Scott came from an old Kentish family that produced an MP for Hythe in 1384 and regularly represented the county from 1430. It reached the apex of its prosperity and prestige under his father, knight of the shire in three Elizabethan Parliaments and noted for his liberal housekeeping.
Although now settled, Scott did not abandon his military career but served with the 2nd earl of Essex during the Azores voyage in 1597, and in Ireland two years later. On his return to England he strengthened his links with Essex by taking as his second wife the sister of Sir Thomas Smythe*. He was not exclusively bound to the earl, however, as his kinsman, lord treasurer Buckhurst (Thomas Sackville†), was a close ally of Essex’s great rival, Robert Cecil†. In 1600 Scott appealed to Buckhurst after the local sewer commissioners, many of them allies of Lord Cobham (Henry Brooke alias Cobham II†), sought to remove all the weirs on the Medway. Buckhurst, who detested Cobham, was only too pleased to oblige, and although Scott was forced to abandon his opposition to the removal of the weirs the commissioners were compelled to give up their scheme to make the river navigable.
Following the fall of Lord Cobham in 1603, Scott was elected to the first Stuart Parliament as the junior knight for Kent. He seems to have been a fairly active Member, being appointed to 90 committees, but was no debater. During the first session he was appointed to consider the grievances propounded by Sir Robert Wroth I (23 Mar.), and was one of the Members instructed, on the motion of Sir Oliver St. John, to recommend measures for the relief of veterans of the Irish campaigns (26 March). He twice accompanied the Speaker to the king over the Buckinghamshire election (28 Mar. and 12 Apr.), and on 30 Mar. was required to help set down the Common’s reasons for their proceedings in writing. He was named to the committee for religion proposed by Sir Francis Hastings (16 Apr.), and to those for the suppression of popish books (6 June) and the reform of the ecclesiastical courts (16 June).
After the Gunpowder Plot, Scott was appointed to help consider ‘consider of some course for the timely and severe proceeding against Jesuits, seminaries, and all other popish agents and practisers’ (26 Jan. 1606). He was also named to committees for the restoration of deprived ministers (7 Mar.) and the better direction of ecclesiastical proceedings (1 April).
In the third session Scott was among those added to the committee to consider the Union with Scotland (29 Nov. 1606). He presumably served on the committee to confirm Salisbury’s title to Cheshunt vicarage, to which he was named on 12 Dec., as not long after he wrote to thank Salisbury for a Sussex wardship, ‘which proved more to him in value than he ever received from any person living, his father and wives excepted’, and to ask ‘whether it is fitting for him to renew his suit to the king’ for back pay and expenses.
When Parliament reassembled for the fourth session in 1610, Scott attended the conference at which Salisbury proposed the Great Contract (15 February). Behind the scenes he seems to have proved sufficiently troublesome to the government to be included among the eight ‘select Members of the Lower House’ who met Salisbury in Hyde Park on the evening of 10 July to reach an understanding on impositions. He was appointed to several bill committees, including those to prevent pluralism (19 Feb.), avoid the need for subscription (14 Mar.), prevent the export of ordnance (17 Mar.) and revoke trusts made by his stepson Sir Robert Drury (27 March).
Shortly before Parliament met for its fifth and final session Scott succeeded to the estates of his childless elder brother, and thereafter he lived at Scot’s Hall, in the parish of Smeeth. This sudden change of fortune may have kept Scott away from Parliament; certainly he left no trace on the records of the session. Scott was now considerably wealthy, for in addition to Nettlestead and the Scot’s Hall estate he also leased from the Crown nearby Aldington Park, a property that had come into his possession some years earlier following the death of two of his younger brothers.
In September 1613 Scott was urged by his kinsman Thomas Scott* of Canterbury to stand for the county seat once again ‘when that inevitable and desired and feared day comes’. Thomas sent him a pamphlet by the out-ports’ propagandist Thomas Milles of Sandwich, and proposed that he should ally himself with Sir Edwin Sandys ‘or some such’ so as to launch a fresh assault on the privileges of the London trading Companies.
Scott played only a modest role in the Addled Parliament, as he made no recorded speeches and was named to just eight committees, although these included the committee for privileges and the committee for the repeal or continuance of expiring statutes (both on 8 April). On 13 Apr. he was among those appointed to prepare an address expressing abhorrence of ‘undertaking’. As one of the senior knights of the county, he resented yielding precedence to the new-fangled baronets, and was appointed to consider their position (23 May). Indeed, a few months later he was rebuked for refusing to recognize the titles of Sir Samuel Peyton* and another Kentish baronet, an error which the Privy Council had not expected in ‘a gentleman of your judgment, temper, and discretion’. His nomination on 16 May to consider a bill to establish a hospital in East Grinstead out of funds bequeathed by the 2nd earl of Dorset (Robert Sackville*) presumably reflected his kinship with the Sackvilles.
Following the dissolution, Scott enthusiastically supported the royal benevolence. As well as contributing £20 himself,
Despite two marriages Scott remained childless, and consequently as early as 1610 he provided for his estates to be conveyed to trustees on his death. On 14 Sept. 1616 he revised these arrangements to remedy defects in a former conveyance.