conclusion of the war (Rex v. Dowley, 4 East's Reports, p. 512), a more congenial task, and on 19 March 1804, in his last speech in the House of Commons, opposed, also with success, the clause forbidding resignations, which was inserted in the Volunteers' Consolidation Bill.

In 1806, after Pitt's death, it became necessary to include some of the whigs in the Grenville administration. Eldon was not sufficiently loyal to a mixed cabinet of colleagues to be trusted with the seals, and, after being refused by Lord Ellenborough and Sir James Mansfield, chief justice of the common pleas, they were on 7 Feb. 1806 given to Erskine. The appointment was generally condemned. He had refused to hold briefs before the House of Lords and privy council, was ignorant of equity, and experienced only as an advocate at nisi prius. 'He is totally unfit for the situation,' writes Romilly. From this time he sank into comparative insignificance. He took his title, Baron Erskine of Restormel, from the castle of that name in Cornwall, out of compliment to the Prince of Wales. His motto, "Trial by jury,' was much derided. He took his seat on 10 Feb., and being quick, cautious, and attentive, and receiving some assistance from the equity counsel in practice before him, made few blunders as a judge; but he was ignorant of real property law and neglected to study it, contenting himself with making Hargrave a queen's counsel and employing him to work up authorities. In his hands equitable principles received little development or adaptation, though his decisions do not deserve the title of the Apocrypha,' which they received. His only considerable decision is Thelusson v. Woodford (DOWLING, Reports, p. 249), on the doctrine of election by an heir. But his chief judicial act was to preside at the trial of Lord Melville in June 1806, which he insisted must, unlike Hastings's impeachment, proceed de die in diem, and be conducted according to regular legal forms. In most of the divisions in this trial he voted in the minority for finding Lord Melville guilty. In the House of Lords he was assisted on appeals by Lords Eldon and Redesdale, and deferred greatly to them, and on one occasion, when sitting at first instance, was assisted by Sir William Grant, master of the rolls. On 7 June 1806 he, with Lords Grenville, Spencer, and Ellenborough, was commissioned by the king to inquire into the charges against the Princess of Wales of adultery with Sir Sidney Smith and others. The charges were declared groundless.

In the ministry he was not much con

sulted, nor did he very frequently take part in the debates of the House of Lords. He was not informed of Lord Howick's bill for allowing Roman catholics to hold commissions in the army until it was about to be introduced, and did not speak at all from the meeting of the new parliament in December 1806 until March 1807. Earlier in 1806 he had defended the inclusion in the cabinet of Lord Ellenborough, though lord chief justice, and had supported the bill for the immediate abolition of the slave trade. After the king's insurmountable opposition to Lord Howick's bill had brought the ministry face to face with resignation, Erskine was much chagrined at the prospect of losing office, and Lord Holland's account of the cabinet of 10 Feb. shows that he struggled hard to avoid the necessity of adhering to his colleagues (LORD HOLLAND, Memoirs, ii. 184). When the king demanded his ministry's written promise never again to propose to him a relaxation of the Roman catholic penal laws, Erskine went to expostulate with him, and in a long interview on 14 March imagined that he had converted him. On the 24th, however, the intrigues of Eldon and the Duke of Cumberland succeeded, and the king dismissed his ministers. Some suspicion was caused by the fact that Erskine did not resign the seals till 1 April. This was not, however, due to his having abandoned his colleagues, but was intended to give him time to deliver judgment in pending cases in which he had already heard all the arguments. He, however, somewhat unfairly, took the opportunity in the interval to prevail on Sir William Pepys to resign his mastership in chancery, and to appoint to the vacant post Edward Morris, his own son-in-law. The mode in which this change of ministry took place was so extraordinary that strong hopes were entertained of a return of the ministry of 'All the Talents' to office, but when, a few months later, this seemed immediately probable, Romilly observes that Erskine was not likely to be chancellor again, 'his incapacity for the office was too forcibly and too generally felt.' From this time Erskine gradually dropped out of public life. On 13 April he defended the conduct of the late ministry in refusing the pledge demanded of them, and in the new parliament he moved that the king's personal inclinations ought not to be of any binding effect on ministers (26 June), but the motion was lost by 67 to 160. In this new parliament the whigs were almost annihilated, the ministerial majority being two hundred, and, like many other whigs, Erskine almost entirely neglected parliament for some

