Robert Shuttleworth was born in 1743 to James Shuttleworth and Mary Holden in Yorkshire, England. Robert attended Christ Church College at Oxford in 1760 when he was seventeen. It was at college that he developed a lasting friendship with fellow classmate Joseph Banks. In 1777 Robert became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1778 he was sworn into the Corporation of Trinity House as a member of the Younger Brethren. Among their responsibilities, Trinity House maintained the channel marks and beacons on the Thames. This may be where Robert earned his title as a mariner.

In 1778 Robert married Anne, daughter of Lt. Gen. Thomas Desaguliers, Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery. Robert and Anne kept a house on New Burlington Street in London and established their country seat at Wandon House in Buckinghamshire. On 4 October 1792 Robert agreed to pay off the debt of Captain George Burns, a proprietor on Prince Edward Island, for which he would receive half of Lots 38 and 39 as well as one-third of Lot 40. On 30 May 1793 Robert and his family arrived in Prince Edward Island on board the brig "Lewis" and Robert soon had a large home built on the Morell River.

In the spring of 1794 Robert had a two-masted schooner built in the West River which he named the "Morell". Robert was also very active in the political and military community on the Island. On 8 June 1793 he was sworn in as a member of the Council and on 28 June of the same year he was commissioned as Colonel of the Militia of St. John's Island, Kings County Regiment. Robert also established Shuttleworth's Independent Troop of Forresters, a volunteer cavalry unit. Most of the sixty-three troops were from Robert's own tenantry. Commissions for the Forresters were issued in 1795, however the troops were not fully organized until 1796.

Increasing hostilities between Britain and France prompted Robert to return to England 28 June 1795 to see to his large estate. He left Thomas Wright, Surveyor General and one of his tenants, as his land agent. With the exception of two visits in 1796 and 1797, Robert never again lived on Prince Edward Island. In 1804 he sold his Island estate to John Worrell, a prosperous Barbadoes planter. On 29 January 1816, Robert died in England at the age of seventy-three.