His elder brother was the uncle of Bernard Phelan, who established Château Phélan Ségur, and Dean John Scott, who first planted the gardens open to the public at Ballyin, County Waterford and was married to a niece of Clonmell's political ally, Henry Grattan.

They became firm friends, and Carleton's father, who was known as the 'King of Cork', due to his wealth and influence, invited him to their home and became Scott's patron.

In 1756, Mr Carleton sent both the young men off, with equal allowances, to study at Trinity College Dublin and then the Middle Temple in London.

In 1772 he was Counsel to the Board of Revenue, an extremely lucrative office: in return, he was expected to defend the Government's policy, which he did with great energy.

In 1784, Scott was created 1st Baron Earlsfort of Lisson-Earl, County Tipperary, following his appointment to Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

Due to heavy drinking and overeating, he became grossly overweight, and this no doubt contributed to his early death, although his diary shows that he made frequent good resolutions about living a more temperate life.

He wrote that too many of his colleagues, including Philip Tisdall, his predecessor as Attorney General, had died through failing to moderate their drinking as they grew older, but it seems that he could not take his own good advice.

In its opening pages, the author writes to him: "if I knew but one man in the kingdom, to have a sounder judgment and a finer imagination, a more humane and expanded heart, and a more spirited and judicious arm, I should have been still more presumptuous than I am, in prefixing YOUR NAME to so trifling a production".

During his time as Attorney General, Scott publicly defended the custom of duelling, and encouraged legal tolerance towards duelists who had acted honourably and fought for a good cause.

Of his junior colleagues in the Court of King's Bench (Ireland), he admired Samuel Bradstreet, but dismissed William Henn (with some justification) as a fool, while John Bennett, a man noted for independence of mind, he marked down as an enemy.

In 1797, in the last conversation he would have with his wife's cousin, Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, he exclaimed: 'My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man in life.

As he has revealed to us in his diary he had from the first no misgiving as to the object of his life being personal success, and although he wore out his mind and body in reaching his goal he made it against desperate odds.

Copper Face Jacks, founded in 1996, is a popular Dublin nightclub on Harcourt Street (part of the Jackson Court Hotel).