SHIRLEY, Evelyn Philip (1812-1882), of Eatington Park, Warwickshire; Lough Fea, co. Monaghan

Like his father, Evelyn John Shirley (1788-1856), who sat for county Monaghan, 1826-31 and South Warwickshire 1836-49, Shirley was a firm Conservative and Protestant whose parliamentary activity was largely confined to the division lobby. The Shirleys were a junior branch descended from the 1st earl Ferrers, and in addition to their ancient Warwickshire seat of Eatington Park, owned over 26,000 acres in county Monaghan in Ireland, which they had inherited from the Devereaux family, earls of Essex in the mid-seventeenth century.1‘Shirley, Evelyn John’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 94-6 (at 94); J. Bateman, Great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (1971), 408; Burke’s landed gentry (1886), ii. 1662-3.

The family’s extensive landholdings made Shirley’s return for county Monaghan a ‘certainty’ at the 1841 general election, when he met no opposition.2The Times, 10 June 1841, 17 June 1841, 10 July 1841. Shirley described himself as a ‘Tory’ to Charles Dod, and silently supported agricultural protection whilst opposing political reforms.3Dod MS, iii, f. 989. Shirley voted with his father in favour of the 1843 Irish arms bill, and against motions to redress Irish grievances as well as investigations into the state of that country and its established church, 12 July 1843, 23 Feb. 1844, 12 June 1844. His staunch Anglicanism was further reflected in his hostility to the 1844 dissenters’ chapels bill, the 1845 Maynooth college bill and further Catholic relief in 1847.

A combustible combination of demographic pressure, long-standing mismanagement, high rents and his father’s hard-line with tenants and general habit of ‘making a profit on every trifling transaction’, resulted in widespread unrest on the family’s Monaghan estate in 1843.4W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish life (4th edn., 1869), 63-96; P. Duffy, ‘Assisted emigration from the Shirley estate, 1843-54’, Clogher Record, 14 (1992), 7-62 (at 13-15); idem, ‘Management problems on a large estate in mid-nineteenth century Ireland: William Steuart Trench’s report on the Shirley estate in 1843’, Clogher Record, 16 (1997), 101-122 (qu. at 105); K.T. Hoppen, Elections, politics, and society in Ireland, 1832-1885 (1984), 111; The Times, 10, 18, 19, 25 Apr. 1843, 10 June 1843. This perhaps contributed to Shirley’s retirement at the 1847 general election following a challenge from a Liberal.5The Times, 27 June 1847; Morn. Chro., 10, 13, 19 June 1847.

Shirley’s second stint in Parliament, after his unopposed return for South Warwickshire at a by-election in December 1853, followed much the same pattern as before. He supported the maintenance of church rates and Anglican oaths and tests at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Spooner’s attempts to end the endowment of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth. He maintained his silence in debate and voted in under a fifth of divisions in 1856.6In 1856 Shirley voted in 37/198 divisions: J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck (1857), 21. Although local Liberals were too weak to challenge Shirley and his Conservative colleague, they complained loudly of their representatives’ inactivity and said that ‘as politicians neither of them can claim any higher place than that of the merest units in the rank and file of undistinguished Toryism’.7Birmingham Daily Post, 26 Apr. 1865. Shirley’s claim in 1857 that, although a Conservative, he had ’endeavoured to give an independent support to the present government’ led by Palmerston, does not seem to tally with his votes.8The Times, 2 Apr. 1857. He backed Disraeli’s critical motion on the prosecution of the Crimean War, 25 May 1855, and Cobden’s Canton motion, 3 Mar. 1857. Shirley told constituents at the 1857 general election, at which he was returned unopposed, that he had opposed Palmerston on the latter issue as he believed that the government’s China policy was ’morally wrong’ and therefore could not be ’politically right’. He defended his vote on Maynooth as stemming not from anti-Catholic principles but merely a belief that the seminary was an inefficient way of training priests.9Ibid. Shirley repeatedly cast votes against political reforms, except as in 1859, when they were proposed by his own party.

Shirley, who had succeeded his father in 1856, retired at the 1865 general election wishing to spend more time on this Irish estate.10Leicester Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1865. Despite his strong Protestantism, Shirley did not, unlike his Evangelical father, attempt to convert his Catholic tenants.11Hoppen, Elections, politics, and society, 123. A regular contributor to Notes and Queries 1849, Shirley continued his antiquarian pursuits, his publications included histories of his family, county Monaghan (which was soon criticised by nationalists) and deer parks.12F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1901), iii. 555; E.P. Shirley, Stemmata Shirleiana; or the annals of the Shirley family (1841; 2nd edn., 1873); idem, Lough Fea (1859); idem, The noble and gentle men of England (1860); idem, Some account of English deer parks (1867); idem, The history of the county of Monaghan (1879); cf. D.C. Rushe, Historical sketches of Monaghan; from the earliest record to the Fenian movement (1895), 1-2. His Tory romanticism found expressoin in his remodelling of his Warwickshire seat (renamed Ettington in line with earlier custom) in a Gothic style, 1858-65.13G. Tyack, ‘Ettington Park’, Warwickshire History, 1:4 (1970), 3-21; idem, Warwickshire country houses (1994), 81-7. Shirley was apparently used by Disraeli as the model for Mr. Ardenne in Lothair, who was described as ’a refined country gentlemen … He had an ancient pedigree, and knew everybody else’s’.14B. Disraeli, Lothair (1870), 176; F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1901), iii. 555. On Shirley’s death in 1882 he was succeeded by his only son Sewallis Evelyn (1844-1904), Conservative MP for County Monaghan 1868-80.15Burke’s landed gentry (1907), 1519-20; M. Stenton, Who’s who of British MPs (1976), i. 350.