HUNTINGDON, SELINA HASTINGS, COUNTESS OF English religious leader and founder of a sect of Calvinistic Methodists, known as the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection, was the daughter of Washington Shirley, 2nd Earl Ferrers. She was born at Stanton Harold, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, on Aug. 24, 1707, and in 1727 married Theophilus Hastings, 9th earl of Huntingdon. In 1739 she joined the first Methodist society in Fetter Lane, London. On the death of her husband in 1746 she threw in her lot with Wesley and Whitefield in the work of the great revival. Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge and A. M. Toplady were among her friends. In 1748 she gave Whitefield a scarf as her chaplain, and he frequently preached in her London house in Park Street to audiences that included Ches terfield, Walpole and Bolingbroke. In her chapel at Bath there was a curtained recess dubbed "Nicodemus's corner," where some of the bishops sat incognito to hear him. Lady Huntingdon spent her ample 'means in building chapels in different parts of England, e.g., at Brighton London and Bath (1765), Tunbridge Wells (1769), and appointed ministers to officiate in them, under the impression that as a peeress she had a right to employ as many chaplains as she pleased. In 1768 she converted the old mansion of Trevecca, near Talgarth, in South Wales, into a theological seminary for young ministers for the connection.
Up to 1779 Lady Huntingdon and her chaplains continued members of the Church of England, but in that year the prohibi tion of her chaplains by the consistorial court from preaching in the Pantheon, a large building in London rented for the purpose by the countess, compelled her, in order to evade the injunction, to take shelter under the Toleration Act. This step placed her legally among dissenters. Till her death in London on June 17, 1791, Lady Huntingdon continued to exercise an active, and even autocratic, superintendence over her chapels and chaplains. She successfully petitioned George III. in regard to the gaiety of Archbishop Cornwallis's establishment, and made a vigorous pro test against the anti-Calvinistic minutes of the Wesleyan Con ference of 1770, and against relaxing the terms of subscription in 1772. Her 64 chapels and the college were bequeathed to four trustees. In 1792 the college was removed to Cheshunt, Hertford shire, where it remained till 5905, when it was transferred to Cambridge.