The 8th Lord Abinger, who has died aged 87, devoted much of his time in the House of Lords to reforming the ancient law on treasure trove.
Under the law which long prevailed, objects deemed by a coroner to have been lost became the property of the finder; items deemed to be treasure trove (valuables once hidden, rather than lost), became the property of the Crown - although the finder might receive an ex gratia reward from public funds equivalent to the full market value of the discovery.
Abinger proposed that items of gold or silver found would go to the owners of the land where they were discovered, if a coroner's court decided they were lost; if it decided that the treasure had been hidden, and was thus treasure trove, the reward for their discovery would also go to the landowner, not to the finder.
His concern was not only to reform the system of rewards, but also to restrict the activities of treasure hunters with metal detectors, who might damage important archaeological sites.
With the support of the Council for British Archaeology, Abinger introduced two Private Member's Bills, in 1979 and 1981. Both failed; but the cause was taken up by the Earl of Perth, and Abinger's contribution was acknowledged in 1997 when the Treasure Act finally became law. Under its provisions, the landowner and the finder of treasure trove received an equal share of the spoils.
James Richard Scarlett was born at Datchet, Berkshire, on September 28 1914. His father Hugh (later the 7th Lord Abinger) was then serving on the Western Front with the Royal Artillery. James's mother, Marjorie McPhillamy, was the daughter of the owner of an Australian cattle station in New South Wales.
The first Lord Abinger's family had been sugar planters and occasional privateers in Jamaica, obtaining grants of land soon after the island was taken from the Spanish. He came to England in 1785, and rose to be Attorney-General and Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He was raised to the peerage in 1835. His second son, General Sir James Yorke Scarlett, led the victorious Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava in the Crimean War.
In 1926, Hugh Scarlett unexpectedly became the 7th Lord Abinger following the deaths of his three elder brothers, thereby inheriting Inverlochy Castle, near Fort William. The river Lochy, which ran through the estate, was then regarded as the best salmon river on the west coast of Scotland.
From Eton, where he won the school mile, James Scarlett went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read Economics, and then on to Sandhurst.
He was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1936 and posted to the 5th Medium Regiment RA, with whom he went to France in 1939. He also served in India and Norway, retiring in the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1947.
In 1943, while at Poona, Scarlett had received a letter informing him of his father's death. By the end of the war, Inverlochy was severely run down, due to wartime requisition as a training centre for Army commandos. The grouse moors were in very bad shape, having been used as firing ranges.
The new Lord Abinger sold Inverlochy in 1945 to a Canadian whisky merchant named Hobbs.
On leaving the Army, Lord Abinger moved south and bought Clees Hall, a mixed arable and dairy farm in Essex. For the next 50 years he devoted his time not only to farming but also to playing a part in national government, as a Conservative peer, and in local government as a councillor.
Abinger's grandmother had been adopted by Sir Percy Shelley, only son of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, and had inherited part of their literary estate. Abinger devoted much time to cataloguing the Boscombe Collection of Shelley letters and manuscripts, now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He was also vice-president of the Byron Society.
He had a lifelong interest in conserving the rural environment. He was chairman of the Essex branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) from 1972 to 1982, and in 1974 co-founded the Colne Stour Countryside Association to protect the Essex-Suffolk border landscape from the effects of over-intensive development.
He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Essex in 1968.
During his time at Clees, Abinger planted a vineyard that produced enough wine to supply the demands of family and friends.
Lord Abinger, who died on September 23, married, in 1957, Isla Carolyn Rivett-Carnac - who in the press of the 1950s was known, for her love of jiving, as a "Mayfair Rock 'n Roller". He leaves two sons, the elder of whom, James Harry Scarlett, becomes the 9th Lord Abinger.
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