SHIPPEN, WILLIAM (1673–1743), parliamentary Jacobite, born in 1673, was the second son of Dr. William Shippen, and grandson of ‘William Shippen, gent.,’ of Stockport, Cheshire, who died in 1681. Dr. Shippen, the father, born in 1635, matriculated from University College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1653, subsequently became a fellow of his college and a proctor of the university (1665), and was preferred successively to Prestbury (1667), Kirkheaton (1670), Aldford (1676), and finally, in February 1678, to the rectory of Stockport, where he died on 29 Sept. 1693. His younger brother Edward (1639–1712) emigrated to Boston in 1668, turned quaker, became first mayor of Philadelphia (1701), and died on 2 Oct. 1712, leaving great wealth and numerous issue, from whom the Shippen family in America descend (cf. Roberdeau Buchan, Shippen Genealogy, Washington, 1877; Appleton, Cyclopædia, v. 512).
The younger William was educated at Stockport grammar school under Roger Dale, and at Westminster, where he was elected a queen's scholar in 1688; he matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1691, graduated B.A. in 1694, and then entered the Middle Temple. In 1707 he entered parliament as member for Bramber in Sussex, by the interest of Lord Plymouth, whose son, Dixie Windsor, was his brother-in-law. He represented this borough until 1713, when he was returned for Saltash. In 1714 he was elected for Newton in Lancashire, through the interest of Peter Legh (into whose family his brother had married), and he retained this seat for the rest of his life. He commenced his political career by two dreary satires in verse against the whigs, entitled ‘Faction Displayed’ (in which the whig lords are portrayed under the names of the leaders in Catiline's conspiracy) and ‘Moderation Display'd’ (1708), both of which were reprinted in ‘A Collection of the Best English Poetry’ (London, 2 vols. 1717, 8vo). When the tory parliament met in 1710 he was known as a prominent member of the ‘October Club.’ In 1711 he was elected one of the commissioners to investigate the Duke of Marlborough's alleged peculations, and he warmly supported the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Bill, while in August 1714 he boldly opposed the offer of a reward for the apprehension of the Pretender.
Upon the accession of George I, he loyally defended his old leader, Harley (January 1716), and in April spoke against the Septennial Bill, on the ground that long parliaments ‘would grow either formidable or contemptible.’ His speech was printed, and deserves attention as marking an era in tory strategy; Shippen frankly invoking a democratic sanction in politics and showing himself willing to relax rigid tory dogmas in order to gain popular sympathy. Similar tactics were employed in 1738, when Shippen attacked standing armies as instruments of oppression, and defended the tories as the true upholders of revolution principles in a typical outburst of party rhetoric. Early in 1718 Shippen opposed the Mutiny Bill, and he used every opportunity, with some small measure of success, to move the reduction of votes for military purposes. In December of this year, after opposing the reception of the king's message, asking for a grant of money to provide against a Swedish invasion, he discussed the king's speech and the measures recommended in it with a freedom which was then entirely novel. The speech, he maintained, was to be treated wholly as a concoction of the ministers. The solicitor-general, Lechmere, moved that words in which he drew attention to the king's ignorance of ‘our language and constitution’ be taken down, and Shippen be sent to the Tower. Shippen would not retract, and, in spite of the attempts to shield him made by Walpole (now in opposition) and others, he was sent to the Tower by a vote of 175 to 81 (4 Dec.). The intrepidity he showed was so popular as to elicit three anonymous offers of gifts of 1,000l. each, which he declined with appropriate dignity. One of the would-be donors was the Prince of Wales. Shippen's speech was printed, and deemed worthy of a confutation by Steele in his ‘Guardian.’ Sheffield celebrated his incorruptibility in his ‘Poem on the Election of a Poet Laureate.’ He was released at the close of the session (cf. Gent. Mag. 1812, ii. 411).
Henceforth Shippen was a leader of the Jacobite squires in the house, a party which was ridiculed with some effect in Cibber's ‘Nonjuror.’ His reputation, as Stanhope says, grew much more from his courage, his incorruptibility, his good humour, and frankness of purpose than from any superior eloquence or talent.
In 1720, during the South Sea crisis, he opposed Walpole's measure for the restoration of public credit as too lenient; his plan, he said, was a mere palliative, designed to evade the public demand for vengeance. He moved for a list of South Sea directors to be submitted to the house, and so exasperated Craggs that he expressed readiness to give any man satisfaction where and when he pleased. By such manœuvres, though his following scarcely ever exceeded fifty, he frequently got the upper hand in debate, and his co-operation was eagerly courted by the
