William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell

He was educated at Newcastle Royal Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he gained a Durham scholarship in 1761.

[2] Scott graduated as doctor of civil law, and, after a customary year of silence[citation needed], commenced practice in the ecclesiastical courts.

[3] The second case involved the French ship Le Louis (1816) after it had been seized by the West Africa Squadron for slave trading off the African coast at Cape Mesurado.

However Scott overturned this judgement, saying that the way Le Lois had been stopped and boarded was illegal as "No nation can exercise a right of visitation and search on the common and unappropriated parts of the sea, save only on the belligerent claim."

He accepted that this would constitute a serious impediment to the suppression of the slave trade, but argued that this should be remedied through international treaties rather than Naval officers exceeding what they were permitted to do.

His first marriage, in 1781, was to Anna Maria, eldest daughter and heiress of John Bagnall of Erleigh Court, near Reading, in Berkshire, where the two later resided.