Elizabeth, daughter of John Bennett of Wallingford, Berkshire, was born on 6 Aug. 1606, and was admitted advocate on 17 July 1631. On 16 July 1633 he was knighted by Charles I at Innerwick (Balfour, Annals, iii. 367), and was commissioner in the Scottish parliament for the county of Clackmannan in 1639, 1640, and 1641. In 1639, and again in 1640, he was colonel of the troop raised by the College of Justice to attend General Leslie as his bodyguard; but in the latter year, on the march into England, at the crossing of the Tyne, ‘Sir Thomas and his troop were scarce well entered the ford before they wheeled about and retired with discredit.’ In September 1641 he proposed in parliament, on behalf of the barons, that the estates should appoint officers of state and privy councillors by ballot, but the proposal was lost. He was prominent in opposing Charles's demand for a public inquiry into ‘The Incident,’ and was the author of the compromise effected between the king and the estates with reference to the appointment of Loudoun as chancellor. On 13 Nov. 1641 the estates appointed him an ordinary lord of session and lord justice-general, and he was also a commissioner to treat with the English parliament for the suppression of the Irish rebellion. In the parliament of 1643 he was member for Stirlingshire, but on 23 Aug. of that year he died at Edinburgh, leaving a son, Alexander, the first baronet of Kerse. He wrote ‘The Law Repertorie,’ and left a manuscript commentary on books 18–24 of the ‘Digest,’ now in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.
[Brunton and Haig's Senators of the Royal College of Justice; Acts Scots Parl.; Books of Sederunt; Balfour's Annals; Laing's Hist. of Scotland, iii. 214–22; Hill Burton's Hist. vii. 146–52; Omond's Lord Advocates; Napier's Montrose and the Covenanters, ii. 110.]
HOPE, Sir THOMAS (d. 1646), lord advocate of Scotland, was son of Henry Hope, a merchant of Scotland with business connections in France, by his wife Jaqueline de Tott. His great grandfather, John de Hope, is said to have come from France to Scotland in the retinue of Magdalen, queen of James V, in 1537. His younger brother Henry seems to have settled in early life in Amsterdam, and was ancestor of the rich family of merchants long connected with that city (cf. Hope, John Williams, and Hope, Thomas 1770?–1831). Thomas was bred to the law in Scotland, and was admitted advocate on 7 Feb. 1605. He defended John Forbes (1568?–1634) [q. v.] and five other ministers tried at Linlithgow in 1606 upon a charge of having committed treason in declining to acknowledge the jurisdiction claimed by the privy council over the general assembly. He, like his leaders, Thomas Craig, William Oliphant, and Thomas Gray, counselled submission, but when the two former declined to appear at the trial on 10 Jan., Hope made so vigorous a defence that, although his clients were convicted, he speedily ranked among the foremost men at the bar. Two years afterwards Lord-advocate Hamilton spoke of him as ‘one of the most learned and best experienced’ of Scotch advocates, and the privy council desired his opinion on a point of law in the case of Margaret Hartsyde, one of the queen's chamberwomen, whom, however, he was retained to defend (Melros Papers, i. 50, 344; Balfour, Annals, ii. 26; Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, ii. 544–57). Till the end of the reign he had a lucrative practice. His public life began under Charles I. In 1625 he prepared the deed revoking James's grants of church property to laymen. On 29 May 1626 he was appointed lord advocate jointly with Oliphant, then an old man (Burnet, Hist. of his own Time, i. 30; Registrum Secreti Sigilli, xcviii. 444), and thereupon addressed the king in a long Latin poem, published in the same year. With regard to the resumption of ecclesiastical property his policy was to threaten boldly and act moderately to those who begged for terms. On his advice in August an action was commenced to have the various grants of church property declared null and void (see Connell on Tithes, Append. xxxix.) The action, however, was abandoned, and a commission, of which he was a member, was appointed to report upon the whole subject. In February 1628 his services to the crown on this commission were rewarded with a Nova Scotia baronetcy. On 19 Nov., in pursuance of an old claim and privilege of lord advocates, he was sworn to secrecy, and admitted to sit with the judges in cases in which he was not himself employed (Acts of Sederunt, 19 Nov. 1628). In parliament he was entrusted with the royal letters of prorogation on each occasion from 1629 to 1633. He prepared the summons for leasing-making served on John Elphinstone, lord Balmerino [q. v.], on 14 Nov. 1634, and conducted the trial on behalf of the crown. Though he exerted himself zealously against the prisoner he does not appear to have lost the favour of the presbyterians. He was a party to the act of the privy council commanding the use of the service-book on 20 Dec. 1636 (Baillie, Letters and Journals, vol. i. App. 440), but he probably absented himself from the first reading in St. Giles's, and is charged by Bishop Guthrie with having been
