He was the eldest son of John Smith, cheesemonger, of Jermyn Street, St. James’s, in what is now central London.

[3] In 1774 he went into politics and was briefly elected to Parliament as the member for Hindon, Wiltshire, by spending 15 guineas per vote.

He and his fellow candidate, Thomas Brand Hollis, were prosecuted, fined one thousand marks, and imprisoned for six months.

He was satirically attacked by a Captain Joseph Price and a portrait of him appeared opposite that of Elizabeth Armistead (one of the favourite courtesans, and eventually the wife, of Charles James Fox) in Town and Country Magazine.

His Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry says only that the couple had a son and a daughter, without naming them.