Robertson provides a somewhat slanted take on the tradition of the preferment-seeking Hanoverian cleric; he was educated in the dissenting tradition, conformed to the established church, and then left it over scruples about asking anyone to commit to a human-written liturgy. Essentially he spent the first twenty-odd years of his life preparing for the dissenting ministry, then spent his working life into his late fifties in the established church, then spent the last two decades of his life cobbling together an income as a schoolmaster. Throughout he was an outspoken (and, given his loss of preferment, principled) advocate for liberty of thought. His one poetic publication (characteristically written in blank verse because rhymes are "fetters") is dedicated to Catherine Macaulay. Also wrote for periodical press during down-at-heel 1760s.