Biography
Robert Shafto was born around 1732 at his family seat of Whitworth near Spennymoor in County Durham. He was educated at Westminster School, London from 1740 to 1749, when he entered Balliol College, Oxford.
He succeeded to the family estate on the death of his father John in 1742. Both his father and uncle Robert Shafto had been Tory Members of Parliament (MPs). He continued this tradition becoming MP for County Durham in 1760, using his nickname "Bonny Bobby Shafto" and the now famous song for electioneering purposes, defeating the Whig Sir Thomas Clavering, with a campaign supported by Henry Vane, first earl of Darlington, Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle and the bishop of Durham. However, once in parliament he dropped this allegiance, supporting the administrations of John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute and Pitt the elder. He held the Durham seat for two parliaments until he declined to stand in the election of 1768.
Shafto married Anne Duncombe (d. 1783), daughter and heir of Thomas Duncombe of Duncombe Park, Yorkshire, on 18 April 1774. Shafto and his wife had three children, John (1775–1802), Robert (1776–1848), and Thomas (b. 1777). His wife, Anne, had inherited property in the borough of Downton in Wiltshire and he became its MP in 1780. He is known to have supported William Pitt the Younger during the regency crisis of 1788–9. He did not seek re-election in 1790. Robert Shafto died in November 1797, and is buried in the Shafto family crypt beneath the floor of Whitworth Church.
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