[4] In 1735, Whitehead married Anna, only daughter of Sir Swinnerton Dyer, bart., of Spains Hall, Essex, by which time either he had managed to leave the Fleet, or his marriage provided him with the means to do so.

[6] Whether or not the action of the Lords had been intended as a warning to Pope, whose two "Dialogues", 1738 (Epilogue to the Satires), had done their utmost to make the existing political tension unbearable, it at least sufficed to muzzle Whitehead for the moment.

[7] His next publication, "The Gymnasiad" (1744), is a harmless mock heroic in three short books or cantos, with "Prolegomena" by Scriblerus Tertius, and "Notes Variorum", in ridicule of the pugilistic fancy of the day, and dedicated to John Broughton, one of the most celebrated Sons of Hockley and fierce Brickstreet breed.

When Alexander Murray, a supporter of the opposition candidate, was sent to Newgate Prison and detained there for a considerable period on the charge of having headed a riot, Whitehead composed a pamphlet on his case, which appealed to the indignation of the people of Great Britain as well as of the electors of Westminster.

His political intimacy with Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer and other politicians, and his literary talents, made him an acceptable member of the dissipated circle calling themselves the "monks of Medmenham Abbey", and he was appointed secretary and steward of the Hellfire Club.

[9] Whitehead had, however, at the time, been rewarded for his services by being appointed, through Sir Francis Dashwood, probably during his chancellorship of the exchequer in Lord Bute's ministry (1762–3), to a Deputy Treasurership of the Chamber, as one of his biographers calls it, worth £800 a year.

[10] In his Epistle to Dr. Thompson he describes, quite in Pope's Horatian vein, the modest comforts of his retirement, and he appears to have been popular both in the country, where he was known for his kindliness, and in London society, where among his friends were Hogarth and Hayman, and the actor and dramatist William Havard.

[13][14] A collection of his Poems and Miscellaneous Compositions, with a life by Captain Edward Thompson, which is dedicated to Lord Le Despenser, and written in a strain of turgid and senseless flattery, appeared at London in 1777 (4to).