Styles of Walter Shirley |
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Reference style | The Right Reverend |
Spoken style | My Lord |
Religious style | Bishop |
Walter Augustus Shirley (1797–1847) was an English bishop who was the Bishop of Sodor and Man.
He was born on 30 May 1797 in Westport, Ireland, where his father held a curacy, the only son of Walter Shirley, by his wife Alicia, daughter of Sir Edward Newenham. His grandfather was Walter Shirley. At the age of nine, Shirley was placed under the care of the Rev. Legh Richmond but was soon moved to a school at Linton in Essex. He became a scholar of Winchester College in 1809, and six years later was elected to a scholarship at New College, Oxford, where he became a Fellow in 1818.
After his ordination on 7 August 1820, he took charge of the parish of Woodford, Northamptonshire, one of the livings held by his father. In 1821 he became curate of Parwich in Derbyshire. In 1822 he was appointed assistant lecturer of Ashbourne and curate of Atlow and was awarded the prize for the English essay at Oxford, the subject being the Study of Moral Evidence.
He acted as chaplain at Rome in the winter of 1826–7, and during his residence there he became intimately acquainted with Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen and Thomas Erskine, as well as with Charles Lock Eastlake and David Wilkie. In the autumn of 1827 he was married at Paris to Maria, daughter of William Waddington, and at the same time, his father resigned the living of St Michael's Church, Shirley in his favour. He took possession of his new home in January 1828. After nine years' residence at Shirley, he accepted the living of Whiston, near Rotherham, which he held jointly with Shirley. He gave up the former cure two years later when he was appointed to the incumbency of Brailsford, a parish adjoining that of Shirley. In 1829 he alienated some of his friends by his outspoken advocacy of Catholic emancipation; in later years he estranged others by refusing to support measures against the Tractarians. His own upbringing and views were evangelical.