John Hope, Lord Hope

On 25 June 1822, James Abercromby unsuccessfully moved in the House of Commons for the appointment of a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the Lord Advocate and the other law officers of the crown in Scotland in relation to the public press.

In 1841 he succeeded David Boyle as Lord Justice Clerk, taking his seat on the bench as president of the second division of the court of session on 16 November 1841, and on 17 April 1844 was sworn a member of the Privy Council.

On 31 May he sentenced shoemaker James Nicholson to transportation for ten years for his part in the unrest in Pulteneytown on 24 February.

These harsh sentences attracted widespread criticism and were subsequently commuted to much shorter terms of imprisonment by the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey[4] Lord Hope died at home, 20 Moray Place, Edinburgh,[5] on 14 June 1858. from a sudden attack of paralysis, and was buried at Ormiston, near Tranent.

Our high-pressure dean screams and gesticulates and perspires more in any forenoon than the whole bar of England (I say nothing of Ireland) in a reign" (Memorials of his Time, i.114).

[6] There was a portrait of him by Colvin Smith, R.S.A., made when he was Dean of Faculty, in the National Gallery of Scotland (Catalogue No.