on behalf of the popular party in Spain; in 1822 he published a letter to Lord Liverpool in behalf of the cause of Greek independence; in 1823 a letter of his to Prince Mavrocordato was published by the Greek committee, and in the same year he issued a pamphlet called 'A Letter to the Proprietors of Land on Agricultural Prosperity. He was quite estranged from the king, and had fallen into poverty and some social discredit. At various times, from as early as 1796, he had been accused of opium-eating, but without any foundation. He was living now partly at 13 Arabella Row, Pimlico, partly at a cottage, Buchan Hill, in Sussex. At some time not ascertainable he married at Gretna Green a Miss Mary Buck, by whom he had a son, Hampden, born 5 Dec. 1821. She and her child were in very straitened circumstances after his death. In the autumn of 1823 he started for Scotland by sea to visit his brother the Earl of Buchan, at Dryburgh Abbey, Berwickshire. Inflammation of the chest attacked him on the voyage; he was landed at Scarborough and thence conveyed to Almondell, West Lothian, the residence of his brother Henry's widow, and died there 17 Nov. 1823. He was buried at the family burialplace, Uphall, Linlithgow. His character was amiable and elevated, but his distinguishing characteristic was an inordinate vanity, which perpetually made him ridiculous. Almost the best of Canning's 'Anti-Jacobin Papers' is a burlesque speech of Erskine's at the Whig Club in which he is made to point out that he was but a very little lower than the angels. He was caricatured as Counsellor Ego, and as Baron Ego of Eye, and Cobbett always wrote of him as Baron Clackmannan. His wit was proverbial, and many of his epigrams are classic, but he especially excelled in puns. He was an honourable politician, an enthusiast for liberty, and an incomparable advocate and orator. He was an enthusiastic student of English classics, and, in spite of sarcasms on himself, a great admirer of Burke. He knew by heart 'Paradise Lost,' Paradise Regained,' and Burke's speech against Warren Hastings. Lord John Russell's phrase sums up his character: "The tongue of Cicero, and the soul of Hampden.' By his first marriage he had four sons and four daughters. His eldest and fourth sons, David Montagu, diplomatist, and Thomas, judge, are separately noticed. A portrait of him was painted by Sir T. Lawrence, and there is another by Hoppner at Windsor, a statue by Westmacott in Lincoln's Inn Hall, and a bust by Nollekens at Holland House.

[See the various editions of his speeches; Lives of him by Brougham, Townsend, and Campbell

(Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vi.); Moore's Diaries; Romilly's Memoirs; Wraxall's Memoirs; the Croker Papers; Stanhope's Pitt, Lord Holland's Memoirs; Pellew's Lord Sidmouth; Croly's Life of George IV; Sir Henry Holland's Recollections, 2nd ed. p. 244; Duméril's Lord Erskine, a Study, Paris, 1883; Lord Col1828, vii. 120, 626; Diary of Mme. d'Arblay chester's Diary; Johnstone's ed. of Parr's Works, (1842), v. 319, vi. 42; The Pamphleteer, vol. xxiii. 1824; Sketch of Erskine with Anecdotes, pamphlet, 1794; and for specimens of his wit Rogers's Recollections; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 25, 115.]

J. A. H.

ERSKINE, THOMAS (1788-1864), judge, fourth son of Thomas, first lord Erskine [q. v., by his first wife, Agnes, daughter of Daniel Moore, was born 12 March 1788 at 10 Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street. He was brought up at Hampstead and educated at the grammar school there, and at a Mr. Foothead's, and was afterwards under Drs. Drury and Butler at Harrow, where he was a schoolfellow of Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, Byron, and Hook. On becoming lord chancellor his father made him, still a schoolboy, his secretary of presentations, which threw him much into fashionable society. He was, however, entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, and being a peer's son graduated M.A. without residence or examination in 1811, on the inauguration of the Duke of Gloucester as chancellor. In 1807 he was entered at Lincoln's Inn, and became a pupil of Joseph Chitty [q. v.] He became a special pleader in 1810, and practised with success; was called to the bar in 1813, and having first joined the home circuit transferred himself to the western. He took no part in politics but pursued his practice, became a king's counsel in 1827, and took a leading place on his circuit. He was clear and acute rather than rhetorical, and had a strong comprehension of technicalities, being thus in sharp contrast to his father. The Bankruptcy Act, 1 and 2 Wm. IV, c. 56, established a court of review of four judges, and Lord Brougham appointed him to the chief judgeship on 20 Oct. 1831, a post which he filled with credit. also sworn of the privy council. On the death of Alan Park, he succeeded him, 9 Jan. 1839, as a judge of the common pleas, but continued to hold his bankruptcy judgeship till November 1842. In his new capacity his chief act was presiding at the spring assizes at York in 1840, at the political trials, which he did so fairly as to receive the арplause even of the Northern Star,' Feargus O'Connor's paper. In 1844 he was attacked by tubercular disease of the lungs, and resigned his judgeship in November, but lived,

He was