Sir Henry Shirley, 2nd Baronet

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Sir Henry Shirley, 2nd Baronet (1589–1633), was a landowner and local politician in Leicestershire. He was born in January 1589 in Somerton, Oxfordshire, as the eldest son of Sir George Shirley. His brother Thomas said he studied at Oxford, but there is no record of it. He travelled abroad and then joined the court of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. In May 1615 he married Lady Dorothy Devereux, daughter of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.

After his father’s death, Henry went into local politics as a supporter of the Duke of Buckingham. In 1624 he was made high sheriff of Leicestershire. In 1625 he read the proclamation of Charles I’s accession in Leicester’s market place. He opposed Leicestershire’s lord lieutenant, the Earl of Huntingdon. In 1627 a quarrel with a member of the Earl’s household led to his imprisonment and house arrest, ending with a public apology. He was later accused of adultery, and his wife had to defend her honour in the High Commission Court and seek maintenance.

He boasted that he had been promised a barony if he failed to win a parliamentary seat and the lieutenancy of Leicestershire. The Privy Council were lenient at first, but after it was widely reported that he said he cared for no lord in England but the Lord of Hosts, he was summoned before the House of Lords and sent to the Fleet Prison. Four days later he apologized and the Lords ordered the apologies to be published at the next Leicester assizes. Henry Shirley died in February 1633 and was buried in the Shirley family chapel at Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire. His brother says he died a Catholic. In 1635 his widow married William Stafford of Blatherwycke in a Roman Catholic ceremony at the Queen’s chapel, Somerset House.