In 1805 Sheraton published a ‘Discourse on the Character of God as Love.’ He died in Broad Street, Soho, on 22 Oct. 1806, leaving a family in distressed circumstances.
Sheraton was the apostle of the severer taste in English cabinet-making which followed upon the rococo leanings of his great predecessor, Thomas Chippendale [q. v.], who, under the influence of the brothers John and Robert Adam, had refined and simplified the methods of his predecessors. In the cabinets, chairs, writing-tables, and occasional pieces made from Sheraton's designs, the square tapering legs, severe lines, and quiet ornament take the place of the cabriole leg or carved ornament which characterised earlier English cabinet-work. Sheraton trusted almost entirely for decoration to marqueterie. A characteristic feature of his cabinets was the swan-necked pediment surmounting the cornice, being a revival of an ornament fashionable during Queen Anne's reign (Litchfield, Illustrated History of Furniture, pp. 195–7). The South Kensington Museum possesses two mahogany chairs carved by Sheraton (Pollen, Ancient and Modern Furniture, clvi. 90).
The central doctrines of all his work and writing are that ornamentation must subserve utility, that the lines of construction, if sound, connote beauty, and that a successful simplicity is harder and more worthy of attainment than the highest development of Louis-Quinze superfluity. That his principles were not the outcome of a mere vague intuition is evidenced by the admirable treatises on geometry, architecture, and perspective with which he introduces his monumental ‘Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-book.’ Unfortunately in his later years, under the influence of the ‘Empire’ style, which came into vogue after the French revolution, he was untrue to his own convictions, and, in response to popular demand, designed some articles of furniture of blatant and vulgar symbolism.
[Gent. Mag. 1806, ii. 1082; Heaton's Furniture and Decoration in England during the Eighteenth Century (with facsimile reproductions of Sheraton's designs), 1892, fol. I. i. 20–1; Memoirs of Adam Black; Magazine of Art, 1883, p. 190; Prefaces to Sheraton's Drawing-book; Quaritch's Gen. Cat. of Books; information kindly supplied by Mr. B. T. Batsford.]
SHERBORNE or SHIRBURN, ROBERT (1450?–1536), bishop of Chichester, a native of Hampshire, was born about 1440, if Le Neve's statement that he was ninety-six at the time of his death is correct. He is said to have been educated at Winchester College (but cf. Kirby), and at Oxford, where he graduated M.A. before 1469. On 17 March in that year he was appointed prebendary of Mora in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1474 he was fellow of New College, Oxford. He was also master of St. Cross Hospital, near Winchester, and on 14 Dec. 1486 was appointed treasurer of Hereford Cathedral (Le Neve, i. 489). On 1 May 1488 he received the prebend of Langford Manor in Lincoln Cathedral, which he exchanged for Milton Manor in the same cathedral on 27 Nov. 1493, but again exchanged to Langford on 29 Aug. 1494. On 26 Aug. 1489 he was given the prebend of Wildland in St. Paul's Cathedral, and he also held a canonry at Wells, which he resigned in 1493. On 2 Nov. in that year he was made prebendary of Holywell or Finsbury in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1496 he became archdeacon of Buckinghamshire (13 Feb.), of Huntingdon and of Taunton (16 Dec.). In July of the same year he was sent as envoy to the pope with the intimation of Henry VII's willingness to join the holy league, which aimed at keeping the French out of Italy (Rymer, xii. 639); in his letter to the Duke of Milan requesting a free passage for Sherborne, Henry describes him as his secretary (Cal. Venetian State Papers, i. 691, 712, 722). In 1498 he was appointed to levy fines on those of the clergy who had abetted Perkin Warbeck, and in the following year he was made dean of St. Paul's. In August 1500 he was employed in examining adherents of Warbeck (ib. xii. 766). He was apparently ambassador at Rome in 1502, and while there was instructed to go to the pope with the Spanish ambassador, announce Prince Arthur's death, and request a dispensation for the marriage of Prince Henry with Catherine of Arragon (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv. 5467). On 4 May 1503 he was appointed commissioner to treat with Scotland concerning Margaret's dowry, and in 1504 was sent to Julius II to congratulate him on his election as pope.
Early in 1505 Sherborne was made bishop of St. David's by a papal bull which he himself forged (Letters and Papers of Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, i. 246, ii. 169, 335, 337); the temporalities were restored on 12 April, and when the forgery was discovered Henry VII wrote to the Pope asking that Sherborne might be leniently treated (ib.). He does not seem to have been punished, and on 18 Sept. 1508 he was papally provided to the see of Chichester, the temporalities being restored on 13 Dec. On 23 July 1518 he met Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio [q. v.] at Deal on his arrival in England to urge Henry VIII to join in a crusade against the Turks. In
