Background
Born in Abingdon, Abbot was the son of Doctor John Abbot, rector of All Saints, Colchester, and, by his mother"s second marriage, step-brother of Jeremy Bentham.
Born in Abingdon, Abbot was the son of Doctor John Abbot, rector of All Saints, Colchester, and, by his mother"s second marriage, step-brother of Jeremy Bentham.
Christ Church; Westminster School.
He served as Speaker of the House of Commons between 1802 and 1817. From Westminster School he passed to Christ Church, Oxford, at which he gained the chancellor"s prize for Latin verse as well as the Vinerian Scholarship. On 14 February 1793, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1796 Abbot commenced his career as a reformer in Parliament by obtaining the appointment of two committees the one to report on the arrangements which then existed as to temporary laws or laws about to expire, the other to devise methods for the better publication of new statutes.
To the latter committee, and a second committee which he proposed some years later, it is owing that copies of new statutes were thenceforth sent to all magistrates and municipal bodies. Abbot"s efforts effected the establishment of the Record Commission, the reform of the system which had allowed the public money to lie for some time at long interest in the hands of the public accountants, by charging them with payment of interest, and, most important of all, the act for taking the first census, that of 1801.
On the formation of the Addington ministry in March 1801 Abbot became Chief Secretary and Privy Seal for Ireland. And in the February of the following year he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons, a position that he held with universal satisfaction until 1817, when an attack of erysipelas compelled him to retire.
In response to an address of the Commons, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Colchester, of Colchester in the County of Essex, with a pension of £4000, of which £3000 was to be continued to his heir.
His speeches against the Roman Catholic claims were published in 1828.
Royal Society; 1st United Kingdom Parliament. 2nd United Kingdom Parliament. 3rd United Kingdom Parliament.
4th United Kingdom Parliament.
5th United Kingdom Parliament. 17th Parliament of Great Britain.
18th Parliament of Great Britain.
