Peter Champion, a merchant, was a member of a family long resident in the parish of St Columb in Cornwall.
He matriculated at St Mary Hall, Oxford in February 1742, where his tutor was Walter Harte.
After two years he left without taking his degree, and entered as a student at the Middle Temple.
In the House of Commons he sat, like Edward Gibbon, who also represented the latter constituency, a mute observer of the scene, and although he dabbled in poetry, his writings remained unpublished until after his death.
In 1801 Lord Lyttelton published Miscellanies in verse and prose, English and Latin, by the late Anthony Champion.