Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, in the prosecution of Thomas Hardy and his old enemy Horne Tooke; in 1796 he, with the Hon. Thomas Erskine, afterwards lord chancellor, was assigned by the court as counsel for the defence of William Stone, charged with high treason as a champion of the French revolution, and the prisoner's acquittal was doubtless in some measure due to Adair's energetic conduct of his case (State Trials, xxv. 1320 et seq.). Adair's horror of the French revolution did not, however, diminish with his years; at an advanced age he joined a force of London volunteers, raised in 1798, when England was menaced with invasion. The fatiguing discipline to which he thus subjected himself shortened his life. He died suddenly while returning from shooting exercise on 21 July 1798, and was buried in the Bunhill Fields burying-ground, near his parents' graves. At the time of his death he was king's prime serjeant-at-law, M.P. for Higham Ferrers, and chief justice of Chester.
Adair is the reputed author of: 1. ‘Thoughts on the Dismission of Officers, civil and military, for their conduct in Parliament,’ 1764, 8vo. 2. ‘Observations on the Power of Alienation in the Crown before the first of Queen Anne, supported by precedents, and the opinions of many learned judges, together with some remarks on the conduct of Administration respecting the case of the Duke of Portland,’ 1786, 8vo. 3. ‘Discussions of the Law of Libels,’ 1786, 8vo. Almon in his ‘Anecdotes’ fully summarises the first two of these pamphlets, and applauds ‘the learned serjeant's regard for the constitution,’ his ability as a lawyer, and his honesty as a man.
[Gent. Mag. lxviii. part ii. 720–1; Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Almon's Anecdotes (1797), i. 82–92; Junius printed by Woodfall (1872), iii. 380 et seq.]
ADAIR, JAMES MAKITTRICK (1728–1802), originally named James Makittrick, was a native of Inverness, and took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh in 1766. He practised before and after that date at Antigua, and one of his works, with the title of ‘Unanswerable Arguments against the Abolition of the Slave Trade,’ was in vindication of the manners of its residents. His medical writings enjoyed a considerable reputation on the Continent; his degree thesis on the yellow fever of the West Indies was reprinted in Baldinger's collection of medical treatises (Göttingen, 1776), and his ‘Natural History of Body and Mind’ was also translated abroad. After returning from Antigua he followed his profession at Andover, Guildford, and Bath, and wrote, for the benefit of those resorting to the latter place, a volume of medical cautions for invalids. Wherever he went he provoked animosity. At one time he was in Winchester gaol for sending a challenge to a duel; at another period he was engaged in controversy with Dr. Freeman and Philip Thicknesse. Thicknesse published an angry letter to him in 1787, and Adair replied with an abusive dedication to a volume of essays on fashionable diseases. When Thicknesse wrote his ‘Memoirs and Anecdotes,’ his opponent replied with a list of ‘Facts and Anecdotes’ which he pretended that Thicknesse had omitted. He assumed the name of Adair about 1783; it was probably his mother's maiden name, but Thicknesse asserted that it was stolen from a physician at Spa. His death occurred at Harrogate, 24 April 1802.
[Adair's works; Gent. Mag. 1802, lxxii. part i. 475, 582.]
ADAIR, JOHN (d. 1722), an eminent Scottish surveyor and map maker, lived during the close of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The earliest known mention of his name is by Sir Robert Sibbald, his patron, from whom Adair received his first public employment. In ‘An Account of the Scottish Atlas,’ a kind of prospectus published in Edinburgh, 1683, we read: ‘The Lords of His Majesties Privy Council in Scotland gave commission to John Adair, mathematician and skilfull mechanick, to survey the shires. And the said John Adair, by taking the distances of the seuerall angles from the adjacent hills, had designed most exact maps, and hath lately made an hydrographical map of the river of Forth geometrically surueyed; wherein, after a new and exact way, are set down all the isles, blind-rocks, shelves and sands, with an exact draught of the coasts, with all its bayes, headlands, ports, havens, towns, and other things remarkable, the depths of the water through the whole Frith, with the courses from each point [of the compass], the prospect and view of the remarkable islands, headlands, and other considerable landmarks. And he is next to survey the shire of Perth, and to make two maps thereof, one of the south side, and another of the north. He will likewise be ready to design the maps of the other shires, that were not done before, providing he may have sufficient allowance thereof. And that those who are concerned may be the better perswaded thereto, there is joyned with this account the map of Clackmannan Shire taken off the copper plate done for it, where may be seen not only the towns, hills, rivers, and lakes, but also
