The revenues of his benefice were placed under sequestration on 23 March 1780. He said that his "unletter'd brother-in-law" had obtained the sequestration in an "illegal mode" through "merciless and severe persecutions and litigations". His brother in law had died by 1790.[2] Writing to Gough Nichols, editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1797, Tasker said he was "confined in my dreary situation at Starvation-Hall, 40 miles below Exeter, out of the verge of Literature & where even your extensive magazine has never yet reached."[4]