Lady Huntingdon

Huntingdon, Lady (1707-91). Foundress of the countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, Selina Shirley, daughter of the 2nd Earl Ferrers, married the 9th earl of Huntingdon (d. 1746) in 1728. Despite her aristocratic background, her fortune was slender and her marriage a love match. She was converted by her sister-in-law, Lady Margaret Hastings, and joined the methodist society in Fetter Lane in 1739. Coming to know the Wesleys, the Welsh evangelist Howell Harris, and George Whitefield, she built a number of chapels in such places as Brighton (1761), Bath (1765), Tunbridge Wells (1769), Worcester (1773), and Spa Fields, London (1779), served by ministers trained after 1768 at the college which she instituted at Trevecca, near Talgarth. Many of her sixty chapels, like her college, long survived her.