Thomas Shaw, educated at Kendal Grammar School and Queen’s College, Oxford, from which he matriculated in 1711, aged 17. He graduated with a BA in 1716 and an MA in 1720. On 12 June of that year, he was ordained a priest by Bishop John Robinson, in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, just in time to take up an appointment as chaplain to the English factory of the Levant Company at Algiers, under the patronage of the consul, Edward Holden. When Holden died in 1739, Shaw married his widow Joanna at some point after. In 1733, Shaw returned to England, took the degree of doctor of divinity (5 July 1734), and was presented to the vicarage of Godshill, Isle of Wight. In the same year he was made fellow of the Royal Society and subsequently published a range of natural history accounts.