Ebenezer, a celebrated divine, and founder of the Secession Church in Scotland, was born June 22, 1680, according to one account at the village of Dryburgh, but according to another, at the Bass, where his father, who had been ejected in 1662 from his charge in Northumberland, was for some time a prisoner. He received his education at Edinburgh, and was settled in 1703 in the parish of Portmoak. There he remained for twenty-eight years, after which, in the autumn of 1731, he was translated to Stirling. Previously to this period, however, his extraordinary popularity had made him an object of jealousy to the clergy generally, who entertained a peculiar fondness for the abjuration oath, lay patronage, and legal theology. For his vigorous defence of the evangelical doctrines contained in the Marrone of Modern Divinity, Erskine received the rebuke of the Assembly, and was exposed to the most vehement abuse both in the church courts and from the public press. A sermon which he preached on lay-patronage before the Synod of Perth in 1733 furnished new grounds of accusation, and he was compelled to shield himself from re-buke by appealing to the General Assembly. Here, however, the sentence of the synod was confirmed; and after many fruitless attempts to obtain a fair hearing, he, with Wilson, Moncrief, and Fisher, were suspended from the office of the ministry by the commission in November of that year. Against this sentence the four brethren protested, and constituted themselves into a separate church court, under the name of the Associate Presbytery. It was not, however, till 1739 that they were again summoned before the assembly, when appearing in their corporate capacity they declined the authority of the church, and were deposed in the following year. They received numerous accessions to their communion, and remained in harmony with each other till 1747, when a division took place in regard to the nature of the oath administered to burgesses. Erskine continued to preach to a numerous congregation in Stirling till his death, which took place in 1756. His published works consist chiefly of sermons.

Ralph, brother of the preceding, was born at Monlawes in Northumberland, March 18, 1685. Like Ebenezer he probably studied at Edinburgh, and having been licensed in 1709, he was placed as assistant minister at Dunfermline in 1711. Like him, too, he was a fearless advocate of evangelical opinions, and a stern opponent of ecclesiastical tyranny. This led him to homologate the protests which his brother laid on the table of the assembly, although he did not formally withdraw from the establishment till 1737. He sided with his brother in asserting the lawfulness of oaths administered to burgesses, but did not long survive the rupture which followed that unhappy controversy. He died after a short illness Nov. 6, 1752, being then in the sixty-eighth year of his age. His three sons, who lived to be ministers of the Secession Church, died in the prime of life. The works of Ralph Erskine consist of Sermons, Poetical Paraphrases, and Gospel Sonnets.

