Silvester follows the classic clergyman-poet paradigm: he published one volume of verse in his early 30s and otherwise wrote Anglican theological polemic.
In dedicating his most-reprinted play, Edward the Black Prince, to the Earl of Halifax, Shirley bespeaks the Earl's protection "as a Briton... as a Merchant... and as a Poet." The uncharacteristically blunt DNB says that Shirley's plays were awful, but Garrick and Drury Lane came back to him, so they must have at least broken even. For our purposes, Shirley is interesting as a self-avowed merchant (his pamphlets are about mercantile issues, evidently) for whom playwriting was one trade--a bit like Defoe perhaps.
Shiels migrated from rural Scotland to London as a journeyman printer, and worked for SJ, who supported him in his poverty age. He illustrates the way in which printing lay at the intersection of working-class manual labor and the genteel economies of learning and poetry--he published only a few poems, near the end of his life.
Sheridan was an ordained priest and a strong classicist who taught school in Dublin--he received his first benefice at age 38 and never acquired much patronage. He was a close friend of Swift's until late in life, and his oeuvre has a poor-man's-Swift quality to it: lots of broadside squibs and coterie verse published as broadsides; puns and jocular verse; and an essentially secular albeit moralizing poetic persona (though there is one published sermon). Unclear w/o reading them what social/economic work these published poems were supposed to do.
Shenstone seems to be a very pure example of genteel retirement: he never took a degree or pursued a profession, but dedicated his life to poetry, friendship, and landscape gardening. He was prolific but published very little in his lifetime
Born to a modest family, Shebbeare was a cantankerous Tory polemicist in the 1740s and 50s (he was pilloried for libelling the Hanoverians) but came into favor with the accession of George III, who pensioned him. He also published novels and medical treatises, again with a strongly combattive flavor. His signed publications mention an M.D. (he claimed it was from Paris, according to DNB) but unclear if he made money practicing medicine. Only poetry is a political epitaph in 1739 GM and a verse epistle published in 1750s.
An example of the aristocratic woman of letters that contrasts in interesting ways with for instance Lady Mary: Lady Frances was an active correspondent and writer, patronizing a wide range of poets, but she was diffident about her own publications. Moreover, she was a pious evangelical. She seems to have almost completely avoided the print market, though her papers appeared posthumously in several forms (see DNB sources list)
Seward seems to be a fairly modest example of the 18c clerical man of letters paradigm--he published a few sermons, edited some Jacobean drama, and published a few anonymous poems with Dodsley. He's also a good exemplification of the standard moves for a successful career of clerical preferment--travelling as a Grand Tour tutor for a family which then takes care of you in finding livings and stalls.
Seagrave figures in the DNB as a Whitefield-following evangelical who either left the established church or took a strongly evangelical line within it. In this capacity he is relevant to midcentury poetry as a writer and editor of evangelical hymns. But the ESTC also attributes a (pre-conversion?) Whig panegyric poem to him. He was also very active in writing polemical divinity with a heavy emphasis on the "protestantism" of evangelicals.
No ESTC records--publication of hymns in collections from MSs probably w/o her knowledge--coterie devotional poet whose hymns circulated in MS within her family clerical/pious milieu.