the word is used without any qualification it is understood to apply to the latter class alone. For an account of the duties, qualifications and powers of elders in the Presbyterian Church see Presbyterianism.
See W. R. Smith, History of the Semites; H. Maine, Ancient Law; E. Schürer, The Jewish People in the Time of Christ; J. Wellhausen, History of Israel and Judah; G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 154.
ELDER (O. Eng. ellarn; Ger. Holunder; Fr. sureau), the
popular designation of the deciduous shrubs and trees constituting
the genus Sambucus of the natural order Caprifoliaceae.
The Common Elder, S. nigra, the bourtree of Scotland, is found
in Europe, the north of Africa, Western Asia, the Caucasus, and
Southern Siberia; in sheltered spots it attains a height of over
20 ft. The bark is smooth; the shoots are stout and angular,
and the leaves glabrous, pinnate, with oval or elliptical leaflets.
The flowers, which form dense flat-topped clusters (corymbose
cymes), with five main branches, have a cream-coloured, gamopetalous,
five-lobed corolla, five stamens, and three sessile
stigmas; the berries are purplish-black, globular and three- or
four-seeded, and ripen about September. The elder thrives best
in moist, well-drained situations, but can be grown in a great
diversity of soils. It grows readily from young shoots, which
after a year are fit for transplantation. It is found useful for
making screen-fences in bleak, exposed situations, and also as
a shelter for other shrubs in the outskirts of plantations. By
clipping two or three times a year, it may be made close and
compact in growth. The young trees furnish a brittle wood,
containing much pith; the wood of old trees is white, hard and
close-grained, polishes well, and is employed for shoemakers’ pegs,
combs, skewers, mathematical instruments and turned articles.
Young elder twigs deprived of pith have from very early times
been in request for making whistles, popguns and other toys.
The elder was known to the ancients for its medicinal properties, and in England the inner bark was formerly administered as a cathartic. The flowers (sambuci flores) contain a volatile oil, and serve for the distillation of elder-flower water (aqua sambuci), used in confectionery, perfumes and lotions. The leaves of the elder are employed to impart a green colour to fat and oil (unguentum sambuci foliorum and oleum viride), and the berries for making wine, a common adulterant of port. The leaves and bark emit a sickly odour, believed to be repugnant to insects. Christopher Gullet (Phil. Trans., 1772, lxii. p. 348) recommends that cabbages, turnips, wheat and fruit trees, to preserve them from caterpillars, flies and blight, should be whipped with twigs of young elder. According to German folklore, the hat must be doffed in the presence of the elder-tree; and in certain of the English midland counties a belief was once prevalent that the cross of Christ was made from its wood, which should therefore never be used as fuel, or treated with disrespect (see Quart. Rev. cxiv. 233). It was, however, a common medieval tradition, alluded to by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and other writers, that the elder was the tree on which Judas hanged himself; and on this account, probably, to be crowned with elder was in olden times accounted a disgrace. In Cymbeline (act iv. s. 2) “the stinking elder” is mentioned as a symbol of grief. In Denmark the tree is supposed by the superstitious to be under the protection of the “Elder-mother”: its flowers may not be gathered without her leave; its wood must not be employed for any household furniture; and a child sleeping in an elder-wood cradle would certainly be strangled by the Elder-mother.
Several varieties are known in cultivation: aurea, golden elder, has golden-yellow leaves; laciniata, parsley-leaved elder, has the leaflets cut into fine segments; rotundifolia has rounded leaflets; forms also occur with variegated white and yellow leaves, and virescens is a variety having white bark and green-coloured berries. The scarlet-berried elder, S. racemosa, is the handsomest species of the genus. It is a native of various parts of Europe, growing in Britain to a height of over 15 ft., but often producing no fruit. The dwarf elder or Danewort (supposed to have been introduced into Britain by the Danes), S. Ebulus, a common European species, reaches a height of about 6 ft. Its cyme is hairy, has three principal branches, and is smaller than that of S. nigra; the flowers are white tipped with pink. All parts of the plant are cathartic and emetic.
ELDON, JOHN SCOTT, 1st Earl of (1751–1838), lord high
chancellor of England, was born at Newcastle on the 4th of June
1751. His grandfather, William Scott of Sandgate, a suburb of
Newcastle, was clerk to a “fitter”—a sort of water-carrier and
broker of coals. His father, whose name also was William,
began life as an apprentice to a fitter, in which service he obtained
the freedom of Newcastle, becoming a member of the gild of
Hoastmen (coal-fitters); later in life he became a principal in the
business, and attained a respectable position as a merchant in
Newcastle, accumulating property worth nearly £20,000.
John Scott was educated at the grammar school of his native town. He was not remarkable at school for application to his studies, though his wonderful memory enabled him to make good progress in them; he frequently played truant and was whipped for it, robbed orchards, and indulged in other questionable schoolboy freaks; nor did he always come out of his scrapes with honour and a character for truthfulness. When he had finished his education at the grammar school, his father thought of apprenticing him to his own business, to which an elder brother Henry had already devoted himself; and it was only through the interference of his elder brother William (afterwards Lord Stowell, q.v.), who had already obtained a fellowship at University College, Oxford, that it was ultimately resolved that he should continue the prosecution of his studies. Accordingly, in 1766, John Scott entered University College with the view of taking holy orders and obtaining a college living. In the year following he obtained a fellowship, graduated B.A. in 1770, and in 1771 won the prize for the English essay, the only university prize open in his time for general competition.
His wife was the eldest daughter of Aubone Surtees, a Newcastle banker. The Surtees family objected to the match, and attempted to prevent it; but a strong attachment had sprung up between them. On the 18th November 1772 Scott, with the aid of a ladder and an old friend, carried off the lady from her father’s house in the Sandhill, across the border to Blackshiels, in Scotland, where they were married. The father of the bridegroom objected not to his son’s choice, but to the time he chose to marry; for it was a blight on his son’s prospects, depriving him of his fellowship and his chance of church preferment. But while the bride’s family refused to hold intercourse with the pair, Mr Scott, like a prudent man and an affectionate father, set himself to make the best of a bad matter, and received them kindly, settling on his son £2000. John returned with his wife to Oxford, and continued to hold his fellowship for what is called the year of grace given after marriage, and added to his income by acting as a private tutor. After a time Mr Surtees was reconciled with his daughter, and made a liberal settlement on her.
John Scott’s year of grace closed without any college living falling vacant; and with his fellowship he gave up the church and turned to the study of law. He became a student at the Middle Temple in January 1773. In 1776 he was called to the bar, intending at first to establish himself as an advocate in his native town, a scheme which his early success led him to abandon, and he soon settled to the practice of his profession in London, and on the northern circuit. In the autumn of the year in which he was called to the bar his father died, leaving him a legacy of £1000 over and above the £2000 previously settled on him.
In his second year at the bar his prospects began to brighten. His brother William, who by this time held the Camden professorship of ancient history, and enjoyed an extensive acquaintance with men of eminence in London, was in a position materially to advance his interests. Among his friends was the notorious Andrew Bowes of Gibside, to the patronage of whose house the rise of the Scott family was largely owing. Bowes having contested Newcastle and lost it, presented an election petition against the return of his opponent. Young Scott was retained as junior counsel in the case, and though he lost the petition he did not fail to improve the opportunity which it afforded for displaying his talents. This engagement, in the commencement of his
