Christopher Sclater, M.A., born 1679, rector of Loughton in Essex, and afterwards of Chingford in the same county. His eldest son—
William Sclater, D.D., seems (from MSS. still existing) to have inherited the theological talent of his ancestors, but o. s. p. Richard Sclater, Esq., the second son of Christopher, was grandfather to William Lutley Sclater, Esq., of Hoddington House, Hants, the present representative of the family. By a third son, Christopher Sclater was grandfather to Eliza Sclater, wife of —— Draper, Esq., and celebrated for her Platonic attachment to Lawrence Sterne. From MSS. preserved in the family, it is clear that she must have been a woman of considerable talent.
I had always supposed William Sclater, the Nonjuror, and author of An Original Draught, &c., to have been a brother of Francis Sclater; but, if it be true that his work was a posthumous publication (as I learn for the first time from the Note by the Editor of "N. & Q."), I think it most probable that it was his father (the vicar of Collumpton above mentioned), who would have been about sixty years of age in 1688, and who was certainly a man of learning and scholarship.
I have no doubt that Edward Sclater, the pervert of Putney, belonged to the same family, though I know not in how near relationship.
The name of Sclater, which is curious, seems to have originated in a place called Slaughter (olim Sclostre or Sclaughtre, temp. King John) in Gloucestershire, where a family of Sclaughters flourished as lords of the manor for upwards of 300 years. The arms of both families are: arg. a saltier az.; crest, an eagle sa. rising out of a ducal coronet. The motto of the Sclater family (which they owe, no doubt to one of their learned ancestors) is a Greek quotation from Gal. vi. 14.: "εἴ μὴ ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ."
About the commencement of the seventeenth century, another branch of the same family (whose patronymic was Thomas) was settled in Cambridgeshire. The last male representative of these, Sir Thomas Sclater, Bart., died without issue in 1684 (see Burke's Ext. Baronetages).
I should be glad of any information respecting the connexion of these two branches with each other, or of either with the parent stem in Gloucestershire. I should also be glad of information respecting one Will. Slatyer, D.D. (whose name is sometimes, I believe erroneously, spelt Sclater) a very learned person, chaplain to James I., the
author of some curious historical and genealogical works, and a celebrated Hebraist in those times. He was a cotemporary of Sclater of Pitminster, and died at Ottenden in Kent about the same time; but it is doubtful whether they were relations.
S. L. P.
Oxford and Cambridge Club.