Shipley, J
ACHIEVEMENTS: Advocate of religious toleration, political reform, and support of American independence.
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 1714, England
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
6 December 1788, Chilbolton, Hampshire, England. Aged 78
DISCIPLINE: Bishop
FIELD: Religion
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS:
Father: Jonathan Shipley
Mother: Martha Davies
SIBLINGS:
brother: William Shipley (instituted the Society of Arts)
SPOUSE:
Anna Maria Mordaunt
CHILDREN:
including son: William Davies Shipley
including 3 daughters: Anna Maria, Georgiana, Catherine
EDUCATION:
School in Reading, Berkshire
St John's College and Christ Church, Oxford
MAJOR WORK: None
LIFE AND TIMES:
Shipley took holy orders soon after getting his master's degree in 1738. His first post was as tutor to the family of the Earl of Peterborough. Five years later Shipley married the earl's niece and was appointed rector of Silchester and Sherborne St John in Hampshire and a prebendary of Winchester cathedral. In 1745 he was chaplain-general to the Anglo-Hanoverian army fighting the French under the leadership of the Duke of Cumberland on the continent during the campaign of Fontenoy.
Back home, Shipley continued to rise up the ecclesiastical ladder and in 1769 became bishop of Llandaff and then, within the same year, of St Asaph. Despite these signs of royal or at least ministerial favour, Shipley joined the Whig party in opposition to the government of George III. It was the king's policy towards his American colonies with which Shipley disagreed, an attitude reinforced by Shipley's friendship with the American statesman Franklin*. With reckless disregard for his own future preferment, Shipley preached a sermon praising the American colonies in 1773, and the following year voted in the House of Lords against the punitive measures proposed for the state of Massachusetts after the Boston riots.
Shipley was one of only two bishops in the Lords who opposed the government. In 1778, during the debate on the continuance of the war, a measure supported in his last speech to the House by Lord Chatham, William Pitt the Elder, Shipley again voted with the opposition. He was equally rigorous about following his conscience in religious matters and in 1779 was the only bishop to advocate the abolition of all laws against Protestant dissenters. He was certainly not concerned to gain popularity with his more influential colleagues in the Lords, telling them that toleration was a matter for the state, not the church, and that they "were not the men to whose decision I would commit it".
When the Whigs came to power in 1782 Franklin voiced his hope that Shipley would get preferment but he was not appointed to the vacancy of Salisbury and the following year the king blocked any chance of his becoming archbishop of Canterbury. This was hardly surprising since Shipley made a habit of speaking out against all abuses of power and referred to princes as the 'trustees, not the proprietors of their people'.
He supported Pitt* in his early (and only) effort to reform Parliament with shorter parliaments and the disfranchisement of small 'rotten' boroughs where all the votes could be bought by the owner of the land. Shipley had a wide circle of friends apart from his political friends such as Burke*.Through his daughter Georgiana, who was a painter, he became great friends with Sir Joshua Reynolds*, and he was a member of the literary Club formed around Dr. Johnson*. Another daughter, Anna Maria, married the orientalist Sir William Jones*. Shipley died in 1788.
ASSESSMENT: Shipley is remembered for his unusual stance as a Anglican bishop who supported the American colonies during the war of independence, and who also advocated religious toleration and parliamentary reform.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Horace Walpole* was supporter.
ONELINER: Jonathan Shipley, pro-American Independence bishop
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DNB, EB