Erskine, HENRY

Erskine, HENRY, second son of the tenth Earl of Buchan, was born in Edinburgh, 1st November 1746, and was educated at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. He joined the Scottish bar in 1768. His rise was immediate, and commenced, like that of his rival Henry Dundas, from his appearances in the debates of the General Assembly. Under the short-lived coalition ministry of Fox and North, he became Lord Advocate (1783), an office to which he was again appointed in 1806. In 1785 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, but in 1796 was deposed in favour of Robert Dundas of Arniston. This mark of professional censure was intended by the Faculty to stigmatise Erskine's conduct in attending a public meeting and supporting a resolution protesting against the 'Seditious Writings Bill' proposed by the government. Lord Cockburn justly says, 'It was the Faculty of Advocates alone that suffered.' Erskine was elected member for the Haddington burghs in March 1806, and in the following November for the Dumfries burghs. He died at Amondeil, his seat near Midcalder, 8th October 1817. During his second tenure of the office of Lord Advocate, Erskine practically carried into effect some of the legal reforms for which a pamphlet, published in London in 1807, and attributed to him on good authority, pleaded forcibly—viz. the introduction of jury trial in civil cases, and the abolition of the rule by which the fifteen judges of the Court of Session sat together. He was the author of several metrical translations from the classics, and other poems, of which the best known is The Emigrant (1773), inspired by the depopulation of the Highlands. Erskine's forensic style was the delight of his contemporaries, and the recorded fragments of his speeches justify his high reputation as an orator and a wit, and warrant the conclusion that, had Henry Erskine, in his own witty language, 'played at the guinea tables' in London, instead of 'at the stilling tables' in Edinburgh, he would have been no unworthy rival to his distinguished brother, Lord Erskine. See Colonel Alexander Fergusson's Henry Erskine (1882).