He was born in 1759 in a village called Walkeringham in the Nottinghamshire county of England.
In 1795, he chaired several meetings in London aimed at petitioning the crown and parliament to make peace with France.
In 1806, he attacked Edmund Burke in a pamphlet entitled Remarks on Mr. Burke's Two Letters "on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France," censuring him for applying the term 'regicide' to the French Directory.
[citation needed] In 1800, he was brought to trial for forestalling hops, having purchased a large number of hop-grounds to control the price of their production.
He was found guilty, fined £500, and sentenced to one month's imprisonment.