John Shebbeare
Encyclopedia
John Shebbeare was a British tory
political satirist
.
of Bideford
, Devonshire. A hundred and a village in Devon
, where the family had owned land, bear their name. Shebbeare was educated at the free school, Exeter
, under Zachariah Mudge, and there, it is said, "gave evidence of his future eminence in misanthropy and literature." In his sixteenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards set up for himself. Having, however, lampooned both his master and the members of the Exeter corporation, he in 1736 removed to Bristol, where he later entered into partnership with a chemist. In 1740 he published A new Analysis of the Bristol Waters; together with the Cause of Diabetes and Hectic, and their Cure, as it results from those Waters, which was reissued in 1760.
In 1752 he went to Paris, where he claimed to have obtained a medical degree, and to have been elected member of the Academy of Sciences. But he found his pen more remunerative than his practice. Settling in London, he began his career as a political writer in 1754, with The Marriage Act, a novel, dedicated to John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford
,
one of the chief opponents of Lord Hardwicke
's
reform. The author was imprisoned for his reflections on the legislature, but his
book was reissued in 1755 as Matrimony, and reappeared in 1766. Shebbeare followed
up his success in 1756 by an attack on the Duke of Newcastle
in the form of
Letters on the English Nation, by Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit resident in London, of
which he professed to be the translator only. This political satire, modelled on Bolingbroke
's writings against Robert Walpole
, alone entitled
Shebbeare (in the opinion of Boswell
)
to a respectable name in literature. Meanwhile
he attacked the ministry directly in
the Monitor and the Con-test, as well as
in a series of outspoken pamphlets entitled
Letters to the People of England, having,
it was said, determined to write himself into a post or into the pillory.
At the close of 1757, after Pitt
's dismissal,
Shebbeare issued his sixth letter, "in which is shown that the present grandeur of France and calamities of this nation are owing to the influence of Hanover on the councils of
England." On 12 January 1758 a general warrant was issued against the author, printer,
and publisher. On 23 January all copies of a seventh Letter were seized and suppressed.
On 17 June Shebbeare was tried for libel on
an information laid against him by the attorney-general,
Pratt
, who on this occasion
admitted the right of the jury to judge of
the law. During the trial, as Walpole
laments, Mansfield
laid it down that satires
on dead kings were punishable. In summing
up he declared that the Letter nearly
approached high treason. On 28 Nov. Shebbeare
was sentenced to a fine and three
years' imprisonment, besides having to find
security for good behaviour for seven years.
He was also to stand in the pillory
at Charing Cross
on 5 Dec. Owing to the friendship
of Arthur Beardmore
, the under-sheriff, he was
allowed to stand upright between the upper
and lower boards of the pillory, while an
Irish chairman held an umbrella over his
head. At the end of an hour he retired
amidst the cheers of the crowd, who had been
invited by printed bills to come and see 'the
British champion.' Beardmore was afterwards
punished for his conduct. An anonymous squib appeared
under the title Memoirs of the Pillory; being a consolatory Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare. While in prison Shebbeare
received subscriptions for a history of England,
and actually composed one volume, which was not published. When attacked on the subject in a letter in the Public Advertiser of 10 Aug. 1774 he excused himself chiefly on the ground of debts incurred in consequence of a lawsuit against Francis Gwyn
, who had been concerned with him in the publication of an edition of Clarendon
's History of the Reign of Charles II. The book, for which Shebbeare wrote a strong tory introduction, was suppressed by an injunction in chancery at the instance of the Duchess of Queensberry, and, though Shebbeare recovered expenses from Gwyn, half the sum went in costs. Notwithstanding his position, he refused to avail himself of the Insolvent Act. On his release he advocated peace with France, and attacked John Wilkes
. On 29 Feb. 1764 a memorial signed by several members of parliament was presented to George Grenville
in his favour,and Shebbeare was granted a pension of £200 a year. The king, in reply to Sir John Philips, who made the application, is said to have spoken of Shebbeare "in very favourable terms." Almon's statement that a pension of £400 had been previously granted by Bute seems doubtful. Henceforth Shebbeare became a steady advocate of the measures of the court, and even assailed his old favourite, Pitt.
His most elaborately written work was The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Institutions, Religion, Laws, Manners, and Genius of the Sumatrans, and of the Restoration thereof in the reign of Amurath the Third, 2 vols. 1763. It is a skilful exposure of the weak points in whig policy and administration, followed by a panegyric on George III
and his ministers. In style it is a colourable imitation of Bolingbroke.
