Scott was educated at the Newcastle grammar school, under the Rev. Hugh Moises [q. v.], fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and, on his advice, he stood for and obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, open to persons born in Durham. Seven days after his election he matriculated, on 3 March 1761. On 20 November 1764 he took his B.A. degree, and on 14 Dec. was elected on probation to a Durham fellowship at University College, and was admitted actual fellow on 14 June 1765. He was at once appointed one of the two college tutors, and in this capacity earned the reputation of being ‘a very useful, ingenious man’ (G. Birkbeck Hill, Letters of S. Johnson, i. 311, 420); eventually he became senior tutor. He appears, however, from a letter to his father in 1772, to have found the work an excessive strain on his health. On 17 June 1767 he took his M.A. degree, proceeded B.C.L. on 30 May 1772, and in 1773, on the death of John Warneford, he was, after a contest, elected by convocation Camden reader in ancient history. He never published his lectures, and forbade his executors to do so; but they were very popular and almost as much esteemed as Blackstone's Vinerian lectures. Gibbon speaks of them with approbation from hearsay, and singles Scott out as a shining example amid the general incapacity of university teachers of the time; Dr. Parr, who seems to have heard them, praises them highly (see Quart. Rev. lxxv. 33); and Milman, who saw the notes of them after his death, confirms Gibbon's statement (Milman, Life of Gibbon, 1839, p. 83).
Scott's intimate friendship with Dr. Johnson began at Oxford, and continued till Johnson's death. Robert Chambers [q. v.], his companion at school and college, brought them together when Johnson was visiting him at University College. He accompanied Johnson from Newcastle to Edinburgh in August 1773, was elected a member of The Club in December 1778, and lived to be its senior member, and with Hawkins and Reynolds was an executor of Johnson's will. Boswell records (Boswell, Life of Johnson, edit. 1835, vii. 97–108) a long conversation at a dinner at Scott's rooms in the Middle Temple on 10 April 1778, and Scott was a member of, though not an attendant at, the club formed in 1784 by a number of Johnson's most intimate friends, to meet monthly at the Essex Head in Essex Street, Strand, near Johnson's house (Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ii. 553). Croker obtained from Lord Stowell, in 1829, a considerable number of written reminiscences of Johnson, as well as much personal information. The latter he used freely in his edition of Boswell, but the former were sent by post to Sir Walter Scott, and, the mail being robbed, disappeared; owing to Lord Stowell's advanced age they never were rewritten (Croker Papers, ii. 27–35).
Scott's wish had long been to go to the bar, and as early as 24 June 1762 he entered himself as a student at the Middle Temple, but his own caution and his father's reticence about his own means led him to put off his removal to London. In the autumn of 1776 his father died, leaving him an estate in Durham named Usworth, the family house in Love Lane, Newcastle, and other property, worth altogether, according to Lord Eldon, 24,000l. In winding up his father's estate, he for some time continued his shipping business, and thus gained a practical experience, which was afterwards of professional value to him. Accordingly he resigned his tutorship, and early in 1777 took chambers at 3 King's Bench Walk, Temple; but, retaining his Camden readership till 1785, he continued to reside occasionally in Oxford. He particularly interested himself in increasing the collections in the Bodleian Library, and assisted in raising the fund for the purchase of rare works at the Pinelli and Crevenna sales.
He elected to practise in the admiralty and ecclesiastical courts, and for that purpose took the degree of D.C.L. on 23 June 1779, and was admitted a member of the faculty of advocates at Doctors' Commons on 3 Nov. in the same year. He was also called to the bar on 11 Feb. 1780. At first he was so unready a speaker that, although he had once spoken for his friend, Andrew Robinson Stoney or Bowes, at the Newcastle election in 1777, he wrote out his arguments, and for several months read them in court from manuscript; but his talents, coupled with his singular combination of wide reading in history and civil law, and practical experience of both college and shipping business, soon began to tell in the special courts in which he sought to practise. Briefs and preferments alike were heaped upon him. ‘His success is wonderful,’ writes John Scott in 1783, ‘and he has been fortunate beyond example.’ On 21 May 1782 he received the crown appointment of advocate-general for the office of lord high admiral, the emoluments of which in times of war were considerable; in 1783 the archbishop of Canterbury appointed him to the sinecure office, worth 400l. a year, of registrar of the court of faculties. On 30 Aug. 1788 the bishop of London constituted him judge of the consistory court of London. On 3 Sept.
