Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, (10 January 1750 – 17 November 1823) was a British lawyer and Whig politician who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1806 to 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents.
The youngest son of the 10th Earl of Buchan, Erskine had brief careers in the Royal Navy and British Army before gaining a degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. Called to the Bar in 1778, he soon established a profitable legal practice. He achieved widespread recognition for his successful defence of radicals, including Thomas Paine, John Horne Tooke, and Thomas Hardy, who were accused of seditious libel and treason. He sat as a member of parliament for Portsmouth from 1783 to 1784 and from 1790 to 1806, though his parliamentary contributions were less acclaimed than his advocacy in court. He was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1806 and created Baron Erskine of Restormel.
Following his departure from office when the ministry fell in 1807, Erskine was not permitted as ex-chancellor to return to legal practice but remained active in the House of Lords. Among the causes he took up in his retirement was animal welfare; he introduced a bill in the House of Lords for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Erskine, who was married twice and had eleven children, died in 1823 at the home of his brother's widow at Almondell in West Lothian and was buried nearby at Uphall.
Background and childhood Erskine was the third and youngest surviving son of Henry David Erskine, 10th Earl of Buchan and Agnes Steuart, the daughter of Sir James Steuart, solicitor general for Scotland. His older brothers were David (Lord Cardross and later the 11th Earl of Buchan) and Henry (later Lord Advocate of Scotland). His elder sister was Lady Anne Agnes Erskine who was involved with the evangelical Methodists of Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.
Erskine was born in a tenement at the head of South Grays Close on the High Street in Edinburgh. His mother undertook much of her children's education as the family, though noble, were not rich.Stryker 1949: 3 The family moved to St Andrews, where they could live more cheaply, and Erskine attended the grammar school there.Hostettler 1996: 5 The family's money having been spent on the education of his older brothers, Erskine, aged fourteen, reluctantly abandoned his formal education for the time being and went to sea as a midshipman. His family meanwhile moved to Bath to become members of the Methodist community headed by Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. Erskine's sister Anne Agnes, was to become treasurer of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon's charities.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 3
Navy, army and legal studies Erskine went to sea as a midshipman in the Tartar, under captain Sir David Lindsay, who was a nephew of Lord Mansfield and a friend of the Erskine family. The Tartar set sail for the Caribbean, where Erskine was to spend the next four years, rising to the rank of acting lieutenant.Hostettler 1996: 6 When Erskine was eighteen he resigned from the Navy. His ship had been paid off, there were no commissions available, and he didn't want to return to sea as a midshipman after having been an acting lieutenant.Stryker 1949: 15 The 10th Earl of Buchan had recently died, and Erskine now had just enough money to buy a commission in the army, becoming an ensign in the 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot.Hostettler 1996: 7 He was stationed first at Berwick-upon-Tweed and then on Jersey. In April 1771, after a six-month leave of absence from the army, Erskine, along with his wife Frances, rejoined his regiment in Minorca, and were there for two years. While he was stationed in Jersey and Minorca, Erskine had on occasion preached sermons to his men, prompting one biographer to say that "a taste for oratory that ultimately would lead on to his true career originated in those soldier sermons".Stryker 1949: 19 He also demonstrated his future skills as an advocate in a pamphlet entitled "Observations on the Prevailing Abuses in the British Army Arising from the Corruption of Civil Government with a Proposal toward Obtaining an Addition to Their Pay".Stryker 1949: 31 Whilst on leave in London, the charming and well-connected young officer was able to mix in literary circles and met Dr Johnson. James Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, recalled meeting "a young officer in the regimentals of the Scots royal, who talked with a vivacity, fluency and precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular attention. He proved to be the Honorable Thomas Erskine, youngest brother to the Earl of Buchan, who has since risen into such brilliant reputation at the Bar in Westminster-hall".Hostettler 1996: 7–8 Although Erskine was appointed a lieutenant in April 1773, he decided to leave the army and, with the encouragement of his family and Lord Mansfield, study for the Bar.Hostettler 1996: 11
Erskine was admitted as a student of Lincoln's Inn on 26 April 1775. He discovered that the period of study required before being called to the Bar could be reduced from five years to three for holders of a degree from Oxford or Cambridge universities. He therefore, on 13 January 1776, entered himself as a gentleman commoner on the books of Trinity College, Cambridge where, as the son of an earl, he was entitled to gain a degree without sitting any examinations. He did however win the English declamation prize for an oration on the "glorious revolution" of 1688.Hostettler 1996: 12 At the same time, he was a pupil in the chambers of first Francis Buller and then George Wood. These were years of poverty for Erskine and his growing family: he installed his wife Frances and the children in cheap lodgings in Kentish Town and survived on a gift of £300 from a relative, and the sale of his army commission.Stryker 1949: 35, 44 Jeremy Bentham, who knew Erskine at this time, described him as "so shabbily dressed as to be quite remarkable".Hostettler 1996: 13
