John Scott-Waring

Born at Shrewsbury, his father was Jonathan Scott of Shrewsbury (died August 1778), who married Mary, second daughter of Humphrey Sandford of the Isle of Rossall, Shropshire. The second son, Richard, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and served under Sir Eyre Coote against Hyder Ali Khan. The third son was Jonathan Scott the orientalist. The fourth son, Henry, became commissioner of police at Bombay. John, the eldest son, entered the service of the East India Company about 1766, and became a major in the Bengal division of its forces. ==In India==

Scott had been in India for twelve years before he knew Warren Hastings more than casually. They became close, and he was one of the intermediaries who, in November 1779, patched up a temporary reconciliation between Hastings and Philip Francis. In May 1780 he was appointed to command a battalion of sepoys. ==Political agent in London==

Scott was sent by Hastings to England as his political agent, and he arrived in London on 17 December 1781. Scott was profuse in his expenditure for his patron. From 1784 to 1790 Scott sat in parliament as member for West Looe, and in 1790 he was returned for Stockbridge in Hampshire. A petition was presented against him, and in February 1793 a prosecution for bribery seemed imminent, but the matter fell through. ==Impeachment of Hastings==

The charges against Warren Hastings might have been allowed to drop, but Scott reminded Edmund Burke on the first day of the session of 1786 of the notice which he had given before the preceding recess of bringing them before parliament. Scott asked Burke to name the first day that was practicable; Burke opened the subject on 17 February. Fanny Burney (Diary, ed. 1842, iv. 74–5) commented on Scott "skipping backwards and forwards like a grasshopper". . Hastings hanged by the efforts of Scott, his political agent. ==Later life==

In 1798, by the death of his cousin, Richard Hill Waring, Scott came into the Waring estates in Cheshire, which he sold in 1800 to Peel and Yates (the company of Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet) for £80,000. He then assumed the name and arms of Waring. A year or two later he bought Peterborough House at Parson's Green, Fulham, and gathered around him varied company: royal princes, politicians, wits, and actresses. Scott-Waring died at Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, London, on 5 May 1819. ==Works==

In 1782 Scott published, in the interests of Hastings, his Short Review of Transactions in Bengal during the last Ten Years, and, two years later, his ''Conduct of his Majesty's late Ministers considered'', 1784 (in it he dealt with the payments which he had made to the newspapers for the insertion of letters in defence of Hastings). Letters, paragraphs, puffs, and squibs were attributed to him. The year 1808 saw active controversy on the propagation on Christianity, in which Andrew Fuller and John Owen (1766–1822) had become involved, with Scott-Waring replying to Owen. When John Weyland wrote an open letter to Sir Hugh Inglis in 1811, Scott-Waring replied to it. A Vindication of the Hindoos from the expressions of Dr. Claudius Buchanan, in two parts by "a Bengal Officer" (1808), was attributed to Scott-Waring (DNB first edition). It was in fact by Charles Stuart. ==Family==

Scott was three times married. • Waring's second wife was Maria, daughter and heiress of Jacob Hughes of Cashel. • Waring's third wife was Harriet Pye Esten, a widowed actress. ==References==