Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/447

 conclusion of the war (Rex v. Dowley, 4 East's Reports, p. 512), a more congenial task, and on 19 March 1804, in his last speech in the House of Commons, opposed, also with success, the clause forbidding resignations, which was inserted in the Volunteers' Consolidation Bill.

In 1806, after Pitt's death, it became necessary to include some of the whigs in the Grenville administration. Eldon was not sufficiently loyal to a mixed cabinet of colleagues to be trusted with the seals, and, after being refused by Lord Ellenborough and Sir James Mansfield, chief justice of the common pleas, they were on 7 Feb. 1806 given to Erskine. The appointment was generally condemned. He had refused to hold briefs before the House of Lords and privy council, was ignorant of equity, and experienced only as an advocate at nisi prius. 'He is totally unfit for the situation,' writes Romilly. From this time he sank into comparative insignificance. He took his title, Baron Erskine of Restormel, from the castle of that name in Cornwall, out of compliment to the Prince of Wales. His motto, 'Trial by jury,' was much derided. He took his seat on 10 Feb., and being quick, cautious, and attentive, and receiving some assistance from the equity counsel in practice before him, made few blunders as a judge; but he was ignorant of real property law and neglected to study it, contenting himself with making Hargrave a queen's counsel and employing him to work up authorities. In his hands equitable principles received little development or adaptation, though his decisions do not deserve the title of the 'Apocrypha,' which they received. His only considerable decision is Thelusson v. Woodford (, Reports, p. 249), on the doctrine of election by an heir. But his chief judicial act was to preside at the trial of Lord Melville in June 1806, which he insisted must, unlike Hastings's impeachment, proceed de die in diem, and be conducted according to regular legal forms. In most of the divisions in this trial he voted in the minority for finding Lord Melville guilty. In the House of Lords he was assisted on appeals by Lords Eldon and Redesdale, and deferred greatly to them, and on one occasion, when sitting at first instance, was assisted by Sir William Grant, master of the rolls. On 7 June 1800 he, with Lords Grenville, Spencer, and Ellenborough, was commissioned by the king to inquire into the charges against the Princess of Wales of adultery with Sir Sidney Smith and others. The charges were declared groundless.

In the ministry he was not much consulted, nor did he very frequently take part in the debates of the House of Lords. He was not informed of Lord Howick's bill for allowing Roman catholics to hold commissions in the army until it was about to be introduced, and did not speak at all from the meeting of the new parliament in December 1806 until March 1807. Earlier in 1806 he had defended the inclusion in the cabinet of Lord Ellenborough, though lord chief justice, and had supported the hill for the immediate abolition of the slave trade. After the king's insurmountable opposition to Lord Howick's bill had brought the ministry face to face with resignation, Erskine was much chagrined at the prospect of losing office, and Lord Holland's account of the cabinet of 10 Feb. shows that he struggled hard to avoid the necessity of adhering to his colleagues (, Memoirs, ii. 184). When the king demanded his ministry's written promise never again to propose to him a relaxation of the Roman catholic penal laws, Erskine went to expostulate with him, and in a long interview on 14 March imagined that he had converted him. On the 24th, however, the intrigues of Eldon and the Duke of Cumberland succeeded, and the king dismissed his ministers. Some suspicion was caused by the fact that Erskine did not resign the seals till 1 April. This was not, however, due to his having abandoned his colleagues, but was intended to give him time to deliver judgment in pending cases in which he had already heard all the arguments. He, however, somewhat unfairly, took the opportunity in the interval to prevail on Sir William Pepys to resign his mastership in chancery, and to appoint to the vacant post Edward Morris, his own son-in-law. The mode in which this change of ministry took place was so extraordinary that strong hopes were entertained of a return of the ministry of 'All the Talents' to office, but when, a few months later, this seemed immediately probable, Romilly observes that Erskine was not likely to be chancellor again, 'his incapacity for the office was too forcibly and too generally felt.' From this time Erskine gradually dropped out of public life. On 13 April he defended the conduct of the late ministry in refusing the pledge demanded of them, and in the new parliament he moved that the king's personal inclinations ought not to be of any binding effect on ministers (26 June), but the motion was lost by 67 to 160. In this new parliament the whigs were almost annihilated, the ministerial majority being two hundred, and, like many other whigs, Erskine almost entirely neglected parliament for some