Erskine, Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron 1750-1823
Scottish jurist

Born in Edinburgh, he was sent to sea (1764), and in 1768 bought a commission in the 1st Royals, studying English literature in Minorca (1770-72). He entered Lincoln's Inn (1775) and Trinity College, Cambridge (1776), and was called to the Bar in 1778. His acute legal mind led to immediate success and in 1783 he became a KC, and MP for Portsmouth. A sympathy with the French Revolution led him to join the 'Friends of the People', and to undertake the defence in many political prosecutions of 1793-94. His acceptance of a retainer from Tom Paine cost him the attorney-generalship to the Prince of Wales (held since 1786). Erskine's speeches for Paine, the Scottish radical Thomas Hardy (1794), and John Tooke (1794) are very fine examples of forensic skill, and his defence of Hadfield (1800), indicted for shooting at George III, dismantled the contemporary theory concerning the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill. In 1802 he was appointed Chancellor to the Prince of Wales, an ancient office revived for him, and in 1806 he was appointed Lord Chancellor, but resigned the following year. He published a pamphlet on army abuses (1772), a discussion of the war with France (1797), a political romance (Armata, 1817), a pamphlet in favour of the Greeks, and some poems. He was the brother of David Erskine and the jurist Henry Erskine (1746-1817).

Bibliography: Lloyd Paul Stryker, For the Defense: Thomas Erskine, the Most Enlightened Liberal of His Times 1750-1823 (1947)