250 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1816 



dine with the Club on 27th June. This remarkable man 

 was the youngest son of the tenth Earl of Buchan. He 

 began his varied career at the age of fourteen by entering 

 the Navy, much against his own inclinations, and he served 

 as a midshipman for four years (1764-1768) in the West 

 Indies. He escaped from this mode of life by using up all 

 his patrimony in purchasing a commission in the army 

 in 1768, and when stationed for a time in Minorca devoted 

 his time to an earnest course of reading in English literature. 

 After he returned to England in 1772, he happened to 

 attend an assise court, and appears to have been impressed 

 with the conviction that he was himself more fit to be a 

 barrister than a soldier. On the advice of Lord Mansfield 

 he then resolved to take up the law as his profession. In 

 the spring of 1775 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. Next 

 year he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a gentleman 

 commoner and took an honorary M.A. in 1778. In the 

 same year he was called to the bar and at once attained 

 unprecedented success by his defence of a client against 

 a charge of libel brought by the first Lord of the Admiralty. 

 It is related that on the close of this case he was surrounded 

 by attornies, to the number, he used to say, of sixty-five, 

 all with their retainers to secure his future aid. He increased 

 his reputation by subsequent splendid displays of forensic 

 talent. He entered Parliament in 1783, and took an active 

 part as a debater in the House of Commons. In 1806 he was 

 appointed Lord Chancellor and raised to the peerage with the 

 title of Baron Erskine of Restormel. But he soon thereafter 

 retired from public life. His wife had long predeceased him, 

 and he gave the last touch of romance to his career when 

 he was about seventy, by marrying again at Gretna Green, 

 the second wife being a Miss Mary Buck. 1 He died in 1823. 



1 Sir Henry Holland, who knew him in his later years, records that 

 " his mind was then clouded with little foibles and superstitions. I well 

 recollect a dinner at Sir S. Romilly's, where his agitation was curiously 

 shown in his reluctance to sit down as one of thirteen at table, and by 

 the relief he expressed when the fourteenth guest came in. His life had 

 been one of meteoric kind throughout, vanishing in mist, as such lives are 

 prone to do." Recollections, p. 244. 



