Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/411

 Nottingham [1862], p. 180; Browne's Hist. Congr. Norf. and Suff. 1877, p. 421; Christian Life, 6 Jan. 1883, p. 9.] 

SCARISBRICK, EDWARD (1639–1709), jesuit. [See .]

SCARLE, JOHN (d. 1403?), chancellor, no doubt derived his name from Scarle in Lincolnshire, in which county a family of the name occurs in the reign of Edward III (Abbrev. Rot. Orig. ii. 121, 155). He was acting as a clerk in chancery on 8 July 1378 (Cal. Pat. Rolls, Richard II, i. 259). On 6 April 1379 he was collated to a prebend at Aberguylly, and on 19 July 1379 exchanged his living of Holm-by-the-Sea, Norfolk, for the living of South Kelsey, Lincolnshire (ib. i. 329, 373). He was a receiver of petitions from Gascony in the parliaments of October 1382, November 1383, and April 1384 (Rot. Parl. iii. 133, 150, 166), and of petitions from England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, in the parliament of November 1384, and in each succeeding parliament down to February 1397; he was also clerk of the parliament from November 1384 to February 1397 (ib. iii. 184–337). On 22 July 1394 he was made keeper of the rolls, and in this capacity had several times custody of the great seal, as in October November 1396 (Fœdera, vii. 809, 840). On 11 Sept. 1397 Scarle resigned his office at the rolls, and once more became a clerk in chancery (, Hist. Norfolk, i. 118). After the arrest of Richard II, he was appointed chancellor on 5 Sept. 1399, and was continued in that office on the accession of Henry IV, till 9 March 1401 (Fœdera, viii. 181). He was present in the council, March 1401, 5 July, and 24 Aug. 1401; in January 1403 he was one of the commissioners in the proceedings concerning the alien priories (, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, i. 126, 146, 168, 191–7). On 27 Sept. 1401 Scarle was appointed archdeacon of Lincoln, and was admitted 1 Dec. following; according to Le Neve, the archdeaconry was voided by Scarle's death before 29 April 1403 (Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii. 45). If this is correct, he cannot be the John Scarle who received the livings of Mannington and Saxthorp, Norfolk, in 1404 (, Hist. Norfolk, vi. 467). Scarle's house in London was in Chancery Lane, on the site of what was afterwards Serjeants' Inn.



SCARLETT, JAMES, first (1769–1844), lord chief baron of the exchequer, was born on 13 Dec. 1769 in Jamaica, where his family held considerable property, and had long been resident. He was the second son of Robert Scarlett of Duckett's Spring in the parish of St. James, Jamaica, by his wife Elizabeth, widow of a Mr. Wright, and daughter of Colonel Philip Anglin of Paradise Estate in the same island. His younger brother, Sir Philip Anglin Scarlett, who died in October 1831, was for some years chief justice of Jamaica. In the summer of 1785 James was sent to England in order to complete his education, and on 9 Sept. 1785 was admitted a member of the Inner Temple. A few weeks afterwards he was admitted as a fellow commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he commenced to reside in November 1785. While at the university he refused to join the ‘True Blue Club,’ and acquired the reputation of a hard-reading man; he formed a friendship with [q. v.], from whom he received much assistance in the direction of his studies. Owing to his desire ‘for an early establishment in life,’ Scarlett declined to wait until he could go in for honours, and took his B.A. in June 1789 (Memoir, p. 42). By the advice of his friend Romilly, Scarlett, on taking up his quarters in the Temple, studied law for a year by himself, and subsequently became the pupil of George Wood, the special pleader, who afterwards became a baron of the exchequer. He was called to the bar on 28 July 1791, and graduated M.A. in 1794. After some doubts, for he was entirely without professional connections, he joined the northern circuit and the Lancashire sessions. His success was gradual and the result of steady application.

He married some twelve months after his call, and his professional income for the first time exceeded his expenditure in 1798, when his father died. He quitted the Lancashire sessions, where he had obtained a great deal of work, in 1807, and soon afterwards found himself in the command of every variety of business; but, by the advice of Plumer, he ultimately confined himself to the court of king's bench and the northern circuit. Though he applied to Lord Eldon for silk in 1807, he did not become a king's counsel until March 1816. From this time to the close of 1834 Scarlett ‘had a longer series of success than has ever fallen to the lot of any other man in the