Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale
Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale( 1695 – 1752), of Enfield, Middlesex, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1727 to 1734 Nightingale was baptized as Gascoigne on 19 December 1695, the eldest son of Rev. Joseph Gascoigne, vicar of Enfield, and his wife Anne Theobald, daughter of Francis Theobald of Barking, Suffolk and his wife Anne Nightingale.
He was educated at Enfield under Dr Uvedale and was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge on 1 July 1712.
In 1721 he succeeded his father and in 1722 he succeeded his younger brother Robert to the estates worth nearly £ 300,000 of Sir Robert Nightingale, 4th Baronet.
He thereupon assumed the additional name of Nightingale.
He married Lady Elizabeth Shirley, daughter of Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers, of Chartley, near Stafford on 24 June 1725.
Nightingale was returned as Member of Parliament for Stafford at the 1727 British general election.
He voted with the Opposition in every recorded division, He did not stand again at the 1734 British general election.
Nightingale ’s wife Elizabeth died on 17 August 1731 following the premature birth of her daughter Elizabeth as a result of the shock caused by a violent flash of lightning.
They had three sons, Washington, Joseph and Robert.
Nightingale moved to Mamhead house in Devon for respite and recovery.
He died on 16 July 1752.
Of the sons, only Washington survived him by only two years.
His daughter Elizabeth also survived him and married Wilmot Vaughan, 1st Earl of Lisburne but died, also in childbirth, in 1755.
They are commemorated by a spectacular monument in Westminster Abbey by the sculptor Louis Francois Roubiliac.
It depicts a skeletal Death emerging from his prison to aim a fatal dart at the dying figure of Elizabeth Nightingale.
Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers
Vice Admiral Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers, FRS( 26 May 1722 – 1 October 1778) was a British Royal Navy officer, peer, freemason and amateur astronomer.
Robert Shirley, 6th Earl Ferrers
Robert Shirley, 6th Earl Ferrers( 20 July 1723 – 18 April 1787) was a British nobleman.
He was born in 1723 in St James, Westminster, the third son of Hon. Laurence Shirley.
On 26 December 1754, he married Catherine Cotton( d. 26 March 1786), by whom he had three children:
In 1778, he succeeded his brother, Vice- Admiral the 5th Earl Ferrers, in the earldom.
On 4 July 1781, he was created a deputy lieutenant of Derbyshire.
He died in his house in London in 1787 aged 63, and was buried with his wife at Breedon on the Hill.
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:
Appointed 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.
Robert Shirley, 12th Earl Ferrers
Robert Walter Shirley, 12th Earl Ferrers (7 July 1894 – 11 October 1954), was a British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords.
Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon
Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon (12 November 1696 – 13 October 1746) was the son of Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon and Mary Frances Fowler.
Hastings married Lady Selina Shirley, daughter of Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers and Mary Levinge, on 3 June 1728.
The couple lived at Donington Park.
He fathered seven legitimate children including Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon 13 March 1729 – 2 October 1789) and Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira (1731–1808).
He had an illegitimate son, Sir George Hastings (1733–1783).
There is a monument to him in St Helen's Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Robert Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers
Robert Washington Shirley, 13th
Earl Ferrers PC DL( 8 June 1929 – 13 November 2012), styled Viscount Tamworth between 1937 and 1954, was a British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords as one of the remaining hereditary peers.
He was one of the few people to serve in the governments of five different Prime Ministers.
Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers
Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers PC (20 October 1650 – 25 December 1717)—known as Sir Robert Shirley, 7th Baronet, from 1669 to 1677 and Robert Shirley, 13th Baron Ferrers of Chartley, from 1677 to 1711—was an English peer and courtier.
Shirley was born at East Sheen, the third son of Sir Robert Shirley, 4th Baronet and his wife Catherine Okeover.
He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford.
In March 1669, he inherited his baronetcy from his infant nephew, and received an M.A. from Oxford in 1669.
Shirley was suggested as a candidate for Lichfield in 1677 by Thomas Thynne, husband of his second cousin Frances, but he preferred to accept a seat in the House of Lords, the barony of Ferrers of Chartley being called out of abeyance for him in December.
He was also appointed a deputy lieutenant of Staffordshire shortly thereafter.
In 1683, he was appointed high steward of Stafford, replacing the Duke of Monmouth.
On 18 February 1684, Lord Ferrers was appointed Master of the Horse to the Queen Consort, Catherine of Braganza.
After Charles II's death in 1685, he became the Dowager Queen's Lord Steward and "Chief Bailiff of the Revenues", in which post he served until her death in 1705.
Among the Queen's property was the honour of Higham Ferrers, part of the Duchy of Lancaster, which had been granted to her for life by Charles II with reversion to the Earl of Feversham, her Lord Chamberlain.
Since Feversham avoided open politics after the Glorious Revolution in 1689, the offices of the honour were in Ferrers' gift.
