Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, was a British lawyer and Whig politician who lived from 10 January 1750 to 17 November 1823 and served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1806 to 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents. He built his reputation as a barrister defending radicals accused of seditious libel and treason, including Thomas Paine, John Horne Tooke and Thomas Hardy, and he declared that he would for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence and integrity of the English bar, a statement later cited as a foundational expression of counsel's duty to defend unpopular clients. He sat as Member of Parliament for Portsmouth from 1790 to 1806 and was created Baron Erskine of Restormel in 1806. In retirement he championed animal welfare, introducing the House of Lords bill against cruelty to cattle that became the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act of 1822.