Knightly.
Shirley of Eatington (elder branch of Staunton-Harold, in the County of Leicester, Earl Ferrers 1711, Baron Ferrers of Chartley 1677, Baronet 1611.)
Sasuualo, or Sewallis, whose name, says Dugdale, "argues him to be of the old English stock," mentioned in Domesday as mesne Lord of Eatington, under Henry de Ferrers, is the first recorded ancestor of this, the oldest knightly family in the county of Warwick. Until the reign of Edward III., Eatington appears to have continued the principal seat of the Shirleys, whose name was assumed in the twelfth century from the manor of Shirley, in Derbyshire, and which, with Ratcliffe-on-Sore, in the county of Nottingham, and Rakedale and Staunton-Harold, in Leicestershire, derived from the heiresses of Basset and Staunton, succeeded, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the usual residence of the chiefs of the house. In the sixteenth century, Astwell, in Northamptonshire, was brought into the family by the heiress of Lovett; and in 1615, by the marriage of Sir Henry Shirley with the coheiress of Devereux, a moiety of the possessions of the Earls of Essex, after the extinction of that title in 1646, centred in Sir Robert Shirley, father of the first Earl Ferrers; on whose death, in 1717, the family estates were divided, the Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Staffordshire estates descending with the earldom to the issue of his first marriage, and the Warwickshire property, the original seat of the Shirleys, eventually to the great-grandfather of the present possessor, the eldest surviving son of the second marriage of the first Earl Ferrers.
Elder Branches.* Shirley of Staunton-Harold, in the county of Leicester, represented by Sewallis Edward, tenth Earl Ferrers 1711; and Shirley of Shirley, in the county of Derby, represented by the Rev. Walter Waddington Shirley, Canon of Christ Church, D.D. only son of the late Bishop of Sodor and Man, and great-grandson of Walter, younger brother of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Earls Ferrers.
Younger Branches (extinct). Shirley, of Wiston, Preston, West-Grinstead, and Ote-Hall, all in Sussex, and all descended from the second marriage of Ralph Shirley, Esq., and Elizabeth Blount; which Ralph died in 1466. All these families are presumed to be extinct on the death of Sir William Warden Shirley, Baronet, in 1815.
See Dugdale's Warwickshire, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 621; Nichols's History of Leicestershire, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 704-727; Stemmata Shirleiana, pr. pr. 4to. 1841; and Brydges's Collins, vol. iv. p. 85.
Arms.—Paly of six, or and azure, a quarter ermine. The more ancient coat was, Paly of six, or and sable, as appears by the seal of "Sir Sewallis de Ethindon, Knight," with the legend, "Sum scutum de auro et nigro senis ductibus palatum," engraved in Dugdale's Warwickshire, and in Upton de Studio Militari. Indeed Sir Ralph Shirley bore it as late as the reign of Edward II; see Nicolas's Roll of that date, p. 73. Sir Hugh de Shirley bore the present coat (Roll of Richard II.): so did his father Sir Thomas, and his great-grandfather Sir James, as appears by their several seals engraved in Upton, &c.
Present Representative, Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq., late M. P. for South Warwickshire.