Simon Harcourt came from a dissenting gentry family and was educated at Shilton Academy and Pembroke College in Oxford. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1683 and in 1690 was elected to Parliament for Abingdon in the House of Commons as a Tory and as an Anglican.

Harcourt developed a reputation for oration and for administration, and he gradually gained promotion throughout Queen Anne's reign. He was close to Anne's chief minister, Robert Harley, with whom he had gone to school. Harcourt's legal practice benefited from his political offices and vice versa. In 1711, he was appointed Lord Keeper and made a baron, and in 1713 he was promoted to the role of Lord Chancellor.

When King George I, a Whig, took the throne, most of Anne's Tory administrators lost power. Harcourt, however, was able to work with the Whig government. In 1720 he held government office again and in 1721 was made a viscount. By 1722 he was once again a member of the Privy Council and served as a Lord Justice when the king was not in residence in England.

Harcourt made his home at Cokethorpe, where he entertained a variety of literary and political individiuals, including Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

[Information retrieved from "Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt," Abingdon Area Archaeology and History Society, https://www.abingdon.gov.uk/abingdon_people/simon-harcourt-1st-viscount-harcourt.]