Robert Shirley (27 May 1700 – 12 July 1738) was a British Tory politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

from 1727 to 1734. The eleventh son of

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, 14th Baron Ferrers of Chartley, from 1677 to 1711—was an English peer and courtier. ...

(and eldest by his second wife, Selina Finch), Robert inherited the estate of

Ettington Ettington is a village and civil parish about south-east of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,171. The present village is on the A422 main road linking Stratford and Banbury. ...

and an equal share, with his three full brothers, in the family's lands in Ireland (the Shirleys held the western moiety of the Barony of Farney) when his father died in 1717. At the 1727 election, Shirley was returned as Member of Parliament for Stamford on the

Earl of Exeter Marquess of Exeter is a title that has been created twice, once in the peerage of England and once in the peerage of the United Kingdom. The first creation came in the peerage of England in 1525 for Henry Courtenay, 2nd Earl of Devon. For more ...

's interest. A Tory, he resolutely opposed

Robert Walpole Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (; 26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prim ...

's ministry, but did not stand again in 1734. He died in 1738, leaving Ettington to his next brother, George.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shirley, Robert 1700 births 1738 deaths British MPs 1727–1734 Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies Younger sons of earls Place of birth missing