William Scott was an English judge, jurist and Member of Parliament.

William Scott's father (also named William Scott) was a tradesman working for a coal fitter's business. The young Scott was educated at Newcastle Royal Grammar School, before going to Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, where he later (1773-1785) became the   Camden Professor of Ancient History. Around 1780 he graduated as Doctor of Civil Law, and he soon embarked on a distinguished legal career, eventually becoming, in 1798, judge of the High Court of Admiralty. 

He unsuccessfully tried getting elected for parliament for Oxford University in 1780, but had more luck some years later, when in 1784 he was elected M.P. on a so-called double return1 for the constituency of Downton, which was also the reason why Boswell referred to him as "Mr. Scott of University College, Oxford (now Dr. Scott of the Commons) in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, published in 1785. He was, however, unseated that same year on a petition. 

He did not again seek election until 1790 when he was successfully elected Member of Parliament for Downton. He sat for this constituency until 1801, when he was finally elected for Oxford University as "a single instance of a professional man representing the university".2 

Scott was married twice. In 1781 he married Anna Maria (d. 1809), daughter of John Bagnall of Erleigh Court, with whom he had four children, only one of whom, their daughter Marianne, survived her father. In 1813 he married Louisa-Catherine, the widow of John, the late Marquess of Sligo.

William Scott's younger brother, John (1751-1838) also became a politician, who rose to serve as Lord Chancellor of Britain for almost three decades (1801-1806, 1807-1827)

James Beattie was a Scottish poet and philosopher, best known for his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) and his poem The Minstrel (1771). Married (1767) to Mary Dunn, with whom he had two sons, James Hay (d. 1790) and Montagu (d. 1796).

Beattie was born in 1735, the son of a shopkeeper and small farmer. He was educated at Marischal College in Aberdeen, where he formed a lifelong friendship with abolitionist James Ramsay. In 1757 he was appointed master at Aberdeen Grammar School, and just a few years later in 1760, at the young age of 24, he became Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at his alma mater Marischal College, supposedly due to the influence of his friend Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo.

In 1770 he wrote the Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, as an answer to the theories of David Hume. This gained him instant fame and led to an introduction to King George III, a government pension of £200 and the degree of LL.D. from Oxford. In 1771 and 1774 respectively was published the two volumes of his poem The Minstrel, which even won him the praise of Dr Johnson himself. Beattie had met the poet Thomas Gray some years earlier, during the latter's journey into Scotland, and Johnson wrote in his Lives of the Poets (1779-1781), that "[Gray] naturally contracted a friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man."

In 1783 Beattie was co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In contrast to his professional career, his personal life was marred with some degree of tragedy. In 1767 he married Mary Dunn, a daughter of the Rector of the Aberdeen Grammar School, and she bore him two sons. Mary, however, suffered from some unidentified mental disease and was eventually committed to Musselburgh Asylum. As if that wasn't bad enough, his two promising sons died in 1790 and 1796 respectively, at the ages of 22 and 18.

Following Beattie's death in 1803, An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D., including many of his Original Letters was written by his friend, the eminent banker and literary executor of James Boswell, Sir William Forbes. It was published in 1806.

At the time of her death, Danziger was Emeritus Professor of English at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Green was the daughter of a Capt. Green, who was killed at the Battle of Minden in 1759. Her brother was Charles Green (1749-1831), who rose to become a General, a Baronet and Governor of Suriname.

In 1783 she married Thomas David Boswell, with whom she had four children, two of whom, Maria (1788-1811) and Thomas Alexander, survived infancy. She appears to have separated from her husband in 1799 and details of her life after this time are sketchy.5