22 Facts About Nicholas Trott

Nicholas Trott was an 18th-century British judge, legal scholar and writer.

Nicholas Trott had a lengthy legal and political career in Charleston, South Carolina and served as the colonial chief justice from 1703 until 1719.

Nicholas Trott came from a prosperous English family; his grandfather Perient Trott having been a husband of the Somers Isles Company and his uncle Sir Nicholas Trott served as the governor of the Bahamas.

Nicholas Trott's final published work, The Laws of the Province of South Carolina, chronicled the early legal and judicial history of Charleston up until 1719.

Nicholas Trott was born in Lewisham, London, England, to Samuel Trott, a successful London merchant.

Nicholas Trott's grandfather, Perient Trott, was a husband of the Somers Isles Company, the chartered company which was involved in the early colonization of Bermuda.

Nicholas Trott married his first wife, Jane Willis, in Bermuda a year later.

In 1695, Nicholas Trott became a member of the Inner Temple, one of London's four Inns of Court, which served as centers of learning for training lawyers.

In 1699, Nicholas Trott left Bermuda for Charleston, South Carolina to become attorney general and naval officer in the colony.

Nicholas Trott had been offered this post by Edward Randolph, then surveyor general of the colonies.

Nicholas Trott was eventually restored to his former position by the colonial assembly in 1702 and was appointed chief justice the next year.

Nicholas Trott was involved with other Anglicans to establish the Church of England within the colony and suppress the religious dissenters.

Nicholas Trott visited England in 1714 where he was given "extraordinary legal powers" by the colony proprietors which included his right to appoint a provost marshal, though his presence was required in order to hold a quorum in the colonial council, and no additional laws could be passed without his approval.

In 1718, Nicholas Trott gained a certain degree of notoriety when he served as Vice Admiralty Judge during the trial of Captain Stede Bonnet and his crew.

Nicholas Trott published a transcript of the trial, entitled The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and Other Pirates, that provided extensive details of the trial and was included as a primary source document in prominent collections of state trials published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nicholas Trott's work was frequently cited in public international law into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Nicholas Trott petitioned to have his office restored but eventually gave up.

Nicholas Trott's works included, aside from his own memoirs of the Bonnet trial, a lexicon of the psalms Clavis Linguae Sanctae and The Laws of the British Plantations.

Nicholas Trott's last published work, The Laws of the Province of South Carolina, included a collection of provincial laws during his time as colonial magistrate.

Nicholas Trott spent the last years of his life, according to personal correspondence and his later obituary from the South Carolina Gazette, explicating the Hebrew text of the Bible which has apparently been lost.

Nicholas Trott left small bequests to his "two grandchildren Sarah and Mary Jane Rhett", descendants of his second wife by her first marriage, but apparently had no children of his own.

Nicholas Trott is considered to have been a highly important figure in the early history of South Carolina.