Shipman was born in Scarrington near Newark-on-Trent and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. His work shows him to have been an outspoken royalist, but he managed to keep his family estate intact between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Stuart restoration in 1660 by retiring from public life. In his preface to "Carolina" Flatman comments: "In the Calamities of the last Rebellion he was no small Sharer, the Iniquity of the Times having no power to shock his Loyalty, he very cheerfully underwent the Tryals of unhappy Virtue."