On 3 Aug. 1764 Walpole sent Lord Hertford
a pamphlet written by Shebbeare under Grenville's direction, adding the remark, "We do not ransack Newgate and the pillory for writers." He speaks of him as engaged with Carteret Webbe, solicitor to the treasury, in writing against Pratt
, the lord chief justice, in a paper called The Moderator. In 1766 Shebbeare offered to John Beard
, the manager of Covent Garden
, a play he had written in early life, and its non-production led to the publication of the correspondence between them (1767). In 1768 he wrote for three months the reviews of books in the Political Register. In 1770 Shebbenre published an Eighth Letter to the People of England. He defended the American policy of George III against Price
and Edmund Burke
in the Public Advertiser
and elsewhere. The
former he "abused daily in the papers,"
In 1774, in reflecting on some speeches
lately delivered by Thomas Townshend
(afterwards Lord Sydney) and Councillor Lee
, he took occasion to cast aspersions
on the character and reputation of William III
, Algernon Sidney, and other Whig
heroes, as viewed in the light of the recently
published Memorials of Sir John Dalrymple
. An answer appeared as
an appendix to a Letter to Dr. Johnson on his late Political Publications, 1775, by a
"Doctor of Laws" (Hugh Baillie). Despite a
protest made by Fox
in the House of Commons
on 16 Feb. 1774, the names of Johnson and Shebbeare
were usually coupled in whig pasquinade
s.
It was said that the king had pensioned
both a He-bear and a She-bear. In 1776 Wilkes
spoke of them as the "two famous doctors"
who were "the state hirelings called pensioners"
and whose names disgraced the civil
list." Mason the poet,
writing under the pseudonym "Malcolm Macgregor,"
in 1777 addressed a scathing epistle
to Shebbeare, as
Nor did Shebbeare's own political friends altogether
spare him. His sudden transition from pillory
to pension was glanced at in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, and he is the "Ferret" of Tobias Smollett
's '
Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. Shebbeare
seems to have shared Johnson's dislike
to Scotsmen. He criticised adversely Smollet's
History, and assailed the "Scotch
gentlemen criticks" of the Critical Review
,
then conducted by Smollett. In the revised edition
of the History, however, the passage relating to Shebbeare's prosecution in 1758 is
curiously laudatory. William Hogarth
, also
one of George III's pensioners, introduced
Shebbeare as one of the figures in the third
print of his Humours of an Election
series. Frances Burney met him in
1774 at the house of Catherine Reid, a
Scottish portrait-painter, and has recorded a
specimen of his conversation in her Early Diary. It was marked by extraordinary
coarseness, and consisted chiefly of abuse of
women and Scotsmen, whom he declared to
be "the two greatest evils upon earth." The
last production by Shebbeare was The Pole Cat, or C. Jennings, the Renegade Schoolmaster ... Detected, 1788, 8vo.
Shebbeare died on 1 Aug. 1788 in Eaton
Street, Pimlico.
of Gaston, Norfolk, he died rector of East Horndon, Essex, on 7 Feb. 1794.
He wrote The Ornaments of Churches considered, with particular view to the late Decoration of St. Margaret's, Westminster.
, thought "his knowledge and abilities much above the class of ordinary writers." Besides the works mentioned, he published:
Also the following medical works:
The full list given in the European Magazine numbers thirty-five pieces. Wadd (Nugæ Chirurgicæ) wrongly attributes to Shebbeare Charles Johnstone s Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea. The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, which Smollett introduced
into Peregrine Pickle, has aleo
been erroneously assigned to him.
Tories (political faction)
The Tories were members of two political parties which existed, sequentially, in the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Great Britain and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.-Overview:...
political satirist
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
.
Life
He was the eldest son of an attorney and corn-factorFactor (agent)
A factor, from the Latin "he who does" , is a person who professionally acts as the representative of another individual or other legal entity, historically with his seat at a factory , notably in the following contexts:-Mercantile factor:In a relatively large company, there could be a hierarchy,...
of Bideford
Bideford
Bideford is a small port town on the estuary of the River Torridge in north Devon, south-west England. It is also the main town of the Torridge local government district.-History:...
, Devonshire. A hundred and a village in Devon
Shebbear, England
Shebbear is a village and civil parish in the District of Torridge in Devon, England. It was once itself centre of the Shebbear hundred. It has a population of 858....
