[2] Scott spent much of his youth attending open air evangelical meetings, with sermons given by known preachers of the day such as William Romaine, Erasmus Middleton, and in particular Rowland Hill who led the Surrey Chapel in Southwark.
By 1815 original partners Henry Thornton and Richard Down had died and a new partnership was formed involving Scott.
[5][2] Surrendering most of his assets, including the lease of his house in Canonbury Square, he retired in 1826 to the then village of Stoke Newington, a notable place of habitation for nonconformists, where he lived with his second wife Anne until his death.
[6] His position within the city brought him into contact with other like-minded Christians and abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, and the reformed slaver John Newton, for whose last will and testament Scott was an executor; Newton had been the rector of St Mary Woolnoth just a stone's throw from where the bank was based in Bartholomew Lane.
A funeral sermon was preached at the Independent Meeting House, Stoke Newington, by the congregationalist minister John Jefferson, in which he said of the deceased: "I have only known him as an old man and an aged Christian, ripe for glory.
From that period I have enjoyed frequent opportunities of intercourse with this holy man, and I never could retire from his society without feeling that I was the better for his converse, and without being constrained to admire the grace which shone so conspicuously in him".