SETON, Sir JOHN, Lord Barns (d. 1594), Scottish judge, was the third son of George, fifth lord Seton [q. v.], by his wife Isabel, daughter of Sir William Hamilton of Sanquhar. While still a young man he went to Spain to the court of Philip II, by whom he was made knight of the royal order of St. Jago and master of the household. He was appointed master of the stable to James VI of Scotland some time before 1581, when he had an encounter with James, earl of Arran (Calderwood, History, iii. 592). The same year he was sent as ambassador to complain to Elizabeth regarding her conduct in interfering in behalf of the Earl of Morton, but was not permitted to enter England. On 27 Jan. 1586–7 he was admitted a member of the privy council (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iv. 139), and on 17 Feb. 1587–8 he was appointed, with the title Lord Barns, an extraordinary lord of session, in room of his brother, Alexander Seton, afterwards Earl of Dunfermline [q. v.] He died on 25 May 1594. By his wife Anne, daughter of William, seventh lord Forbes, he had, with other children, a son John who succeeded him.
[Calderwood's Hist. of the Kirk of Scotland; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. iii.–iv.; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice.]
SETON or SETONE, THOMAS de (fl. 1344–1361), chief justice of the king's bench, appears as a counsel in the ‘Year-Books’ from 1344 onwards, and was one of the king's serjeants in 1345, when he applied before the council that the iter in the bishopric of Durham might be foregone for that year. He was appointed to a judgeship, probably in the king's bench, previously to April 1354, when he was a trier of petitions in parliament (Rolls of Parliament, ii. 254). He was a judge of the common pleas in Michaelmas 1355. In 1356 he recovered damages from a woman for calling him ‘traitor, felon, and robber’ in the public court. On 5 July 1357 Setone was made chief justice of the king's bench, ad tempus; the temporary character of the appointment is shown by the fact that Setone continued to act as judge of common pleas till Michaelmas 1359, and he is so styled when admitted to the king's secret council in the same year. But he must have soon afterwards been raised permanently to the chief-justiceship, which office he held till 24 May 1361, when Henry Green [q. v.] was appointed his successor.
[Foss's Judges of England.]
SETTLE, ELKANAH (1648–1724), city poet, the son of Josias Settle and his wife Sarah, was born at Dunstable on 1 Feb. and baptised on 9 Feb. 1647–8 (Bedfordshire Notes and Queries, vol. iii. pt. vii. 206). He matriculated on 13 July 1666 from Trinity College, Oxford, where his tutor was Abraham Campian, but he left Oxford without taking a degree and proceeded to London. According to Gildon, he once possessed a good fortune, which he quickly dissipated. If Downes may be believed, it was in the same year (1666) that Settle, then barely eighteen, completed his first play, ‘Cambyses, King of Persia: a Tragedy.’ It was the first new play acted that season at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Betterton and his wife were in the cast, and, the other parts being ‘perfectly well acted,’ it ‘succeeded six days with a full audience’ (Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, 1886, p. 27). It was subsequently produced at Oxford, and was printed in 1671 and 1673. Wood states that Settle's fellow collegian, William Buller Fyfe, had some part in the composition, the plot of which was mainly derived from Herodotus. Settle was inflated by his success, and ‘Cambyses’ formed the first of a series of bombastic dramas, the scenario of which was discreetly laid in Persia or Morocco.
Settle's triumph was eagerly adopted by Rochester as a means of humiliating Dryden. Through Rochester's influence Settle's next tragedy, ‘The Empress of Morocco,’ was twice acted at Whitehall, the prologues being spoken respectively by Rochester and by Lord Mulgrave. It seems to have been originally given in 1671, and revived at Dorset Garden in 1673, when Betterton played it for two weeks with great applause. Though highflown, it is not devoid of merit, and Genest called the plot ‘well managed.’ In his dedication to the Earl of Norwich, Settle says, ‘I owe the story of my play to your hands and your honourable embassy into Africa.’ It was published by Cademan in 1671, and again in 1673 with six engravings (one of which represents the front of Dorset Garden), at the enhanced price of two shillings. It is said to have been the first play ever published with engravings (later editions 1687 and 1698). The court was for
