Erskine had been annually re-elected Dean of Faculty since 1785; but in consequence of his having presided at a public meeting, held in Edinburgh on 28th November, 1795, to petition against the war, his political adversaries determined to oppose his re-election; and at the meeting of the Faculty on 12th January, 1796, Robert Dundas of Arniston, then Lord Advocate, was chosen Dean. Lord Cockburn, commenting on this incident, observes—“This dismissal was perfectly natural at a time when all intemperance was natural. But it was the Faculty of Advocates alone that suffered. Erskine had long honoured his brethren by his character and reputation, and certainly he lost nothing by being removed from the official chair. It is to the honour of the society, however, that out of 161 who voted, there were 38 who stood true to justice, even in the midst of such a scene” (“Life of Jeffrey,” vol. i., p. 94).
On the death of Lord Eskgrove in October, 1804, Erskine was offered the office of Lord Clerk Register, but declined it, refusing to separate his fortunes from those of his party. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1806 he once more became Lord Advocate, and was at the same time returned member for the Dumfries District of Burghs. The downfall of the Ministry in March, 1807, however, again deprived him of office, and the dissolution in the following month put an end to his Parliamentary career.
In 1811 Lord Justice-Clerk Hope was, on the death of Lord President Blair in May of that year, appointed his successor. Erskine, who was fifteen years Hope’s senior at the bar, being disappointed of the preferment to which his professional standing and abilities entitled him, after a brilliant career extending over a period of forty-four years, retired from public life to his residence of Almond-dell in West Lothian, where he died on 8th October, 1817, in the seventy-first year of his age.
Erskine resided at one time in George Square, Edinburgh, next door to No. 25, where Scott’s father lived. He removed in 1789 to No. 27 Princes Street.
Lord Cockburn calls Erskine “the brightest luminary at our bar,” and adds, “His name can no sooner be mentioned than it suggests ideas of wit, with which, in many memories, the recollection of him is chiefly associated. A tall and slender figure, a face sparkling with vivacity, a clear, sweet voice, and a general suffusion of elegance, gave him a striking and pleasing appearance” (“Life of Jeffrey,” vol. i., p. 91).
Erskine was twice married; his first wife, Christian, was the only daughter of George Fullerton of Broughton Hall, by whom he had several children, one of whom, Henry David, succeeded to the Earldom of Buchan on the death of his uncle, David Steuart Erskine, eleventh earl, in 1829. By his second wife he had no children.
Alexander Wight, advocate (died 1793), was the son of David Wight, writer, Edinburgh. He was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates on 2nd March, 1754, and was subsequently appointed Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales. He was vice-president of the Antiquarian Society, and was also a director of the Musical Society. He is said to have been long distinguished as an eminent counsel. He died at Edinburgh on 18th March, 1793.
Wight was well known as a legal writer, and was the author of “A Treatise on the Laws Concerning the Election of the Different Representatives sent from Scotland to the Parliament of Great Britain, with a Preliminary View of the Constitution of the Parliaments of England and Scotland before the Union of the two Kingdoms,” dedicated to Lord Mansfield (Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo); and also of “An Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of Parliament chiefly in Scotland, and a Complete System of the Law Concerning the Election of the Representatives from Scotland to the Parliament of Great Britain” (Edinburgh, 1784, fol.).
Cosmo Innes says of him—“If we did not know his unhappy end we should call Alexander Wight, the author of the ‘Law of Elections’ and ‘History of Parliament,’ the most sensible, dispassionate, and clear-headed of historical lawyers. He had great difficulties to contend with in writing too early for correct versions of our Acts of Parliament; and the curious charters appended to his volume lose much of their value by the extreme inaccuracy of the only readings which he could procure” (“Lectures on Scotch Legal Antiquities,” 1872, p. 11).
Wight is mentioned in “The Court of Session Garland” (1839, p. 47). It is recorded by Chambers in his “Traditions of Edinburgh” (1825, vol. ii., p. 159) that Wight was one of the earliest settlers in the New Town, where he built one of the houses on the south side of St. Andrew Square. He chose the situation of his new residence with a view to having the ancient part of the city still within sight, and especially St. Giles’ steeple and clock, which had for many centuries directed the motions of his legal predecessors. In order to prevent the intermediate line of Princes Street from interrupting his beloved prospect, he purchased the feu of the ground which immediately intervened, and erected that house now occupied by the Sun Insurance Office (No. 40 Princes Street) upon it with a flat and low roof.