Item V/i/04 - A Plan of Education for the young nobility and gentry of Great Britain

SHERIDAN, THOMAS, third son of Rev. Thomas Sheridan DD, King’s Mint House, Capel Street, Dublin, schoolmaster, and Elizabeth, only child of Charles MacFadden, Quilca House, co. Cavan; b.; adm. (aged 11) Feb 1732/3; KS 1734; left 1734; Trinity Coll. Dublin, matr. 26 May 1735, scholar 1738; BA 1739; became an actor; appeared as Richard III at Dublin Jan 1743; for several years manager of Theatre Royal, Smock Alley, Dublin; played at Covent Garden 1754-5 and at Drury Lane 1744, 1763; ranked by Churchill in the Rosciad as next to Garrick as a tragic actor; a successful lecturer on elocution; gave readings with Henderson in London; procured the grant of a government pension to Samuel Johnson and also to himself (G. B. Hill, ed, Boswell’s Johnson, i, 372-7, 385-6); MA Oxford 28 Nov 1758, Cambridge 16 Mar 1769; hon. freeman, City of Edinburgh 8 Jul 1761; a voluminous writer; author, A General; Dictionary of the English Language, 1780; father of Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan PC MP, politician and playwright; m. 1747 Frances, dau. of Ven. Philip Chamberlayne DD, Archdeacon of Glendalough; d. 14 Aug 1788. DNB.