, where the family had owned land, bear their name. Shebbeare was educated at the free school, Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
, under Zachariah Mudge, and there, it is said, "gave evidence of his future eminence in misanthropy and literature." In his sixteenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards set up for himself. Having, however, lampooned both his master and the members of the Exeter corporation, he in 1736 removed to Bristol, where he later entered into partnership with a chemist. In 1740 he published A new Analysis of the Bristol Waters; together with the Cause of Diabetes and Hectic, and their Cure, as it results from those Waters, which was reissued in 1760.
In 1752 he went to Paris, where he claimed to have obtained a medical degree, and to have been elected member of the Academy of Sciences. But he found his pen more remunerative than his practice. Settling in London, he began his career as a political writer in 1754, with The Marriage Act, a novel, dedicated to John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford
John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford
John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford KG, PC, FRS was an 18th century British statesman. He was the fourth son of Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford, by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Howland of Streatham, Surrey...
,
one of the chief opponents of Lord Hardwicke
Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke
Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke PC was an English lawyer and politician who served as Lord Chancellor. He was a close confidant of the Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister between 1754 and 1756 and 1757 until 1762....
's
reform. The author was imprisoned for his reflections on the legislature, but his
book was reissued in 1755 as Matrimony, and reappeared in 1766. Shebbeare followed
up his success in 1756 by an attack on the Duke of Newcastle
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, KG, PC was a British Whig statesman, whose official life extended throughout the Whig supremacy of the 18th century. He is commonly known as the Duke of Newcastle.A protégé of Sir Robert Walpole, he served...
in the form of
Letters on the English Nation, by Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit resident in London, of
which he professed to be the translator only. This political satire, modelled on Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his atheism. In 1715 he supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the...
's writings against Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
, alone entitled
Shebbeare (in the opinion of Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
)
to a respectable name in literature. Meanwhile
he attacked the ministry directly in
the Monitor and the Con-test, as well as
in a series of outspoken pamphlets entitled
Letters to the People of England, having,
it was said, determined to write himself into a post or into the pillory.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham PC was a British Whig statesman who led Britain during the Seven Years' War...
's dismissal,
Shebbeare issued his sixth letter, "in which is shown that the present grandeur of France and calamities of this nation are owing to the influence of Hanover on the councils of
England." On 12 January 1758 a general warrant was issued against the author, printer,
and publisher. On 23 January all copies of a seventh Letter were seized and suppressed.
On 17 June Shebbeare was tried for libel on
an information laid against him by the attorney-general,
Pratt
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden was an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician who was first to hold the title of Earl of Camden...
, who on this occasion
admitted the right of the jury to judge of
the law. During the trial, as Walpole
laments, Mansfield
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, SL, PC was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was educated in Perth, Scotland before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School...
laid it down that satires
on dead kings were punishable. In summing
up he declared that the Letter nearly
approached high treason. On 28 Nov. Shebbeare
was sentenced to a fine and three
years' imprisonment, besides having to find
security for good behaviour for seven years.
He was also to stand in the pillory
Pillory
The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...
at Charing Cross
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London, England. It is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross is now occupied by an equestrian...
on 5 Dec. Owing to the friendship
of Arthur Beardmore
Arthur Beardmore
Arthur Beardmore was an English radical lawyer and a friend on John Wilkes.Beardmore was an editor of the Monitor. On 6 November 1762 the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Lord Halifax, issued warrants for the arrest of Beardmore. He was arrested on 11 November for publishing an...
, the under-sheriff, he was
allowed to stand upright between the upper
and lower boards of the pillory, while an
Irish chairman held an umbrella over his
head. At the end of an hour he retired
amidst the cheers of the crowd, who had been
invited by printed bills to come and see 'the
British champion.' Beardmore was afterwards
punished for his conduct. An anonymous squib appeared
under the title Memoirs of the Pillory; being a consolatory Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare. While in prison Shebbeare
received subscriptions for a history of England,
and actually composed one volume, which was not published. When attacked on the subject in a letter in the Public Advertiser of 10 Aug. 1774 he excused himself chiefly on the ground of debts incurred in consequence of a lawsuit against Francis Gwyn
Francis Gwyn
Francis Gwyn PC , was a Welsh politician and official.-Background:Gwyn was the son and heir of Edward Gwyn of Llansannor, Glamorganshire, who married Eleanor, youngest daughter of Sir Francis Popham of Littlecott, Wiltshire; he was born at Combe Florey in Somerset about 1648...