This allowed him to choose the Member of Parliament for Higham Ferrers until 1703, when Thomas Watson-Wentworth, whose brother had married Feversham's sister-in-law, purchased from him the reversion of the honour of Higham Ferrers and took over the electoral interest.
At the coronation of King James II in April, Ferrers was assistant lord cupbearer.
He was also the first colonel of The Princess Anne of Denmark's Regiment of Foot, raised in the summer of 1685, during the Monmouth Rebellion, but was removed in favor of James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick on 1 November 1686.
In September 1687, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, replacing the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was unwilling to comply with James II's orders for purging the commission of the peace and packing Parliament with royalist candidates (to secure the repeal of the Test Act and the Penal Laws).
However, Ferrers proved no more tractable, and was replaced in November by Walter Aston, 3rd Lord Aston of Forfar.
He was also dismissed from the high stewardship of Stafford in February 1688.
In December 1688, after the outbreak of the Glorious Revolution, Ferrers, Lord Chesterfield, and a retinue of gentlemen attended Princess Anne in Nottingham and escorted her to Warwick.
Under William III and Mary II, Ferrers was re-appointed as high steward of Stafford.
In 1692, Ferrers and Thynne (the latter now Viscount Weymouth) decided to partition the Barony of Farney in County Monaghan, both possessing an equal moiety of it as coheirs of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex.
The barony was surveyed and divided into lands of equal value, Weymouth taking the eastern moiety and Ferrers the western.
However, the survey soon proved to be faulty, and Ferrers' share of lesser value.
Weymouth generously deeded a portion of his share to Ferrers to equalize them, a process completed in 1706.
Ferrers was admitted to the Privy Council on 25 May 1699.
He was retained in the Privy Council of Queen Anne, and was again assistant lord cupbearer at her coronation.
John Macky described him during her reign:
Is a very honest Man, a Lover of his Country, a great Improver of Gardening and Parking; a keen Sportsman, never was yet in Business, but is very capable; a tall, fair Man, towards sixty Years old.
After his second marriage to Selina Finch in 1699, he spent much of his time at a house he built in Twickenham, Heath Lane Lodge.
On 3 September 1711, Lord Ferrers was created Earl Ferrers and Viscount Tamworth.
On his death at Bath six years later, his earldom passed to his second (but eldest surviving)
son Washington, whilst his barony passed to his granddaughter, Elizabeth, her father and elder brother having died in 1698 and 1714, respectively.
Washington received the family's Northamptonshire estates in fee simple, while those in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Staffordshire were to some extent encumbered by annuities to his four younger half-brothers and a jointure to the Dowager Countess Selina.
She also received Heath Lane Lodge, which was then to go to her eldest son; he also inherited the Ettington Park estate near Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, and he and his three full brothers were jointly left the Earl's Irish lands in County Monaghan.
The estate of Garsdon in Wiltshire, inherited from the Washingtons, went to the Earl's third surviving son, Laurence.
Washington Shirley, 8th Earl Ferrers
Washington Shirley, 8th Earl Ferrers( 13 November 1760 – 2 October 1842), styled Hon. Washington Shirley from 1778 to 1827, was a British nobleman.
The third son of Robert Shirley, 6th Earl Ferrers, he was educated at Westminster School.
On 19 May 1780, he was appointed a cupbearer in the Royal Household, but this sinecure was abolished on 14 November 1782.
Shirley married Frances( d. 4 March 1812), daughter of Rev. William Ward and granddaughter of William Ward, on 24 July 1781 at Gretna Green.
They had one son and two daughters:
After the death of his first wife, Ferrers married Sarah Davy( d. 30 June 1835) on 28 September 1829.
They had no children.
As his nephew had predeceased him without legitimate issue, Washington succeeded his elder brother in the earldom in 1827.
On 13 July 1832, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Leicestershire.
He died at Chartley on 2 October 1842 aged 81 and was buried at Staunton Harold.
Sewallis Shirley, 10th Earl Ferrers
Sewallis Edward Shirley, 10th Earl Ferrers( 24 January 1847 – 26 July 1912), styled Viscount Tamworth until 1859, was a British peer.
He was the son of Washington Sewallis Shirley, 9th Earl Ferrers and Lady Augusta Annabella Chichester.
Ferrers was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a B.A. in 1867 and an M.A. in 1871.
He was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Derbyshire and, on 8 February 1869, of Staffordshire.
Ferrers was also commissioned a lieutenant in the Staffordshire Yeomanry cavalry on 8 February 1868.
He resigned his commission in 1871.
He was invested as a Knight, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem( K.St.J.) and was Justice of the Peace( J.P.) for Derbyshire.
On 24 October 1885, at St George's, Hanover Square, he married Lady Ina Maude Hedges- White, daughter of William Hedges- White, 3rd Earl of Bantry and Jane Herbert.
The 10th Earl Ferrers died at age 65; his marriage was childless.
He was succeeded by Walter Shirley, 11th Earl Ferrers.

Question: Where did Washington Shirley, 2Nd Earl Ferrers's father study?
Answer: Christ Church