Like Henry Shelley, Timothy Shelley came of a cadet branch (not the same one) of the Shelleys of Michelgrove, represented in this period by Sir John Shelley, 6th Bt. His father, by successive marriages, stepped into the first rank of the Sussex gentry and was an ally of the 11th Duke of Norfolk in local politics.
Shelley was again brought in at Norfolk’s instigation in 1802, this time for Shoreham, where his father had some influence and where he had been proposed as early as 1780.
As soon as his friends came to power, Norfolk applied to them for a baronetcy for Shelley’s father, whom he stated to be worth £10,000 p.a. in Sussex and Kent.
Shelley resumed his seat unopposed at the general election of 1812. His only votes in the first session were against Catholic relief throughout (a line he maintained subsequently) and in favour of Christian missions to India, 22 June 1813. In the session of 1815 he joined opposition on the transfer of Genoa, 21 Feb.; the continuation of the militia in peacetime, 28 Feb.; the corn bill, 10 Mar.; the civil list, 14 Apr.; the property tax, 19 Apr.; the Regent’s address proclaiming the resumption of hostilities with France, 25 May, and the Duke of Cumberland’s establishment bill, 3 July. In 1816 he opposed the army estimates, 28 Feb.; the property tax, 18 Mar.; the Admiralty secretaries’ salaries, 20 Mar., and the leather tax, 9 May. He also paired against the public revenue bill, 17 June. On 7 Mar. 1817 he made his only reported speech, testifying to the respectability and orderliness of the Horsham meeting in favour of retrenchment and reform. His last known vote was nevertheless with ministers, for the suspension of habeas corpus, 23 June 1817. His outlook, affected by his inheritance of the bulk of the family fortune in 1815 and the death of his sponsor Norfolk late that year, as well as by dislike of his heir’s unbridled radicalism, became more conservative. He did not seek re-election in 1818. He died 24 Apr. 1844, commended as an agricultural improver.