John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon
Henry Addington | |
---|---|
Preceded by | The Lord Loughborough |
Succeeded by | The Lord Erskine |
Personal details | |
Born | 4 June 1751 Tory |
Spouse | |
Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon,
Early life
Background
Eldon was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. His grandfather, William Scott of Sandgate, a street adjacent to the Newcastle quayside, was clerk to a fitter, a sort of water-carrier and broker of coals. His father, whose name also was William, began life as an apprentice to a fitter, in which service he obtained the freedom of Newcastle, becoming a member of the guild of Hostmen (coal-fitters);[1] later in life he became a principal in the business, and attained a respectable position as a merchant in Newcastle, accumulating property worth nearly £20,000.
Education
Eldon was educated at
Elopement with Bessie Surtees
His wife, Elizabeth, known as "Bessie", was the eldest daughter of Aubone Surtees, a Newcastle banker. The Surtees family objected to the match, and attempted to prevent it; but a strong attachment had sprung up between them.
On 18 November 1772, Scott, with the aid of a ladder and an old friend, carried off the lady from her father's house in the Sandhill, across the border to Blackshields, in Scotland, where they were married. The father of the bridegroom objected not to his son's choice, but to the time he chose to marry; it was a blight on his son's prospects, depriving him of his fellowship and his chance of church preferment. But while the bride's family refused to associate with the couple, Scott, like a prudent man and an affectionate father, set himself to make the best of a bad matter, and received them kindly, settling on his son £2000.
John returned with his wife to Oxford, and continued to hold his fellowship for what is called the year of grace given after marriage, and added to his income by acting as a private tutor. After a time, Mr Surtees was reconciled with his daughter, and made a liberal settlement of £3000.[1]
John Scott's year of grace closed without any college living falling vacant; and with his fellowship he gave up the church and turned to the study of law. He became a student at the Middle Temple in January 1773. In 1776, he was called to the bar, intending at first to establish himself as an advocate in his native town, a scheme which his early success led him to abandon, and he soon settled to the practice of his profession in London, and on the northern circuit. In the autumn of 1776, his father died, leaving him a legacy of £1000 over and above the £2000 previously settled on him.[1]
Political career
At the English bar
In his second year at the bar his prospects began to brighten. His brother William, who by this time was the
The same year Bowes again retained him in an election petition; and in the year following Scott greatly increased his reputation by his appearance as leading counsel in the Clitheroe election petition. From this time his success was certain. In 1782, he obtained a silk gown, and was so far cured of his early modesty that he declined accepting the king's counselship if precedence over him were given to his junior,
Member of Parliament
In 1782, he entered Parliament for Lord Weymouth's close borough of Weobley in Herefordshire, which Lord Thurlow obtained for him without solicitation. In Parliament he gave a general and independent support to Pitt. His first parliamentary speeches were directed against Fox's India Bill. They were unsuccessful. In one he aimed at being brilliant; and becoming merely laboured and pedantic, he was covered with ridicule by Sheridan, from whom he received a lesson which he did not fail to turn to account. In 1788, he was appointed
In 1793 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society[2]
Lord High Chancellor
In 1799, the office of chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas falling vacant, Sir John Scott's claim to it was not overlooked; and after seventeen years' service in the Lower House, he entered the House of Lords as Baron Eldon. In February 1801, the ministry of Pitt was succeeded by that of
In the latter year we find him conducting the negotiations which resulted in the dismissal of Addington and the recall of Pitt to office as prime minister. Lord Eldon was continued in office as chancellor under Pitt; but the new administration was of short duration, for on 23 January 1806 Pitt died, worn out with the anxieties of office, and his ministry was succeeded by a coalition, under
During this time Lord Eldon was revered for his work in consolidating equity into a working body of legal principles. In Gee v Pritchard he wrote,[3]
"Nothing would inflict on me greater pain in quitting this place, than the recollection that I had done anything to justify the reproach that the equity of this court varies like the Chancellor's foot."
It was not until April 1827, when the premiership, vacant through the paralysis of Lord Liverpool, fell to Canning, the chief advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, that Lord Eldon, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, finally resigned the chancellorship in protest, being deeply opposed to the new prime minister's more liberal principles.[4] When, after the two short administrations of Canning and
In 1821, Lord Eldon had been created Viscount Encombe and Earl of Eldon by
Personal life
Lord Eldon's wife, the former Elizabeth Surtees, whom he called Bessie, died before him, on 28 June 1831. They had had two sons and two daughters that survived childhood:
- John (8 March 1774 - 24 December 1805) married Henrietta Elizabeth Ridley, daughter of Sir Matthew White Ridley, 2nd Baronet. He had one son, John, later heir to the title.
- William Henry John (d. 1832) unmarried.
- Lady Elizabeth Repton John (1783 - 16 April 1862)[6] married George Stanley Repton, son of Humphry Repton.
- Frances Jane (d. 6 August 1838) married Rev. Edward Bankes (son of Henry Bankes) on 6 April 1820. They had two sons, John Scott and Rev. Eldon Surtees. Their grandson was Sir John Eldon Bankes
Lord Eldon himself survived almost all his immediate relations. His brother William died in 1836. He himself died in London on 13 January 1838. Eldon left an estate of £2,300,000[7] – at a time when even estates of a million pounds were exceedingly rare.[8] John Wade, compiler of The Black Book, or Corruption Unmasked detailed in precise figures how Eldon's "almost incredible wealth" was due to state "emoluments of which he and his family monopolize to an inordinate degree."[9]
Eldon's title subsequently passed to his eldest grandson, John.