Thomas, Lord Erskine, a distinguished lawyer and statesman, was the third and youngest son of David Henry Erskine, tenth earl of Buchan. He was born in Scotland, and received his education partly at the high school of Edinburgh, and partly at the university of St Andrews. From the contracted resources of his family, it was necessary for him to fix upon a profession. He chose the navy, and having embarked at Leith as a midshipman, he quitted his native country, which he did not revisit until a few years before his death. In the navy he experienced no advancement, and, after four years' service, he entered the army in 1768. In 1770 he married, and shortly after this event he accompanied his regiment to Minorca, where he remained during three years. It is not certain whether his abilities as an officer ever rendered him conspicuous, but the versatility of his talents, and the acuteness of his intellect, early gained for him a high reputation. By the earnest persuasion of his mother, who, it would appear, was a woman of more than ordinary penetration, he was induced to quit the army after six years of military probation. The legal profession was the one which appeared best adapted for the character of his mind; and in 1777 he entered as a fellow commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge, for the purpose of obtaining a degree, which he was entitled to as the son of a nobleman, and thereby of shortening his passage to the bar. At the same time he entered himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn. In 1778 he was called to the bar, where his success was both immediate and brilliant. In a case of libel, in which he advocated the cause of Captain Baillie, the defendant, he displayed so much eloquence and talent, that thirty retainers were put into his hand by attorneys before he left the court. A few months after this event he was chosen to appear at the bar of the House of Commons, as counsel against Lord North's bill to restore to the universities the monopoly in almanacks. The bill was lost by a large majority, and the speech which Erskine made upon the occasion so established his reputation for forensic skill, that he was from this period engaged, either on one side or another, in every case of importance, during a practice of twenty-five years. To this period also belongs his famous speech in defence of Lord George Gordon, which procured the acquittal of his client, and proved for the time a death-blow to the tremendous doctrine of constructive treason. In May 1783 he received a silk gown, and the same year was elected member of parliament for Portsmouth, for which borough he was on every election re-chosen, until his advancement to the peerage rendered that honour unnecessary. He was soon after chosen attorney-general by the then Prince of Wales. There is nothing, however, which reflects so much honour on his memory as his exertions in defence of the privileges of juries. The rights of those pro tempore judges he strenuously maintained upon all occasions, but especially in the celebrated trial of the Dean of St Asaph, for libel, when Justice Buller refused to receive the verdict of guilty of publishing only, as returned by the jury. In 1789 another opportunity was afforded him to display his peculiar powers. This was the defence of Mr Stockdale, a bookseller, who was tried on an information filed by the attorney-general, for publishing what was charged as a libellous pamphlet in favour of Mr Hastings. The situation of the latter, whose celebrated but protracted trial was then dragging its slow length along, gave Erskine admirable scope for that animated appeal to the feelings, by which his speeches are so much distinguished. It is one of his finest orations; and, whether we regard the wonderful skill with which the argument is conducted, the soundness of the principles laid down, and their happy application to the case, the vividness of fancy with which these are illustrated, and the touching language in which they are conveyed, it is justly to be regarded as a consummate specimen of the art of addressing a jury. This masterly defence procured a clear acquittal for Stockdale, although the fact of publication was admitted. Not long afterwards he advocated the cause of Mr Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle, who was also charged with publishing what the jealous loyalty of those times construed into a libel; and his speech produced a similar result. But the most arduous effort of his professional life arose out of the part cast upon him, in conjunction with Mr (afterwards Sir Vicary) Gibbs, in the trials of Hardy, Tooke, and others, for high treason in 1794. These trials lasted several weeks, and the ability displayed by Mr Erskine upon this memorable occasion was acknowledged and admired by men of all parties. His speech in defence of Mr Frost, which, however, preceded those above mentioned, is another of those almost miraculous exertions, which, in that momentous crisis, Mr Erskine made for the liberties of his country. Frost was accused of uttering seditious words; which, however, turned out to have been spoken at random in a coffee-house whilst the accused was in a state bordering on intoxication. In the violence of that day, the executions of Erskine failed of their accustomed effect, and Frost was found guilty. But the impression of his defence was not lost; and it deterred the government from risking its credit on such precarious speculations, until, as we have noticed, the charges of high treason were brought forward, when the whole force of the bar was marshalled against the prisoners, and every effort used to beat down and paralyse their undaunted defender.

Erskine was a warm partisan of Fox, and the liberal party of that time. He strenuously opposed the war with France, and published a pamphlet against it, entitled A View of the Causes and Consequences of the War with France, which had an immense sale. In 1802 the Prince of Wales not only restored him to his office of attorney-general, of which he had been deprived, but made him keeper of the seals for the duchy of Cornwall. On the death of Pitt in 1806, when Lord Grenville received orders to form a new administration, Erskine was created a peer, by the title of Lord Erskine, of Restormel Castle in Cornwall, and elevated to the dignity of lord high chancellor of Great Britain. His previous experience in the courts of common law scarcely fitted him for the judicial functions of this dignified office; but there seems little doubt that his natural quickness of intellect would have triumphed over every difficulty, had not a dissolution of the administration of which he formed part been accelerated by the obstinacy of the king on the subject of the Catholic claims. His public career may be said to have terminated with this event, and the remainder of his life was undistinguished by any great exertion, whilst it was unhappily embittered by pecuniary difficulties, which were enhanced, it is said, by an unfortunate second marriage. His mind, however, retained its native elasticity, and in his retirement he employed himself in editing several of the state trials. He also wrote the preface to Fox's speeches, a political romance entitled Armata, and several pamphlets in support of the Greek cause. Whilst accompanying one of his sons by sea to Edinburgh, he was seized with an inflammation of the chest, which compelled him to land at Scarborough. He reached Scotland by easy stages, but expired on the 17th of November 1823, at the seat of his brother, a few miles from Edinburgh. The peculiar character of Lord Erskine's eloquence has already in some measure been described. In his capacity of advocate he possessed the power of summoning upon the instant all the resources of his mind, and bringing them to bear upon the subject before the court with extraordinary effect. In this respect his speeches bear a resemblance to those of Mr Pitt, whilst they far surpass them in impassioned fervour, in brilliancy of imagination, in copiousness of imagery, and in that quality of mind expressed by the emphatic word genius. His dexterity was likewise unrivalled at the bar; and these qualifications, united with a courage which nothing could daunt, and a firmness which was never overcome, rendered him almost irresistible on the defensive side of political persecution. Amidst all the struggles of the constitution in parliament, in council, and in the field, during that momentous period of our national history, there was no man to whose individual exertions it owed so much as to those of this celebrated advocate.

By his first wife, who died in 1805, Lord Erskine had three sons and five daughters. His speeches have been frequently printed; the last edition is in 5 vols. 8vo. (J.F.S.)