Elected M.P. for Downton, Wiltshire, but was unseated on petition. Appointed Judge of the Consistory Court Appointed King's Advocate. Appointed Vicar-General of the Province Elected M.P. for Downton, through the Appointed Master of the Faculties. Elected M. P. for the University of Oxford. Resigned Judgeship of High Court of Died at Erleigh Court and was buried on At Sonning there is a memorial brass in the South Aisle and a mural monument over the doorway of the North Aisle. In the Temple Church is a tablet to the memory of Lords Stowell and Eldon, erected by the Society of the Middle Temple "to the memory of these highly distinguished brothers.' CHAPTER I BIOGRAPHICAL 1745-1780 OXFORD THE JOHNSON CIRCLE 66 ON the 17th of October 1745, and again on June 4, 1751, a son was born to William Scott hoastman," coal merchant, broker and shipowner of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. William, the elder of these two boys, became Lord Stowell, the creator of a definite and reasoned body of prize law in Great Britain and in the United States. John, the younger, afterwards Lord Eldon, was for many years Lord Chancellor of England. William Scott in his own generation achieved repute as a civil lawyer-for his knowledge of ecclesiastical, of Admiralty and of prize law was remarkable, but he certainly was not then regarded as more noteworthy than other successful lawyers of his time, and when, in 1805, there were rumours at Westminster that he was about to receive a peerage it was not as we should have expected-looked on as an approaching reward for high judicial services, but for his silent votes in Parliament. "I hope," wrote Fox to Windham, "that our friend Sir William will not have his peerage, and that his close attendance and voting through thick and thin will not avail him.” He was considered by his contemporaries a clever and agreeable person; 66 a very useful ingenious man was a description of him when he was a tutor at Oxford; "one of the pleasantest men I ever knew," was Sir Walter Scott's estimate of him in later life. But not one of Scott's contemporaries foresaw that from an able Oxford tutor and a successful lawyer he would become a famous jurist, and as the names of the eminent judges of the later part of the eighteenth and of the beginning of the nineteenth centuries became more and more obscured by the enveloping mists of time, that of Stowell would continue to emerge, till it stands among those of the great jurists of the world, and as of one who has attained a positive and unique fame on both sides of the Atlantic as the creator of the modern prize law of England and America. William Scott was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in February 1761; he finally left the University in 1780, when he was thirty-five. He had then been an actual Fellow and a tutor of University College since 1765, and a University professor-Camden Reader of Ancient History-since 1773. In fact he did not resign the Readership till 1785, and thus continued in academic connection with his University after he had embarked on an active professional career in London. 66 In the eighteenth century it was largely a matter of temperament whether a tutor at Oxford or Cambridge was sluggardly or active, for he was left to his own devices, and "comparatively little help was given to the learner." Colleges were filled with Fellows, middle-aged and old, who were like drone bees," and the younger and more energetic, who were probably in a quiet way less inactive than is often supposed, were lost in the supine crowd which was the easy butt of every University satirist. Scott, as his whole life showed, though not ambitious in the popular acceptation of the word, had a high sense of public duty and an unobtrusive energy which urged him to achievement, and he became, without pressure, an efficient and conscientious teacher. John Barton of Corpus Christi College and William Scott of University College are mentioned by Gibbon in his Autobiography as two men who realized their academic responsibilities. Scott's activities even extended beyond his college; he originated a scheme for increasing the funds of the Bodleian Library by means of an annual payment by those entitled to use it, and by a small fee on matriculation, and he assisted in the raising of a loan for the purchase of certain objects of art for the University Galleries. In the world of Oxford in his day William Scott clearly stood far above the many idlers and mediocrities who sat around the college high tables, he was one of the few " good tutors," and he may be regarded also as one of those through whose efforts and example the University at the end of the century began to improve. The academic and social atmosphere of Oxford affected Scott's personal and professional career not less than his work as a judge. In his day an Oxford Common Room was a sociable place, it contained both learned and-it must be admitted-very idle persons, but those who entered it lived well, port wine and classical lore made them excellent company. The impress of University College never left Stowell throughout his life. But he carried his learning lightly, uniting with it a northern shrewdness which produced a rare judicial combination, and enabled him to leave to posterity a continuing fame as a jurist, and property which, in technical language, was sworn for probate under two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. |