\"1st Baron Stowell\" William Scott Hand Written Free Frank Dated 1823 COA For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "1st Baron Stowell" William Scott Hand Written Free Frank Dated 1823. 

ES-8635

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell (17

October 1745 – 28 January 1836) was an English judge and jurist. He served as Judge of the

High Court of Admiralty from 1798 to 1828. Scott was born

at Heworth, a village about

four miles from Newcastle upon Tyne, the

son of a tradesman engaged in the transport of coal. His younger brother John Scott became Lord Chancellor and was made Earl of Eldon. He was educated at Newcastle Royal Grammar

School and Corpus Christi College,

Oxford, where he gained a Durham scholarship in 1761. In 1764 he

graduated and became first a probationary fellow and then as successor to

William (afterwards the well known Sir William)

Jones a tutor of University College.

As Camden

reader of ancient history he rivalled the reputation of Blackstone. Although he

had joined the Middle Temple in

1762, it was not till 1776 that Scott devoted himself to a systematic study

of law.

 Scott graduated as doctor of civil law, and,

after a customary year of silence commenced practice in the ecclesiastical courts. His

professional success was rapid. In 1783 he became registrar of the court of

faculties, and in 1788 judge of the consistory court and advocate-general, in

that year too receiving the honour of knighthood; and in 1798 he was made judge of the high court of admiralty. In this capacity he heard on appeal

two important cases having to do with the abolition of the slave trade. On 22

May 1809 HMS Crocodile took Donna Marianna on

the Cape Coast for breach of the Act for the abolition of the slave

trade. The Vice admiralty court at

Sierra Leone condemned the vessel. Although Donna Marianna was

ostensibly a Portuguese vessel, Scott upheld the seizure on the grounds that

she was actually a British vessel and her Portuguese papers were a fraud.

The

second case involved the French ship Le Lois after it had been

seized by the West Africa Squadron for

slave trading off the African coast at Cape Mesurado. HMS Queen Charlotte had

originally vindicated the seizure and confiscation of the ship and cargo.

However Scott overturned this judgement, saying that the way Le Lois had

been stopped and boarded was illegal as "No nation can exercise a right of

visitation and search on the common and unappropriated parts of the sea, save

only on the belligerent claim." He accepted that this would constitute a

serious impediment to the suppression of the slave trade, but argued that this

should be remedied through international treaties rather than Naval officers

exceeding what they were permitted to do.

He

twice contested Oxford

University in 1780 without success, but successfully in 1801.

He also sat for Downton in

1790. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal

Society in 1793.

Upon

the coronation of George IV in

1821 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Stowell, of Stowell Park in the County of Gloucester. taking his title from the name of

his estate. After a life of judicial service Lord Stowell retired from the

bench – from the consistory court in August 1821, and from the high court of

admiralty in December 1827. Lord Stowell married twice. His first marriage, in

1781, was to Anna Maria, eldest daughter and heiress of John Bagnall of Erleigh Court, near Reading, in Berkshire, where the two later resided. They had four

children, one of whom, a daughter, survived him. He married again, in 1813, the

dowager Marchioness of Sligo, née

Louisa Catharine Howe, younger daughter of the first and last Earl

Howe of the 1788 creation, widow of John Browne, 1st Marquess

of Sligo.

He

died on 28 January 1836 at Erleigh Court, aged 90, and the barony became

extinct.