Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers, Date of Birth, Date of Death
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British peer
Date of Birth: 
About Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers
- Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers (22 June 1677 – 14 April 1729), styled Hon.
- Washington Shirley until 1714 and Viscount Tamworth from 1714 to 1717, was a British nobleman and soldier. The second but first surviving son of Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers (by his first wife, Elizabeth Washington), he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1693.
- In 1697, he was commissioned an ensign in the Coldstream Guards.
- He left the regiment at some time after 1702.
- From 1713 until 1715, he sat for Fore in Ireland, apparently on his wife's interest.
- Upon the death of his nephew Robert Shirley, Viscount Tamworth in 1714, he adopted that title as heir apparent to his father.
- He succeeded to the earldom in 1717, but the estates were much diminished by his stepmother's jointure and bequests to his brothers and half-brothers. He had married Mary Levinge (d.
- January 1740), daughter of Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Baronet, around 1704.
- They had three daughters: Lady Elizabeth Shirley (1704 – 17 August 1734), married Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale and had issue.
- A remarkable monument to the couple exists in Westminster Abbey. Lady Selina Shirley (1707–1791), married Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon Lady Mary Shirley (25 September 1712 – 12 August 1784), married Thomas Needham, 9th Viscount Kilmorey, without issueAppointed Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Staffordshire in 1725, he died in 1729.
- The earldom, for lack of male issue, passed to his brother Henry, a lunatic.
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