Timothy occupied the property of Field Place in Sussex when his elder brother, John, died childless in 1790, and he inherited the baronetcy in 1815, by which time he was also representing the Whig interest as member of Parliament for Shoreham, a seat he held from 1802 to 1818. Percy's mother, Elizabeth Pilfold, also from an old Sussex family, subsequently gave birth to five daughters and another son.
As son and heir, Percy received the attention and opportunities appropriate to the making of a gentleman farmer and future politician before leaving home at the age of ten for Syon House Academy at Isleworth. This establishment was headed by a Scot, Dr. Greenlaw, who saw conscientiously to the intellectual needs of his charges but could do little to discourage the bullying that marked such schools, brutalizing the nation's future leaders at a most impressionable age. Shelley was a prime target for behavior that he would always deplore and attempt to counter, but he also gained access to the school's academic collections and the Gothic fare of its circulating library.
After Syon House came Eton College, a powerful symbol of Englishness for the country's elites.
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