Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/116

 of the lords of the articles for the barons, an honour frequently afterwards conferred on him, although obtained by no one else under the rank of a peer. On 24 Nov. he was styled a justice, in the absence of the justice-general, in a commission appointed to do justice on the ‘malt makers of Leith for common oppression through the exorbitant dearth raised by them, and of their causing through the whole realm’ (Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 315; Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1403–1528, p. 229). On the institution of the college of justice on 13 May 1532, he was nominated the first justice on the temporal side, but died before 19 Nov. of the same year. By his wife, Janet Lundy, daughter of Thomas Lundy of Lundy, he had two sons, Sir William, father of Sir James Scott (fl. 1579–1606) [q. v.], and Thomas (1480?–1539) [q. v.] 

SCOTT, WILLIAM (d. 1656), of Clerkington, was the eldest son of Laurence Scott of Harprig, advocate, clerk to the privy council, and one of the clerks of the court of session. In November 1641 he was knighted by Charles I. Like his father, he was one of the clerks of session, and after the enactment of the act of classes rendering it impossible for those who took part in the engagement on behalf of Charles I to hold office, he was in June 1649 appointed an ordinary lord of session with the title of Lord Clerkington. In 1645 he had been chosen to represent the county of Haddington in parliament, and in 1650 was chosen a commissioner for the county of Edinburgh. He was also one of the committee of estates, and took a prominent part in affairs at the period of Charles II's recall to Scotland in June 1650. He died on 23 Dec. 1656. By his first wife, a daughter of Morrison of Prestongrange, he had one son, Laurence; and by his second wife, Barbara, daughter of Sir John Dalmahoy of Dalmahoy, bart., he had three sons and three daughters. The sons were: John, who succeeded his brother Laurence, obtained from his father in patrimony the lands and barony of Malleny, and was the ancestor of the Scotts of Malleny; James of Scotsloch; and Robert, dean of Hamilton. 

SCOTT, WILLIAM (1674?–1725), of Thirlestane, Latin lyrist, eldest son of Francis Scott, bart., of Thirlestane, Selkirkshire, and Lady Henrietta, daughter of William Kerr, third earl of Lothian [q. v.], was born after 1673, in which year his parents were married (, Book of Buccleuch). He was admitted a member of the faculty of advocates on 25 Feb. 1702. On 20 May 1719 he executed a deed of entail of his lands of Thirlestane. He died on 8 Oct. 1725. Scott married, in 1699, Elizabeth, only surviving child of Margaret, baroness Napier, and her husband, John Brisbane, son of an Edinburgh writer. After her decease he married Jean, daughter of Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton, East Lothian, and widow of Sir William Scott of Harden. Francis Scott, son of the first marriage, became the fifth baron Napier (ancestor of Lord Napier and Ettrick) on the death of his grandmother, who was predeceased by his mother.

Scott contributed to Dr. Archibald Pitcairne's ‘Selecta Poemata,’ 1726, proving himself a scholarly writer of sentimental and humorous lyrics, and an adept at macaronic verse. In the preface to the volume his literary merits are highly extolled by several contemporaries. A direct family tradition, starting from his son, assigns to him the somewhat broad but decidedly appreciative and diverting Scottish ballad, the ‘Blythsome Wedding,’ which is also claimed for Francis Sempill [q. v.] Scott's powers no doubt were equal to the achievement; and, though there exists nothing else of like character that is undoubtedly his, the tradition compels attention. 

SCOTT, WILLIAM (1745–1836), fourth child and eldest son of William Scott of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who was at various times a ‘hoastman’ and ‘coal-fitter’ or coal-shipper, and a small publican, by his second wife, Jane, daughter of Henry Atkinson, a local tradesman, was born 17 Oct. 1745 (O.S.) The public alarm at the Jacobite rebellion and General Cope's defeat at Prestonpans caused his mother to remove for her confinement to her father's country house at Heworth, a place about three miles from Newcastle, and on the Durham side of the Tyne; it is said that, as the town gates were shut and egress forbidden, she was lowered from the walls into a boat. At any rate, but for the lucky accident of his birth in the county of Durham, neither he nor his brother John, afterwards Lord Eldon [q. v.], was likely to have gone to Oxford. For some years William