LIVES OF THE 33 LORD CHANCELLORS OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER CXCI. LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR ELDON FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HIS MARRIAGE. HAPPILY for myself and my readers, I approach the termination of my biographical labours I Only one deceased Chancellor remains to be recorded by me. began with Augmendus, who in the seventh century was Chancellor to Ethelbert, the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, and I have to finish with John Scott, Lord Eldon, who was Chancellor to George III. and George IV., and, having struggled to return to power under William IV., died in the reign of Queen Victoria. I am now appalled by the difficulty of knowing too well the subject of my memoir, and by the consideration that it is to be read by surviving partisans and attached relatives of this great man. I often practised before him, and I was honoured with some notice from him in private; -but, unluckily, I took an interest in political strife for a large portion of the period during which he occupied the wool-sack, almost uniformly disapproving of his principles;-and I afterwards actually held office under an Administration to whose measures he was violently opposed. Thus, with the advantage of personal observation, I have to encounter the suspicion of political enmity. I have sufficient confidence, however, in my own impartiality to proceed with boldness; and while I trust that I shall not deal out praise to his merits with a niggardly hand, dread of the imputation of party bias shall not deter me from pointing out his defects, or censuring his misconduct. We biographers generally make it equally redound to the credit of our hero, whether he be of illustrious or of humble parentage, saying, with the same complacency, "he was the worthy descendant of a long line of noble ancestors," or "he raised himself by his talents, being the first of his race ever known to fame." Although the latter glory un doubtedly belongs to Lord Eldon, an absurd attempt has been made to trace his pedigree to SIR MICHAEL SCOTT of Balwearie, in the county of Fife, who, in the fourteenth century, was one of the ambassadors sent to bring the "Maid of Norway" to Scotland, upon the death of ALEXANDER III., and who is celebrated for his magical incantations in the "INFERNO,"* and in the "LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL." He might with more probability have been connected with DUNS SCOTUS, the enemy of the Tomists, who undoubtedly was of a Northumbrian family; but the truth is, that both he and his brother Lord Stowell had much too great a share of good sense and good taste to set up an unfounded claim to gentility of blood. When they were rising in the world, and found it necessary to have arms,-the seal used by their father having had nothing engraved upon it except W. S., his initials,-after looking at the armorial bearings of the different families of the name of Scott, they accidentally chose the "three lions' heads erased gules," formerly borne by the Scotts of Balwearie, and now the just boast of their representative, Sir William Scott of Ancrum. From the interesting "Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon," by their relative, Mr. Surtees, it appears quite clear that they could not go further back in their genealogy than their grandfather, William Scott of Sandgate, who is said to have been clerk to a "fitter," and who, in the latter part of his life, himself became the owner of several "keels,”—a "fitter” being the person who buys and sells coals between the owner of the mine and the shipper, and who conveys them in "keels," or barges, from the higher parts of the Tyne to Newcastle or Shields, where they are loaded for expor tation. Sandgate, an old street by the water-side beyond, the walls of Newcastle, bearing a great resemblance to Wapping, had long been connected with this trade,-as we learn from an ancient ballad, set to a tune well known through the North as the "Keel-row,"—of which the following is the first stanza: "As I came thro' Sandgate, thro' Sandgate, thro' Sandgate, Wheel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row; * "Quell' altro che ne' fianchi è così poco "In these far climes it was my lot Inferno, canto xx. That when to Salamanca's cave Lay of Last Minstrel, canto ii. I never heard the Chancellor accused of dealing in the black art; and I do not discover any resemblance between him and his supposed ancestor. This is taken from a Fife song, which I was taught when a child :"O weel may the boatie row, That fills a heavy creel, This William Scott had a son William, who on the first of September, 1716, was bound apprentice for seven years to a coalfitter in Newcastle, with a fee of 57.,-and whose indenture of apprenticeship is the first written muniment of a family destined to such distinction. The boy is here described as "son of William Scott of Sandgate, yeoman." This is not at all inconsistent with the representation that he had become a keel-owner, for "yeoman" did not necessarily mean, as we now understand it, "the cultivator of his own little farm," but simply meant "a householder of too poor estate to allow of his designation either as a gentleman or merchant, yet raised above the ranks of servile drudgery." The Scotts of Sandgate well exemplify the quaint definition which the venerable Fuller gives of this class: "The good yeoman is a gentleman in ore, whom the next age may see refined; and is the wax, capable of a gentle impression when the Prince shall stamp it." William, the younger, showed great prudence, steadiness, and shrewdness; and when out of his apprenticeship, becoming himself "a fitter," and commencing with the "keels" he inherited from his father, amassed considerable substance. To swell his profits, he is said at one time to have kept a sort of public-house, near the Quay at Newcastle, for the purpose of supplying his own keelmen with their liquor, on the principle of the truck system. He afterwards became a large ship-owner, and engaged in the maritime insurance then in vogue, called "bottomry." By "servitude" he was entitled to the freedom of the town of Newcastle, which he took up on the 25th of August, 1724; and on the 7th of September, in the same year, he was admitted into the "Hoastmans' Company" which his sons used to observe was the most reputable in the whole corporation. He seems by his industry and frugality to have risen to high consideration among the trading community of his native town, although he mixed little in society, and read no books except his Bible and his ledger. He [AUG. 18, 1740.] married the daughter of Mr. Atkinson of Newcastle, a woman who was And cleads us a', frae head to feet, And buys our parritch meal. And happy be the lot