Page "Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers" Paragraph 5

The Ferrers ' estates were then vested in trustees ; Ferrers secured the appointment of an old family steward named Johnson, as receiver of rents.

This man faithfully performed his duty as a servant to the trustees, and did not prove amenable to Ferrers ' personal wishes.

On 18 January 1760, Johnson called at the earl's mansion at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, by appointment, and was directed to his lordship's study.

Here, after some business conversation, Lord Ferrers shot and killed him.

In the following April Ferrers was tried for murder by his peers in Westminster Hall, Attorney General Charles Pratt leading for the prosecution.

Shirley's defence, which he conducted in person with great ability, was a plea of insanity, and it was supported by considerable evidence, but he was found guilty.

According to Horace Walpole, " Lord Ferrers was not mad enough to be struck with Lady Huntingdon's sermons.

The Methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion, though Whitefield prayed for him.

" Ferrers subsequently said that he had only pleaded insanity to oblige his family, and that he had himself always been ashamed of such a defence.