Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers

[1] Shirley was suggested as a candidate for Lichfield in 1677 by Thomas Thynne,[2] 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.

[1] 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.

In September 1687, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire,[1] 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).

[1] 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.

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.