He was returned as Whig MP for Morpeth from 1717 to 1727; after inheriting his cousin's estate at Homme in 1733, he later sat for the nearby seat of Weobley between 1741 and 1747. In June 1729, he was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1737, he submitted to the Society an account of a wound received by his father at the Battle of Brihuega in 1710, when a musket ball remained lodged in his throat for nearly a year.