Mauritius. Shipp had thus performed the unique feat of twice winning a commission from the ranks before he was thirty-two.

Shipp distinguished himself greatly by his bravery in the second campaign of the Ghoorka war, notably in a single combat with one of the enemy's sirdars near Muckwanpore. He was on the staff of the left division of the ‘grand army’ under the Marquis of Hastings in the Mahratta and Pindaree war (1817–18), and was promoted lieutenant on 5 July 1821. He seems to have been highly popular in his regiment for his gallantry in the field; but during 1822, while quartered at Calcutta, he was inveigled into a series of turf speculations which proved highly disastrous. Shipp was imprudent enough to reflect in writing upon the behaviour of a superior officer in regard to these transactions, and was discharged from the service by a court-martial held at Fort William on 14–27 July 1823. He was, however, recommended to mercy, ‘in consideration of his past services and wounds, and the high character that he had borne as an officer and a gentleman.’ On selling out, on 3 Nov. 1825, the East India Company granted him a pension of 50l., upon which he settled near Ealing in Middlesex. Shipp now turned his hand to relating some of his experiences in an unpretentious volume, entitled ‘Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp’ (London, 1829, 12mo; later editions, 1830, 1840, 1843, and 1890), a successful work and a curiosity in autobiography, in which the writer wisely abstained from any recriminations. Two years later he issued ‘Flogging and its Substitute: a Voice from the Ranks,’ in the form of a letter to Sir Francis Burdett, being a powerful indictment of the detestable barbarities of the ‘cat,’ which, as the author maintained, ‘flogged one devil out and fifty devils in.’