[1] In spite of his father's strong wish that he should take holy orders, he chose the legal profession, and on quitting the university was entered at Lincoln's Inn.

In 1787 he was appointed principal counsel for Warren Hastings in the celebrated impeachment trial before the House of Lords, and the ability with which he conducted the defence was universally recognised.

On the formation of the Addington ministry in 1801, he was appointed Attorney General and shortly afterwards was returned to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Newtown in the Isle of Wight.

In denying the jury's motion for clemency (following the character witness of Vice-Admiral Nelson) Lord Ellenborough emphasised the revolutionary nature of Despard's purpose.

It was, he claimed, not only to rend the new union between Great Britain and Ireland, but also to affect "the forcible reduction to one common level of all the advantages of property, of all civil and political rights whatsoever".

He was harsh and overbearing to counsel, and in the political trials which were so frequent in his time, such as that of Lord Cochrane for Stock Exchange fraud in 1814, showed an unmistakable bias against the accused.

In the trial of William Hone for blasphemy in 1817, Ellenborough directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty, and their acquittal of the prisoner is generally said to have hastened his death.