His father was a physician or apothecary at Bath and thus made many connections with titled families and built up a considerable fortune.
[1] Skrine was a close friend of Horace Walpole, and was returned on the Orford interest as Member of Parliament for Callington, after a contest at a by-election on 22 November 1771.
He lost very heavily on 8 March 1783, and shot himself in the head at a tavern in Newgate Street.
His daughter Louisa Skrine, who may have been an illegitimate child of Jane Sumner and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich,[4] married Sir Thomas Clarges, 3rd Baronet in 1777.
His other daughter Elizabeth Ann Skrine married Charles Loraine Smith in 1781.