Early legal and political career In the summer of 1778 Erskine was awarded a degree and was called to the Bar on 3 July. While many newly qualified barristers, especially those without contacts to put briefs their way, took years to establish themselves, Erskine's success was immediate and brilliant. His first case, that of Thomas Baillie, came to him by chance. The case involved the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen, of which Captain Baillie was lieutenant-governor. Baillie had uncovered abuses in the management of the hospital and, having failed to interest the directors and governors of the hospital or the lords of the Admiralty, he published a pamphlet and was then sued by the agents of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich who was first lord of the Admiralty and had been placing his agents in positions of authority in the hospital.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 8 Hearing of a newly qualified barrister who had himself been a seaman and was sympathetic to his cause, Baillie appointed Erskine to his team although he already had four counsel. Erskine was the most junior, but it was his brilliant speech that won the case and exonerated Baillie. Despite a warning from the judge, Erskine attacked Lord Sandwich calling him "the dark mover behind the scene of iniquity".Lovat-Fraser 1932: 10 After his success in the Baillie case, Erskine had no shortage of work and a few months later was retained by Admiral Augustus Keppel in his court martial at Portsmouth. Keppel was acquitted and gave Erskine £1,000 in gratitude. For the first time in his life Erskine was financially secure.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 11
In 1781 Erskine had his first opportunity to address a jury when he defended Lord George Gordon who had been charged with high treason for instigating the anti-Catholic riots of 1780. Erskine's defence not only achieved Gordon's acquittal but also dealt a blow to the English legal doctrine of constructive treason.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 13 The case established Erskine as the country's most successful barrister.Stryker 1949: 98 By 1783, when he received a patent of precedence, he had earned enough to pay off all his debts and accumulate £8–9,000. He could afford a country house, Evergreen Villa, in Hampstead as well as a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In 1783, when the Fox-North Coalition came into power, Erskine entered parliament as Whig member for Portsmouth. Erskine's friend Charles James Fox had been eager to have such a brilliant lawyer join the ranks of Whig members, but Erskine's speeches failed to make the impact in parliament that they did in court.Stryker 1949: 111–12. Stryker suggests that this failure has been exaggerated. Erskine lost his seat the following year in the general election, becoming one of "Fox's martyrs" when Pitt's party made large gains, although he would regain the seat in 1790.
Defending radicals and reformers The loss of his parliamentary seat enabled Erskine to concentrate on his legal practice. In 1786, when he was thirty-six years old and had been practising at the Bar for only eight years, he was able to write: "I continue highly successful in my profession, being now, I may say, as high as I can go at the Bar. The rest depends on politics, which at present are adverse."Lovat-Fraser 1932: 30 Amongst his notable cases in 1780s was his successful defence of William Davies Shipley, dean of St Asaph (and son of Jonathan Shipley) who was tried in 1784 at Shrewsbury for seditious libel for publishing Principles of Government, in a Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer, a tract by his brother-in-law Sir William Jones advancing radical views on the relationship between subjects and the state.Stryker 1949: 123 Erskine's defence anticipated the Libel Act 1792 (32 Geo. 3. c. 60), which laid down the principle that it is for the jury (who previously had only decided the question of publication) and not the judge to decide whether or not a publication is a libel.
In 1789 he was counsel for John Stockdale, a bookseller, who was charged with seditious libel in publishing John Logan's pamphlet in support of Warren Hastings, whose impeachment was then proceeding. Erskine's speech, which resulted in the Stockdale's acquittal, argued that a defendant should not be convicted if his composition, taken as a whole, did not go beyond a free and fair discussion, even if selected passages might be libellous. Henry Brougham considered this to be one of Erskine's finest speeches: "It is justly regarded, by all English lawyers, as a consummate specimen of the art of addressing a jury".Lovat-Fraser 1932: 31
Three years later he would, against the advice of his friends, take on the defence of Thomas Paine who had been charged with seditious libel after the publication of the second part of his Rights of Man. Paine was tried in his absence; he was in France. Erskine argued for the right of a people to criticise, reform and change its government; he made the point that a free press produces security in the government.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 44 But in this case his arguments failed to convince the special jury, who returned a verdict of guilty without even retiring. Erskine's speech is also remembered for a passage on the duty of barristers to take on even unpopular cases: I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English Bar, without which impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence. From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practise, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end.Lovat-Fraser 1932: 45
Erskine's decision to defend Paine cost him his position as attorney-general (legal advisor) to the Prince of Wales, to which he had been appointed in 1786.