SHIRLEY. This ancient family trace, without hiatzts, to Sasuualo, or Sewallis, whose name, says Dugdale, " argues him to be of the old English stock," and who is mentioned in Domesday as mesne lord of Eatington, co. Warwick, under Henry de Ferrers. This, the oldest knightly family of that county, resided at Eatington until the reign of Edward III., though in the meantime, in the twelfth century, they adopted their surname from their manor of Shirley in Derbyshire. Eatington has never been alienated, and it is, at this day, one of the residences of the existing representative of the family, Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq., M.P. See Stemmata Shirleiana, 1841 ; and Shirley's Noble and Gentle Men.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.