, who had been concerned with him in the publication of an edition of Clarendon
Earl of Clarendon
Earl of Clarendon is a title that has been created twice in British history, in 1661 and 1776. The title was created for the first time in the Peerage of England in 1661 for the statesman Edward Hyde, 1st Baron Hyde...
's History of the Reign of Charles II. The book, for which Shebbeare wrote a strong tory introduction, was suppressed by an injunction in chancery at the instance of the Duchess of Queensberry, and, though Shebbeare recovered expenses from Gwyn, half the sum went in costs. Notwithstanding his position, he refused to avail himself of the Insolvent Act. On his release he advocated peace with France, and attacked John Wilkes
John Wilkes
John Wilkes was an English radical, journalist and politician.He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives...
. On 29 Feb. 1764 a memorial signed by several members of parliament was presented to George Grenville
George Grenville
George Grenville was a British Whig statesman who rose to the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain. Grenville was born into an influential political family and first entered Parliament in 1741 as an MP for Buckingham...
in his favour,and Shebbeare was granted a pension of £200 a year. The king, in reply to Sir John Philips, who made the application, is said to have spoken of Shebbeare "in very favourable terms." Almon's statement that a pension of £400 had been previously granted by Bute seems doubtful. Henceforth Shebbeare became a steady advocate of the measures of the court, and even assailed his old favourite, Pitt.
His most elaborately written work was The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Institutions, Religion, Laws, Manners, and Genius of the Sumatrans, and of the Restoration thereof in the reign of Amurath the Third, 2 vols. 1763. It is a skilful exposure of the weak points in whig policy and administration, followed by a panegyric on George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
and his ministers. In style it is a colourable imitation of Bolingbroke.
On 3 Aug. 1764 Walpole sent Lord Hertford
Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford
Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford KG, PC, PC was a British courtier and politician.He was born in Chelsea, London the son of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Lord Conway and Charlotte Shorter and died in Surrey, England...
a pamphlet written by Shebbeare under Grenville's direction, adding the remark, "We do not ransack Newgate and the pillory for writers." He speaks of him as engaged with Carteret Webbe, solicitor to the treasury, in writing against Pratt
Pratt
Pratt is a surname, which may refer to any of the people listed below. There is also a page listing people named John Pratt.- Literature and the arts :...
, the lord chief justice, in a paper called The Moderator. In 1766 Shebbeare offered to John Beard
John Beard (tenor)
John Beard was an English tenor of the 18th century. He is best remembered for creating an extensive number of roles in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel....
, the manager of Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, a play he had written in early life, and its non-production led to the publication of the correspondence between them (1767). In 1768 he wrote for three months the reviews of books in the Political Register. In 1770 Shebbenre published an Eighth Letter to the People of England. He defended the American policy of George III against Price
Price
-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
and Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
in the Public Advertiser
Public Advertiser
The Public Advertiser was a London newspaper in the 18th century.The Public Advertiser was originally known as the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, then simply the General Advertiser consisting more or less exclusively of adverts. It was taken over by its printer, Henry Woodfall, and...
and elsewhere. The
former he "abused daily in the papers,"
In 1774, in reflecting on some speeches
lately delivered by Thomas Townshend
Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney
Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney PC , was a British politician who held several important Cabinet posts in the second half of the 18th century...
(afterwards Lord Sydney) and Councillor Lee
George Lee, 3rd Earl of Lichfield
George Henry Lee II, 3rd Earl of Lichfield PC was a British politician and peer. He was made a Privy Councillor and Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms in 1762, holding both honors until death...
, he took occasion to cast aspersions
on the character and reputation of William III
William III of England
William III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...
, Algernon Sidney, and other Whig
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
heroes, as viewed in the light of the recently
published Memorials of Sir John Dalrymple
John Dalrymple (political writer)
John Dalrymple , Scottish writer, wrote numerous political tracts, among which Answers for the Right Honourable John Dalrymple, Lord Provost of the city of Edinburgh, and others; to the petition of James Stoddart, Esq; late old Provost, and James Stirling, Esq; late one of the bailies of said city,...
. An answer appeared as
an appendix to a Letter to Dr. Johnson on his late Political Publications, 1775, by a
"Doctor of Laws" (Hugh Baillie). Despite a
protest made by Fox
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
in the House of Commons
on 16 Feb. 1774, the names of Johnson and Shebbeare
were usually coupled in whig pasquinade
Pasquinade
Pasquino or Pasquin is the name used by Romans to describe a battered Hellenistic-style statue dating to the 3rd century BC, which was unearthed in the Parione district of Rome in the 15th century...
s.
