Catalogue description THE SHIRLEY INHERITANCE

The Shirleys profited from a series of marriages in the 14th and 15th centuries. They failed, however, to make the most of the one which was potentially the most profitable of all: the attempt of Ralph Lord Basset (d.s.p. 1390), to settle most of his lands on Hugh Shirley, the son of Ralph's half-sister Isabel [GEC ii. 4. As Ralph's half-sister, whether or not she was a bastard, Isabel was not his heir.] who had married Sir Thomas Shirley (d. 1361), was successfully challenged by Ralph's heirs. Hugh, who was killed at Shrewsbury in 1403, married Beatrice, sister and heir of John Breouse (d. 1423); their son and heir Ralph, born in 1390, married Joan, daughter and heir of Henry de Braylesford of Brailesford (Derb.), and died c. 1443; and their son and heir Ralph (II) married Margaret, sister and heir of Thomas Staunton (d. 1422-3) of Staunton Harold and a coheir of the Meynells of Meynell Langley, Willington and Bradley (Derb.) and Newton Regis (Warws.). [Ralph de Meynell (d. 1389) left four daughters as coheirs: CIPM xvi, no. 715. The eldest daughter, Joan, married of John de Staunton and was mother of Thomas and Margaret: Nichols, Leics. iii (2), 704, 709. VCH Warws. iv. 161, appears to be wrong in giving the second daughter, Elizabeth [wife of William Crawshaw, as Margaret's mother.] Ralph (II) married secondly Elizabeth, sister of Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, and he died in 1466 leaving a son and heir John Shirley (d. 1486). [John held at his death the manors of Shirley, Brailesford and Hoon (Derb.), Staunton Harold, Ratcliffe-on-the-Wreake, and Long Whatton, with holdings in Burton Overy and Dunton Bassett (Leics.) and a third of the manor of Newton Regis (Warws.): CIP Hen. VII, i, nos. 89-91.] The line continued through Sir Ralph (d. 1517) and Francis (d. 1571) to John (II) Shirley. That John married Jane, daughter and heir of Thomas Lovet of Astwell and heir also of the Drayton, Cranford and Prayers families, but he died in 1570 before his father. George, son of John and Jane, succeeded his paternal grandfather Francis Shirley in 1571 and his maternal grandfather Thomas Lovet in 1587, the year in which he married Frances, daughter of Henry Lord Berkeley; he was created baronet in 1611. [Nichols, Leics. iii (2), 703-4, 708-712; Lysons, Magna Britannia, v, p. xc.]