Russell Scott (1760–1834) was an English nonconformist minister, prominent in the 1790s as a supporter of the Political Martyrs group of radicals, and in later life as a leading Unitarian.
[3] A 1782 letter from Lindsey, to his friend William Tayleur, mentions Scott as attending the Essex Street Chapel, and having moved from the orthodox Homerton to the liberal Hoxton in line with a change of views.
[9] In the period leading up to the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1794, Scott became associated with four of the five radical reformers often known as the "Scottish Martyrs" (a misnomer since three were English), who were sentenced to transportation to Australia.
[12] Russell V. Holt, Principal of the Unitarian College, Manchester wrote of the period, its mobs and treason trials: These outrages on justice and on liberty made a lasting impression on many minds which bore fruit later in life-long devotion to the cause of freedom.
[13]In early February 1794 Thomas Muir was a convict on the transport ship Surprize lying off Portsmouth, where he was joined by Palmer from the prison hulk Stanislaus moored on the River Thames off Woolwich.
[14][15] The pair had been in Newgate Gaol, London, where the Unitarian group of Lindsey, Priestley and William Russell had tried to visit them, but had been too late.
This election was ahead of the Sacramental Test Act 1828 that removed the "political disabilities" of dissenters; but in Portsmouth those were circumvented, even treated with disdain.
[23] In 1822 Scott published a book, An Analytical Investigation of the Scriptural Claims of the Devil, based on a lecture series he had given in 1820–1 in Portsmouth.