Shebbeare was educated at the free school, Exeter, under Zachariah Mudge, and there, it is said, "gave evidence of his future eminence in misanthropy and literature."

Having, however, lampooned both his master and the members of the Exeter corporation, he in 1736 removed to Bristol, where in 1750 he was listed in land tax records as being at 10, Guinea Street, a house which is extant.

Settling in London, he began his career as a political writer in 1754, with The Marriage Act, a novel, dedicated to John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, one of the chief opponents of Lord Hardwicke's reform.

Shebbeare followed up his success in 1756 by an attack on the Duke of Newcastle in the form of Letters on the English Nation, by Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit resident in London, of which he professed to be the translator only.

This political satire, modelled on Bolingbroke's writings against Robert Walpole, alone entitled Shebbeare (in the opinion of Boswell) to a respectable name in literature.

Meanwhile, he attacked the ministry directly in the Monitor and the Con-test, as well as in a series of outspoken pamphlets entitled Letters to the People of England, having, it was said, determined to write himself into a post or into the pillory.

[2] At the close of 1757, after Pitt's dismissal, Shebbeare issued his sixth letter, "in which is shown that the present grandeur of France and calamities of this nation are owing to the influence of Hanover on the councils of England."

[1][3] Owing to the friendship of Arthur Beardmore, the under-sheriff, he was allowed to stand upright between the upper and lower boards of the pillory, while an Irish chairman held an umbrella over his head.

His most elaborately written work was The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Institutions, Religion, Laws, Manners, and Genius of the Sumatrans, and of the Restoration thereof in the reign of Amurath the Third, 2 vols.

On 3 Aug. 1764 Walpole sent Lord Hertford a pamphlet written by Shebbeare under Grenville's direction, adding the remark, "We do not ransack Newgate and the pillory for writers."

He speaks of him as engaged with Carteret Webbe, solicitor to the treasury, in writing against Pratt, the lord chief justice, in a paper called The Moderator.

[6] In 1766 Shebbeare offered to John Beard, the manager of Covent Garden, a play he had written in early life, and its non-production led to the publication of the correspondence between them (1767).

The former he "abused daily in the papers,"[7] In 1774, in reflecting on some speeches lately delivered by Thomas Townshend (afterwards Lord Sydney) and Councillor Lee, he took occasion to cast aspersions on the character and reputation of William III, Algernon Sidney, and other Whig heroes, as viewed in the light of the recently published Memorials of Sir John Dalrymple.

His sudden transition from pillory to pension was glanced at in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, and he is the "Ferret" of Tobias Smollett's Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves.

[13] William Hogarth, also one of George III's pensioners, introduced Shebbeare as one of the figures in The Polling, the third work of his four-part Humours of an Election series (he is seen, a shackle on his leg, whispering into the ear of a mad man; in the later print version, he has a copy of the Sixth Letter in his pocket.[1]).

Walpole admitted that his pen was "not without force," and Boswell, who was introduced to him by General James Oglethorpe, thought "his knowledge and abilities much above the class of ordinary writers."