There is a blue plaque on his house in Bedford Square, London.
Lord Eldon and his wife are buried in the churchyard in
Legacy
War, peace and sorrow
Eldon was a loyal and tenacious supporter of the war against Napoleon;[10] but when the prospect of a new war arose in 1823, he expressed rather different concerns: "Men delude themselves by supposing that war consists only in a proclamation, a battle, a victory and a triumph. Of the soldiers' widows and the soldiers' orphans, after the fathers and husbands have fallen in the field of battle, the survivors think not".[11]
Shelley, however, in his Masque of Anarchy, challenged Eldon's sincerity: "Next came Fraud and he had on, Like Eldon, an ermined gown - His big tears, for he wept well - Turned to millstones as they fell".[12]
Political and legal views
Eldon notoriously accused the political reformer Thomas Hardy of attempting to establish "representative government, the direct opposite of the government which is established here" .[13]
He himself was, however, criticised with equal force for not reforming the notoriously slow Court of Chancery,[14] hence a cartoon of 1817 depicting him as leading a flight of lawyer-locusts descending on the law courts.[15]
During Eldon's lifetime, journalist (George) Wingrave Cook observed: "Posterity will probably pass a severe judgement upon the memory of this statesman...there is no other instance of a man who was possessed of nearly absolute influence in the councils of the nation for a quarter of a century, and of whom it can be said that he never originated one measure that the next generation judged beneficial to his country, and never allowed one such measure to be discussed without his strenuous and generally fatal opposition."[16]
John Wade equally noted: "there is no absurdity in law, no intolerance in church government; no arbitrary state measure, of which he is not the surly, furious, and bigoted advocate."[17]
Party allegiance
Although labelled a Tory by the opposition and by subsequent historians,
Nevertheless, in his unstinting opposition to the
See also
- Charles Dickens
- Circumlocution Office
- Charles Wetherell
Decided cases
- Ackroyd v Smithson
- Evans v Bicknell (1801) 6 Ves Jun 173
- Ex parte James(1803) 8 Ves 337
- 17 Ves 320
- Higginbotham v Holme 19 Ves 88
- Lucena v Craufurd(1806) 2 Bos & PNR 269
- Carlen v Drury (1812) 1 Ves & B 154
- Gee v Pritchard (1818) 2 Swans 402
- Gordon v Gordon (1821) 3 Swan 400
- William Lawrence's suit for copyright (1822)
Vessels named for Lord Eldon
Several ships were named in his honour, e.g., Earl of Eldon and Lord Eldon, and the East Indiaman Lord Eldon.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Rigg 1897.
- ^ "Fellows details". Royal Society. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
- ^ Gee v Pritchard (1818) 2 Swans 402, 414
- ^ Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? (Oxford 2008) p. 309 and p. 372
- ^ Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? (Oxford 2008) p. 379
- ^ 1861 England Census
- ^ Multum In Parvo, Liverpool Mercury, 16 February 1838, p3.
- ^ Will Of Peter Holford, Bath Chronicle And Weekly Gazette, 20 September 1838, p3.
- ^ John Wade,The Black Book, or Corruption Unmasked, 1820;
- ^ A. W. Ward ed., The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy (Cambridge 1922) p. 394 and p. 446
- ^ Quoted in Élie Halévy, The Liberal Awakening (London 1961)p. 173
- ^ Quoted in Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel (London 2007) p. 56-7
- ^ Quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London 1926) p. 564
- ^ G. M. Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century:(London 1922) p. 199
- ^ M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank (London 1967) p. 195
- ^ Lord Eldon, Carlisle Journal, 3 February 1838, p4.
- ^ John Wade, The Black Book, or Corruption Unmasked, 1820, p37;
- ^ A. Fraser, perilous Question (London 2013) p. 128
- ^ Clark, J C D (1985). English Society, 1688-1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime. Cambridge: CUP. p. 408.
- ^ Doherty, Gillian M.; O'Riordan, Tomás A. "The campaign for Catholic Emancipation, 1823–1829". Multitext Project in Irish History. University College Cork. Archived from the original on 12 December 2015. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
- ^ Twiss, Horace (1844). "Life of Lord Eldon". The Quarterly Review. LXXXIV. London: John Murray: 113. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
- ^
Hilton, Boyd (2008). A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?. Oxford: OUP. p. 196. ISBN 978-0199218912.
- ^ Dorset County Chronicle, Thursday 26 May 1831, p.4 column 1.
- ^ A. Fraser, Perilous Question (London 2013) p. 146
- ^ G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London 1926) p. 475
- ^ G. M. Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century (London 1922) p. 215
Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rigg, James McMullen (1897). "Scott, John (1751-1838)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 49–56.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Eldon, John Scott". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 166–168. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Horace Twiss: Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon - 3 volumes 1844 London: John Murray Publishers
- Rose A. Melikan: John Scott, Lord Eldon, 1751-1838 The Duty of Loyalty - 1999 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press - ISBN 0-521-62395-2
- Anthony L.J. Lincoln & Robert Lindley McEwen (editors): Lord Eldon's Anecdote Book - 1960 London: Stevens & Sons Ltd.
- ISBN 1-4286-1909-7. See pages 366 to 520.