LORD ELDON’S COPY
WILMOT, John, Esq.
Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Knt. Late Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and one of His Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council: with some original letters. London: Printed by J. Nichols and Son, and sold by White and Cochrane … 1811.
Large 8vo., pp. [4], 241, [1, errata]; engraved frontispiece portrait, offsetting to title-page; occasional light foxing, but an excellent copy, uncut in contemporary drab boards, marked, spine and joints a little rubbed, paper label chipped, date added in ms; ownership inscription of Lord Eldon: ‘from my friend John Wilmot, Eldon’; small engraved armorial bookplate tipped onto front pastedown.
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Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Knt. Late Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and one of His Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council: with some original letters. London: Printed by J. Nichols and Son, and sold by White and Cochrane … 1811.
‘Second edition’, expanded; first published in quarto in 1802. The Memoirs of John Eardley Wilmot (1709-1792) were authored by his son John Wilmot (1748-1815), likewise a lawyer. This copy belonged to John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), who records this copy as having been given by Wilmot’s son, the author. Lord Eldon was a prominent barrister and was Lord High Chancellor at the time these Memoirs were published. He would have known the elder Wilmot personally, not only through the law but through their mutual connection with University College, Oxford. Both are listed on p. 124 as members of the University College Club, which was formed and operated in London. University College (where Eldon was and remains the youngest-ever Fellow, at sixteen) possesses a book with the same bookplate, which has been peppered with buckshot, presumably as target practice, and possibly by Eldon himself, who was a notoriously bad shot.
