[1] Ralph Sheldon left England for France and Italy in 1642 and returned just before his marriage in 1647 to Lady Henrietta Maria, daughter of John Savage, 2nd Earl Rivers (c. 1603–1654), a wealthy Catholic politician and Royalist from Cheshire.
Beoley Hall was burnt down in the English Civil War, apparently to stop it falling into Roundhead hands.
[1] Sheldon's wife died childless in 1663, perhaps of the plague, after which he devoted himself wholly to genealogy, heraldry and antiquities and drew up a Catalogue of the Nobility of England since the Norman Conquest.
Each of the four originals centred on a county in which members of the family lived, held land and had friends: Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.
[5] Sheldon died at Weston on 24 June 1684 and was buried, as his wife had been, in the family chapel at Beoley.