cabinet councils, to investigate a Berkeley or Roxburghe peerage claim, or preside at the trial of a queen. Moreover, the relief afforded by the creation of the vice-chancellor's court fell far short of what was anticipated. Not a few of the hasty decisions of Sir John Leach were overruled by Eldon on appeal or rehearing, and some on fresh evidence. This practice of admitting fresh evidence on appeal or rehearing, however conducive to the interests of justice, was certainly calculated to impair the authority of the court below, and was severely criticised by James Abercromby (afterwards Lord Dunfermline) [q. v.] in the House of Commons on 24 Feb. 1824. Misled by an inaccurate report of his speech, Eldon publicly denounced the charge as an ‘utter falsehood,’ for which breach of privilege he narrowly escaped the censure of parliament, and tendered an apology. With all his hesitancy, no judge knew better how to make up for lost time; and, when so minded, he would fairly weary out his counsel by his energy and assiduity. That, after all, the quantity of business of which he disposed during his tenure of the great seal was not disproportionate to its duration is attested by the space occupied by his decisions, even when allowance is made for their prolixity, in the ‘Reports’ of Vesey, jun., and his contemporaries and successors, Rose, Beames, Cooper, Merivale, Buck, Swanston, Jacob and Walker, Jacob, Wilson, Turner and Russell, Glyn and Jameson, Dow and Bligh.
Eldon was F.R.S., F.S.A., a governor of the Charterhouse, and a trustee of the British Museum. He was painted by Thomas (afterwards Sir Thomas) Lawrence while he was attorney-general. His portrait by William Owen, painted in 1812, is in the Guildhall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The National Portrait Gallery has a replica of another portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence—the original, done in 1824, is at Windsor Castle—and his bust by Tatham, done in 1831. Another portrait, by Pickersgill, is at Merchant Taylors' Hall, London. His visit to Oxford in 1834 is commemorated by one of Briggs's compositions, representing him seated, while Lord Encombe, in academical costume, bows to kiss his hand. The new library at University College, Oxford, contains a colossal statue of him in Carrara marble, on the same base with that of Lord Stowell, both by George Nelson from models by Musgrave Lewthwaite. Engravings of his bust by Sievier, done in 1824, are at the British Museum.
[Twiss's Life of Lord-chancellor Eldon (1844); Townsend's Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges (1846); Surtees's Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon (1846); Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors (1847); Law Review, i. 249, ii. 276, iii. 44; Legal Observer, i. 193, 209, xv. 208, 311; Law Mag. xxxiii. 347; Brougham's Memoirs, ii. 413, and Historical Sketches of Statesmen (1839), ii. 54; Bennet's Biogr. Sketches (1867), p. 57; Gent. Mag. 1817 ii. 554, 1831 i. 648, 1832 ii. 186, 1838 i. 313; Observations on the Judges of the Court of Chancery, and the Practice and Delays complained of in that Court (1823); Edinburgh Rev. xxxix. 246, lxxxi. 131; Quarterly Rev. lxxiv. 71; Westminster Rev. xlii. 456; North British Rev. ii. 212; Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. xiv. 627, xviii. 212, lxi. 245; Brown's Cases in Parliament, ii. 146; Cases in the House of Lords (1781); Parl. Hist. xxiv–xxxvi, and Hansard's Parl. Deb.; Howell's State Trials, xxiv.–xxv.; Commons' Journals, xxxvi. 437, xxxviii. 285; Lords' Journals, xxxvi. 279; Wraxall's Mem. ed. Wheatley; Romilly's Mem.; Buckingham's Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George III, the Regency, and George IV; Phipps's Memoirs of Robert Plumer Ward, i. 371, ii. 69; Diaries of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury (1844), iv. 31, 223; Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, ii. 277–9; Russell's Life of Fox, iii. 325; Stapleton's Life of Canning, p. 207; Yonge's Life of Lord Liverpool; Lord Auckland's Correspondence; Plunket's Life of Lord Plunket; Scarlett's Life of Lord Abinger, p. 89; Peel's Memoirs, ed. Stanhope and Cardwell, i. 275; Greville's Memoirs of George IV and William IV; R. I. and S. Wilberforce's Life of William Wilberforce; Arnould's Life of Lord Denman, i. 233; Martin's Life of Lord Lyndhurst, pp. 262–9; Butler's Reminiscences, 4th edit. p. 135; Brand's Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mackenzie's Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 217.]
SCOTT, JOHN (1798–1846), surgeon, born in 1798, was only son of James Scott, a general practitioner of medicine, living at Bromley in Kent. His father acquired a large practice, and was particularly successful in the treatment of chronic ulcers and of diseased joints. John Scott was educated first at a private school in Sevenoaks, and afterwards at the Charterhouse. He was then apprenticed to Sir William Blizard [q. v.], the senior surgeon to the London Hospital in Whitechapel. He was admitted a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries on 29 April 1819, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 2 June 1820.
He practised with his father at Bromley for a short time, but after marrying he came to London, and was living in New Broad Street in 1824. On 24 Nov. 1826 he was elected surgeon to the Ophthalmic Hospital in Moorfields in succession to [Sir] William Lawrence. Scott was elected assistant sur-
