Not to be confused with Bobby Shaftoe, a main character in Cryptonomicon.
Sergeant Bob Shaftoe is the half-brother of Jack Shaftoe. He is a soldier in The King's Own Black Torrent Guard, who ascends to the rank of Colonel and who serves in Ireland under John Churchill.
Bob was one of Eliza's lovers. It is not clear whether he fathered any of her children. Eliza's motive for taking Bob as a lover is unclear - she claimed that she seduced him to teach him a lesson about the ephemeral nature of love, but his resemblance to his brother Jack, who proved to be Eliza's lifelong romance but who could not personally perform the act of coitus with her, may well have played into her decision. It is also unclear whether Bob or Jack is the ancestor of the Shaftoe family in Cryptonomicon, although the closing scene of Jack's sons in America suggests that it is Jack's branch of the family, not Bob's, that is featured in the novel set in the twentieth century.
During the invasion of the Duke of Monmouth, prior to William of Orange's Glorious Revolution, Bob falls in love with Abigail Frome, one of the Taunton Schoolgirls, who was subsequently enslaved on the order of George Jeffreys. He then made an alliance with then-political prisoner Daniel Waterhouse to work together to kill both Jeffreys and Waterhouse's old enemy, the Earl of Upnor. Their deal worked out - Daniel located Jeffreys and threw him to the mob during the Glorious Revolution, and Bob encountered and killed Upnor in Ireland. After Upnor's death Bob's love becomes the property of Monsieur Comte de Sheerness. During the spring of 1696 Bob and the King's own Black Torrent Guards are stationed near Namur, Belgium where the current war with France has ground to a halt. After Bob is made aware that his Abigail is being held on an estate a mere thirty miles from the town a plan is formulated to steal her away. Bob and the Black Torrent Guards make their way there as part of one of Captain Barnes's many "training exercises", The manor is surrounded and Bob marries Abigail in an incredibly brief service and they immediately make their escape to the west.
Name Reference[]
The name Bob Shaftoe is a reference to an English nursery rhyme.
Bobby Shafto's gone to sea, silver buckles on his knee, He'll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shafto Bobby Shafto's tall and slim, he's always dressed so neat and trim The lasses they aal keek at him! Bonny Bobby Shafto Bobby Shafto's gone to sea, silver buckles on his knee He'll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shafto
Bobby Shafto's gettin' a bairn, for to dangle in his airm In his airm and on his knee, Bonny Bobby Shafto Bobby Shafto's gone to sea, silver buckles on his knee, He'll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shafto Bobby Shafto's been to sea, Silver Buckles on his knee; He's come home and married me, Bonny Bobby Shafto!
Bobby Shafto was in fact a County Durham Member of Parliament, who was elected in 1761, when the song was used as an election jingle. A sweetheart of Bobby Shafto, to whom the ballad is often attributed is believed to have lived at Brancepeth Castle across the River Wear, three miles north of Whitworth, near the outskirts of Durham City.
Peter Railton in his philosophical work, Moral Realism, references a fictional Bobby Shafto in describing "instrumental rationality". John Rawls tackles the subject as well, which explores the boundary between common or moral sense and logic.