He was the likely subject of a famous North East English folk song and nursery rhyme, "Bobby Shafto's Gone to Sea" (Roud #1359).
[3] He continued this tradition, becoming one of the two members for County Durham in 1760, using his nickname "Bonny Bobby Shafto" and the now famous song for electioneering purposes, defeating the Whig Sir Thomas Clavering, with a campaign supported by Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who was the prime minister, Henry Vane, first earl of Darlington, and the bishop of Durham.
[2] However, once in parliament he dropped this allegiance, supporting the administrations of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute and Pitt the elder.
[4] His wife, Anne, had inherited property in the rotten borough of Downton in Wiltshire and he became one of its two members in 1780.
[8] It is likely that his grandson, Robert Duncombe Shafto, also used the song for electioneering in 1861, with several of the later verses being added around this time.