of a' That wish the boatie speed." One stanza is particularly touching: "When Jamie vow'd he would be mine, And wan frae me my heart, O! muckle lighter grew my creel! He swore we'd never part. The boatie rows, the boatie rows, And muckle lighter is the lade When love bears up the creel."1 1 "Creel" is the basket in which the Scottish poissardes carry fish on their backs to market. *Surtees, p. 3. the model of all the domestic virtues, and of such superior understanding that to her is traced the extraordinary talent which distinguished her two sons, William and John,-Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon. Their destiny was materially influenced by the chivalrous effort, in the year 1745, to restore the House of Stuart to the [A. D. 1745.] throne. If Prince Charles and his gallant band had not crossed the Border, William would never have been a Fellow of University College, Oxford, and in all probability John never would have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. Although William's birth certainly took place in the county of Durham instead of Northumberland from the advance of the rebel army to the Tyne, there are two representations of the circumstances attending his mother's flight previous to this event. According to the more romantic story, Mrs. Scott, dreading the violence of the Highlanders, about whom the most frightful rumours were spread,when they approached Newcastle, resolved to hide herself in the country; but she found all the gates shut and fortified, and egress strictly interdicted to all persons of every degree; whereupon, although very near her confinement, she caused herself to be hoisted over the wall in a large basket and descended safely to the water-side; there a boat; lying in readiness to receive her, conveyed her to Heworth, a village distant only about four miles from Newcastle, but on the right bank of the Tyne. Here she was delivered the same night of twins, William [OCT. 1745.] and Barbara-But the following is the account of the affair by Mrs. Foster, a grand-daughter of Mrs. Scott, from whom she says she had heard it hundreds of times:-"My grandmother Scott being with child in the year of the rebellion 1745, it was deemed more prudent for her to be confined at my grandfather's country house at Heworth than in the town of Newcastle. She was therefore attended at Heworth by a midwife, who delivered her of a male infant (afterwards Lord Stowell;) but some difficulty arising in the birth of the second child, a man on horseback was despatched to Whickham for Dr. Askew, a medical practitioner of considerable eminence at that time. Dr. Askew not being at home, the man proceeded to Newcastle for Mr. Hallowel. When Mr. Hallowel reached the town gate, it was, on account of the Rebellion, closed for the night; and further delay becoming serious,instead of waiting until permission was procured from the mayor for his egress, he was let down from the top of the town wall, on the south [A. D. 1751.] delivered my grandmother."* side, and proceeded immediately to Heworth, where he After the retreat of the Chevalier from Derby, by the western side of the island, she returned to her husband's house in Love Lane, Newcastle, and there, in 1751, on the 4th of June, the birth-day of George III., she produced her son John, the future Chancellor, who was likewise accompanied by a twin sister, and was baptized along with her at All Saints' Church on the 4th day of July following. Love Lane is a narrow passage between two streets-in Scotland called a "wynd,"—and in *Letter to the present Earl of Eldon, 14th June, 1810.-Twiss, i. 23. Newcastle a "chare," the lower extremity being there called the "chare-foot ;" and Lord Eldon, who had always genuine delight in referring to native localities, used to amuse the Chancery Bar by declaring that "he ought not to complain of a small and inconvenient Court, as he was born in a chare foot.' 米 I find nothing remarkable related of our Chancellor's infancy-nor any omen of his future greatness--except that he showed he was born with the faculty of always lighting on his legs. His elder sister, Barbara, used to relate that "during one of their mother's confinements Master Jackey being in her room in a go-cart, the nurse quitted her for something that was wanted, leaving the door open; away went Mr. Jackey after her, tumbling down a whole flight of steps, go-cart and all; but though his mamma, who was unable to get out of bed to stop him, got a dreadful fright, he took no harm, and was found standing bolt upright in the passage below." He was taught to read by a master whom I suspect to have been a Scotsman, from his being called Dominie Warden, and his mode of "muffling the consonants," in which I was myself initiated. But the success in life of both brothers is mainly to be ascribed to the admirable instruction they received from the Rev. Mr. Moises, master of the Free Grammar School at Newcastle,-under whom they laid in a large stock of classical learning, and accquired a habit of steady application, enabling them to overcome every difficulty which they had afterwards to encounter. said against this zealous teacher was, that he was too much accustomed to mix his conversation with grave appeals to his conscience and his God-setting an example which at least one of his pupils very sedulously followed. The only thing that could be [1760-1765.] We have a striking illustration of "the boy being the father of the man," in an authentic account of the difference between the two brothers in their Sunday evening performances: "When asked to give an account of the sermon, their father's weekly custom, William would repeat a sort of digest of the general argument—a condensed summary of what he had heard; John, on the other hand, would recapitulate the minutiæ of the discourse, and reiterate the very phrase of the preacher. He showed a memory the most complete and exact, but failed in giving the whole scope and clear general view of the sermon, embodied in half the number of words by the elder brother." Lawyers immediately conceive themselves first delighted with a judgment of Lord Stowell, in *Mr. Twiss tells a story, that "at the Newcastle Assizes, in a case where a witness swore that at a certain time he saw three men come out of the foot of a chare, the Judge, who tried the indictment, recommended it to the jury to take no notice of this evidence, as being obviously that of an insane person. The foreman of the jury, however, restored the credit of the witness, by explaining that the chare from whose foot the three men had been seen to issue was not an article of furniture, but a narrow street.'" Vol. i. p. 25. † According to this mode of teaching the alphabet, a vowel is placed before, instead of after, the consonants. Townsend's Life of Lord Stowell. |