ABBOT

ABBOT, Charles, Lord Colchester, the son of a clergyman at Colchester, was born October 14, 1757, and was educated at Westminster School, from which he was elected a student to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1775. He was called to the bar in 1795, and soon after published a legal work, in which he strongly recommended the abolition of the separate Welsh judicature, a measure which has since been carried out. The same year introduced him into Parliament, where his activity and habits of business soon brought him into notice, and he was proposed by Mr Pitt as chairman of the finance committee. In Mr Addington's administration, he filled the office of chief secretary of state for Ireland; and in 1802 he was elected speaker of the House of Commons, an office which he filled with dignity and general approbation, under successive administrations, till 1817, when a severe attack of erysipelas induced him to resign the laborious duties of the speaker's chair. While he held that situation, it was his lot, on April 8, 1805, to give the casting vote in a House of 433 members, which drove Henry Lord Melville from public life. On Abbot's retirement, he

Abbots-bury was created Lord Colchester, and obtained a pension of £1,4000 a-year; but he afterwards took no very prominent part in public affairs, except in strenuous opposition to the Roman Catholic Emancipation. In 1828 he published six of his parliamentary speeches on that subject. He died May 8, 1829.