Elliot’s father and grandfather, staunch ‘Revolution Whigs’, both owed their promotion to the bench to their close friendship with John, Duke of Argyll. Gilbert, after a frugally restricted European tour, returned to Edinburgh in June 1745, ‘a fine gentleman and polite scholar’ with a taste for poetry, history, and philosophy, but little zest for the Scottish bar. ‘Nature’, he wrote, ‘never meant me for a lawyer.’
When in London he attended Commons debates, conceived an admiration for Pitt, an ambition to join his friends William Mure, James St. Clair, George and Charles Townshend, in Parliament, and particularly to emulate James Oswald.
Argyll encouraged his hopes of a parliamentary seat and on a vacancy in Selkirkshire gave him his interest and obliged John Murray to retire. Argyll wrote to Pelham, 4 Sept. 1753:
Mr. Elliot ... is sure of his election. I believe this young gentleman will be above the common run; he has more of an English manner at the bar than any I see in Scotland.
Elliot made no attempt to speak in the House until the new Parliament, when he confidently intervened in November on the Stirlingshire election, in which Argyll’s interest was concerned.
I impute the notice I have met with very much to its being a thing a little uncommon, from Scotland, for a young man, supported by none of the great, to take up a point of the constitution upon as high a key as any English Member of Parliament.
Backed by Pitt and the Townshends, Elliot eventually obliged Administration to concede appointment for life after an interval of 15 years. ‘So’ wrote Eliot on 4 Mar., ‘we had the triumph of preventing their being declared for ever during pleasure, which is called saving the Revolution principle.’
During the winter Elliot had formed an ‘affectionate attachment’ for Bute, who now sought his mediation in effecting an alliance with Pitt,
On the formation of the Devonshire-Pitt Administration Elliot was offered a choice of appointments. While Argyll and Bute advised a seat on the Board of Trade, Pitt and Temple persuaded him to accept higher rank as a lord of the Admiralty. ‘I mean to make a business of it more than I ever did of a profession’, he wrote to his wife.
Since autumn 1755 Elliot had been resentful of Oswald, against whose nomination to the Treasury Board in 1759 Bute unsuccessfully protested to Newcastle.
I find several persons in power not satisfied with the part I have already taken in this affair ... I do not trouble myself about consequences, and I must hope you will never disapprove of my holding the same conduct in Parliament upon which I set out and upon which I must either act or not act at all.
At the second reading on 15 Apr. Elliot’s bill was overwhelmingly defeated, but his well-reasoned, impassioned speeches brought him immense prestige in Scotland.
Elliot was deeply concerned over Pitt’s bad relations with Bute, who in April 1760 unsuccessfully employed him to seek a reconciliation.
On the accession of George III, Elliot on personal and constitutional grounds regretted Bute’s decision to ‘remain behind the curtain’,
On Argyll’s death on 15 Apr. 1761, Newcastle and Hardwicke were convinced that ‘Elliot would be the man’ for the management of Scotland. Bute, however, aware that a writer’s grandson would be unacceptable to the Scottish nobility,
Grieved by Pitt’s resignation, Elliot wrote to Bute, 2 Oct. 1761:
It is the last pang of a favourite system, the final separation of your Lordship and Mr. Pitt, whose union ... while it seemed at all practicable, I ever most earnestly cherished as the surest ground of the tranquillity of his Majesty’s Government.
To Pitt he wrote: ‘It will be the greatest happiness of my life to recollect that I made a part ... of your Administration’; but, after a moving farewell interview, gave his undivided devotion to Bute; he was rewarded with the reversion of Lord Milton’s place as keeper of the signet. He spoke against Pitt on 9 and 11 Dec. on the German war and the Spanish papers, ‘with great freedom ... but decent and parliamentary’. In March 1762 he urged Bute to sponsor a Scottish militia bill: ‘People must comply if you desire it’. Bute rebuked him for this ‘very improper language’: ‘Whether I could force your bill down the throats of a powerful party is one consideration, whether it would be prudent ... is another; of that I will be the judge.’ In consequence the scheme came to nothing.
When Bute took the Treasury Elliot, disappointed of Cabinet office, was given the lucrative treasurership of the chamber which, he said, he preferred, as leaving him free for Commons business and ‘attendance on the King’.
Loyally supporting Grenville’s Administration, he was shocked by Bute’s negotiation with Pitt in August 1763. He wrote to his father, 30 Aug.:
I knew not the least syllable of this transaction till the Saturday when Mr. Pitt was with the King ... When I heard what the propositions were ... I immediately declared (though I had some reason to believe I was not comprehended in the general sweep) I should certainly resign my situation and retire from a government where I must contradict, if I stayed, all my professions for two years past, and besides be charged with privity to what I disclaimed.
Elliot and Jenkinson went to see Bute at Kew on Sunday, 28 Aug., when ‘they terrified him so much upon the consequences of the step he had persuaded the King to take, that he determined to depart from it and to advise his Majesty to send for Mr. Grenville’.