It was said that the king had pensioned
both a He-bear and a She-bear. In 1776 Wilkes
spoke of them as the "two famous doctors"
who were "the state hirelings called pensioners"
and whose names disgraced the civil
list." Mason the poet,
writing under the pseudonym "Malcolm Macgregor,"
in 1777 addressed a scathing epistle
to Shebbeare, as
-
- The same abusive, base, abandoned thing
- When pilloried or pensioned by a king
spare him. His sudden transition from pillory
to pension was glanced at in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, and he is the "Ferret" of Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
's '
Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. Shebbeare
seems to have shared Johnson's dislike
to Scotsmen. He criticised adversely Smollet's
History, and assailed the "Scotch
gentlemen criticks" of the Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
,
then conducted by Smollett. In the revised edition
of the History, however, the passage relating to Shebbeare's prosecution in 1758 is
curiously laudatory. William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, also
one of George III's pensioners, introduced
Shebbeare as one of the figures in the third
print of his Humours of an Election
Humours of an Election
The Humours of an Election is a series of four oil paintings and later engravings by William Hogarth that illustrate the election of a member of parliament in Oxfordshire in 1754. The oil paintings were created in 1755...
series. Frances Burney met him in
1774 at the house of Catherine Reid, a
Scottish portrait-painter, and has recorded a
specimen of his conversation in her Early Diary. It was marked by extraordinary
coarseness, and consisted chiefly of abuse of
women and Scotsmen, whom he declared to
be "the two greatest evils upon earth." The
last production by Shebbeare was The Pole Cat, or C. Jennings, the Renegade Schoolmaster ... Detected, 1788, 8vo.
Shebbeare died on 1 Aug. 1788 in Eaton
Street, Pimlico.
Family
He married young and unhappily. Mrs. Shebbeare died on 25 Nov. 1779. His son John, born in 1737, matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, on 28 Oct. 1758, and graduated B.C.L. in 1765. After having been incumbentIncumbent (ecclesiastical)
In Anglican canon law, the incumbent of a benefice, usually the parish priest, holds the temporalities or assets and income.Depending on the terms of governance of each parish an incumbent might be either:...
of Gaston, Norfolk, he died rector of East Horndon, Essex, on 7 Feb. 1794.
He wrote The Ornaments of Churches considered, with particular view to the late Decoration of St. Margaret's, Westminster.
Works
Shebbeare's writings generally are vigorous and well informed, and in scurrility go little, if at all, beyond those of the chief polemical writers of the day. Walpole admitted that his pen was "not without force," and Boswell, who was introduced to him by General James OglethorpeJames Oglethorpe
James Edward Oglethorpe was a British general, member of Parliament, philanthropist, and founder of the colony of Georgia...
, thought "his knowledge and abilities much above the class of ordinary writers." Besides the works mentioned, he published:
- A Love Epistle in Verse found at Paris, 1753, 4to; reissued in 1755.
- Lydia, or Filial Piety: a novel, 4 vols. 12mo, 1755; 2nd edit. 2 vols. 1769; another edit. 1786.
- Authentic Narrative of the Oppressions of the Islanders of Jersey, to which is prefixed a succinct History of the Military Actions, Constitution, &c., of that Island, 2 vols. 8vo, 1771.
- Address to the Privy Council pointing out an effectual remedy to the Complaints of the Islanders of Jersey, 1772, 8vo.
- Tyranny of the Magistrates of Jersey ... demonstrated from Records of their Courts, 1772, 8vo.
- Answer to the Printed Speech of Edmund Burke, esq. ... in the House of Commons, April 19, 1774, 1775, 8vo.
- Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Establishment of National Society; in which the principles of Government ... contained in Dr. Price's observations are examined and refuted; together with a justification of the Legislature in reducing America to obedience by force; to which is added an appendix on the excellent and admirable in Mr. Burke's speech of 22 March 1775, 1776, 8vo.
Also the following medical works:
- The Practice of Physick, founded on principles in Physiology and Pathology hitherto unapplied in Physical Enquiries (undated)
- Candid Enquiry into the Merits of Dr. Cadogan's Dissertation on the Gout; with appendix containing a certain Cure for Gout, 1772, 8vo.
The full list given in the European Magazine numbers thirty-five pieces. Wadd (Nugæ Chirurgicæ) wrongly attributes to Shebbeare Charles Johnstone s Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea. The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, which Smollett introduced
into Peregrine Pickle, has aleo
been erroneously assigned to him.