His father, a Member of Parliament for Rutland, succeeded to the earldom of his cousin, Bennet Sherard, 1st Earl of Harborough, in 1732.

[3] As a younger son of an earl, he was part of a large group that entered the Church of England, in substantial numbers, where they were "rewarded by generous preferment which made them financially independent of their elder brothers.

[3] On 23 February 1770, upon the death of his older brother, who had married four times but was without surviving male heir, he inherited the earldom of Harborough and the family residence, Stapleford Park.

With the assistance of his steward, William Reeve, who was also his father-in-law and friend, Lord Harborough consolidated all the Sherard landholdings, including estates in Leicestershire, Rutland, and South Kesteven, before his death.

[3][4] As a member of the House of Lords for 29 years during the late Georgian period, there is no record of the Earl participating in debates and he was only in his place on 24 occasions.

Lord Harborough died on 21 April 1799 and was succeeded in the earldom by his son, Philip.

[6] Through his daughter Lady Lucy, he was a grandfather of Philip Pusey (1799–1855) (who married Lady Emily Herbert, daughter of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon), Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), an English churchman, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford,[7] and Charlotte Pusey (wife of Richard Lynch Cotton).