As I have acquitted myself in a public light ... so I pay what duty I can to private friendship and am much with Lord Bute and shall be so till he leaves this place. My friendship with Mr. Grenville is confirmed and if Mr. Pitt has any candour he has no right to complain of me; but that is more than I expect or indeed desire as I find our ideas of the public so very opposite.
This transaction marks a stage in Elliot’s disillusionment with politics and detachment from party connexion except as a ‘King’s friend’. Having escorted Bute to ‘absolute retirement’ in Bedfordshire, and temporarily disarmed Grenville’s suspicions, Elliot was a prominent supporter of Administration over Wilkes and general warrants. In July 1764 he rebuked David Hume for his bitterness at English antagonism to the Scots:
We are both Englishmen; that is true British subjects. Am I not a Member of Parliament with as much liberty to abuse ministers ... as if I had been born in Wapping? ... Had it not been for the clamour of ‘a Scot’, perhaps indeed I might have been in some more active but not more honourable or lucrative situation. This clamour ... will in time give way to some other equally absurd.
Nevertheless Elliot and Bute’s friends were accused of ‘caballing’—not always unjustly. When Grenville, having insisted upon Stuart Mackenzie’s dismissal, resumed office, Elliot categorically refused his demand for firm guarantees of loyalty in any future crisis, asserting the ‘right of the Crown to name its own officers’ and his own duty to ‘oppose improper measures in a parliamentary way’.
In June Elliot transferred from Selkirk to Roxburghshire, where the principal Minto estates lay. On the formation of the Rockingham Administration in July, Elliot was retained in office, but gave no explicit assurances of support. He wrote to Jenkinson, 26 Aug. 1765:
I think I love the public and I am sure I love my friends ... but as for that partial spirit which gave so much energy to business ... it is by me totally irrecoverable. I will never be angry with ministers because they are incapable of a true confidential friendship.
The ministry were disturbed by Elliot’s attitude: while affirming support in general, he reserved judgment over American affairs. Consulted by Conway on the Address, he insisted upon some reference to parliamentary authority over the colonies, but in the debate on 17 Dec. spoke against the violent terms of Grenville’s amendment.
I spoke and voted in the minority agreeably to the plan I have followed and the explanation I early made ... In other matters I have, supported Government, and in some instances with effect ... I hear we’ll also have the old questions on general warrants and the cider bill, in which case I shall also act consistently with my former opinions.
On Grafton’s resignation, Rockingham and Newcastle tried to sound the King on what Elliot and Oswald would do, and to insist that unless ‘those two’ gave ‘absolute and active support on all occasions’ the ministry would resign.
They mean to lay their not going on at your door and that of your friends; this day they named their surprise at those gentlemen not having spoke ... I said I was not surprised for whilst they were barely tolerated it could not be expected they would with ardour step forward, unasked, to support the ministers.
When Chatham’s Administration was formed Elliot was in Scotland on business consequent upon his father’s death. He retained his place, but, ‘cool and indifferent’, remained at home
Returned unopposed at the general election, he early took a strong line on Wilkes and the Middlesex election; on 12 May 1768 at a meeting of the Government men of business he ‘insisted’ that he would move for Wilkes’s expulsion and reluctantly agreed to postponement. In the new session he repudiated on 23 Nov. Beckford’s strictures on the previous Parliament’s proceedings on Wilkes; advocated a union of parties against ‘licentious men’; spoke, 3 Feb. 1769, for Wilkes’s expulsion, and consistently voted with Administration; but according to Grenville ‘was idle and not very strongly affected to them’. Critical of Grafton’s ‘weakness’, and finding himself ‘much neglected’, he now seldom spoke except ‘on occasions of emergency’.
On Grafton’s resignation Elliot, summoned to a meeting with North on 29 Jan. 1770, promised support to his Administration; spoke 31 Jan. in the debate on Wilkes and was offered the treasurership of the navy, which ‘though hazardous’ he accepted at the King’s desire. During 1770-1 he was a leading Government speaker on the Falkland Islands question, on East India military forces, and the printers’ case; and pressed North to take rigorous action against the city and Brass Crosby. Elliot’s relations with North deteriorated; he began ‘to act the part of discontent’, but continued to vote with Administration. In February 1772 he was bitterly offended when the King concurred with North and Barrington in refusing his son Hugh a captain-lieutenancy in the Guards on the ground that the nominal commission obtained, illicitly, for him in 1762, when aged 10, gave no claim to rank. The presence of the first minister in the House of Commons made Elliot of less consequence in the House.
In American affairs he remained a protagonist of the authority of Parliament and its right to impose colonial taxes; these principles being conceded, he favoured lenity. He spoke, 19 Apr. 1774, against the repeal of the tea duty, but on 22 Apr. in supporting the Massachusetts bill was no extremist.
Elliot’s last major speeches were made in March 1776, in support of Mountstuart’s Scottish militia bill, on which he argued with something of his old fire, but was again disappointed.
After assisting at his son’s Morpeth election, Elliot fell ill, did not return for the autumn session, and died in France 11 Jan. 1777.