SCOTT, Sir William (1745-1836), of Doctors’ Commons and Erleigh Court, nr. Reading, Berks.

Scott, the elder brother of lord chancellor Eldon, had, from his entrance to the Commons in 1790, pursued a brilliant and lucrative career as an advocate specializing in civil and maritime law, alongside a fairly unremarkable course in Parliament as a supporter of successive Tory governments. Widowed for a second time in 1817, he was a witty and companionable man, who was rarely without an invitation to dinner. He was noted for his scruffy appearance and, despite his great wealth, his stinginess. George Canning* once likened the ‘waddling’ Scott to ‘a conceited Muscovy duck’. J.G. Lockhart, Life of Scott (1838), vii. 135; Hatherton diary, 17 Mar. 1836. A fortnight after George III’s death in January 1820 he was reported to have expressed ‘apprehension’ that the Liverpool ministry might resign, to precipitate ‘a general sweep’ in government. Buckingham, Mems. Geo IV, i. 8. Three weeks later he was again returned unopposed for his university (where he had been a distinguished academic before turning to the more lucrative profession of the law) at the age of 74. His name appears in none of the surviving ministerial division lists of this period. On 21 Apr. 1820 he proposed the re-election of Manners Sutton as Speaker. He was perturbed by the implications of Henry Brougham’s scheme of June 1820 to establish a more effective national system of education for the poor. Writing to the headmaster of Shrewsbury, Dr. Butler, whose hostile pamphlet he had admired, he deplored the possibility of ‘education ... descending into the hands of writing masters, accountants [and] excisemen ... of whose principles we know nothing, and little of their literature beyond the multiplication table’. Add. 34585, f. 53. On 7 July he brought in a bill designed to clarify the law relating to offences at sea. On its second reading, 10 July, he argued that ‘recent circumstances’ had shown the necessity of extending the punishment for offences committed on land to those committed at sea. The Times, 8, 11 July 1820. The bill became law on 24 July 1820. At this time he was prematurely tipped for elevation to the peerage. Buckingham, i. 51. He was at first alarmed at the prospect of the trial of Queen Caroline, but came to hope that ‘all may pass off tolerably quietly’, believing that the government had a strong case. Add. 51659, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 4, Aug.; 51679, Lord J. Russell to same, 14 [Aug. 1820]. After the abandonment of the prosecution he wrote to a friend:

I shall be very glad to hear of ... loyal addresses coming up. We want to be reinforced in our spirits by friendly declarations from respectable bodies and individuals. The Whigs appear too much disposed to a coalition with the radicals, in order to compel the king to dismiss the ministers, and that coalition is of itself a sufficient reason for a firm resistance to their admission into power; for they will be compelled to make very unpleasant concessions to their new allies, at the expense of the constitution. Twiss, Eldon, ii. 410-11.

Scott paired against Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821. He presented petitions against it from Oxford University, 12 Mar., and the archdeaconry of Essex, 16 Mar. The Times, 13, 17 Mar. 1821. Opposing the second reading of the relief bill later that day, he objected to the alterations which Plunket proposed to make in his original bill and insisted that the House be given further details of the revisions and sufficient time in which to consider them. In committee, 23 Mar., he condemned any tinkering with the oath of supremacy, maintaining that by unambiguously denying the pope’s authority it had effectively protected the nation from foreign influence. The anti-Catholic Member Henry Bankes wrote that ‘more was expected from ... Scott than he performed: he was out of health and feeble, and fell far short of his former exertions in the same cause’. Dorset RO D/BKL, Bankes jnl. 126. The ‘Mountaineer’ Henry Grey Bennet dismissed his speech as ‘tiresome and dull’, as he did his effort when he led the opposition to the third reading (after presenting a hostile petition from the authorities of Canterbury cathedral), 2 Apr. HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 43, 48; The Times, 3 Apr. 1821. On 12 Apr. 1821 he was granted a fortnight’s leave of absence because of ill health. He was made a coronation peer in July 1821, but rarely appeared in the Lords and took little part in debate.

He retired from the admiralty bench in 1828, having been handicapped for several years by failing eyesight and powers of speech. It was falsely rumoured before he stood down that he was trying to extort a pension from the tottering Goderich ministry. The Whig Sir James Mackintosh*, who aspired to replace him, commented that this was ‘a shameless proposal from a man of 82 with a fortune of near half a million’. Add. 52447, f. 140. He was a great civil lawyer, whose judgments laid the basis of modern admiralty law and the international law of war. Oxford DNB. He lapsed into senility in about 1833 and remained oblivious to the death of his only surviving son, William Scott*, to whom he had devised the bulk of his property, in November 1835. He died two months later, leaving a personal fortune of some £230,000 and real estate worth £12,000 a year. His only surviving child Mary Anne, the second wife of the 1st Viscount Sidmouth, took a life interest in the whole property. On her death in 1842 the Gloucestershire estates passed to Scott’s great-nephew John Scott*, 2nd earl of Eldon, and the personal estate was distributed among the children of his niece Mary Forster of Seaton Burn. Twiss, iii. 251-2, 254-5; Gent. Mag. (1836), i. 430; PROB 11/1859/190.