John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
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John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (3 December 1820- 14 June 1894) was an English Liberal lawyer, politician and judge. He held the posts, in turn, of Solicitor General, Attorney General and Lord Chief Justice of England.
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Early life
The eldest son of Sir John Taylor Coleridge, he was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he enjoyed a scholarship. He was called to the bar in 1846 and practiced on the western circuit, rising steadily, through more than twenty years of hard work, till in 1865 he was returned as Member of Parliament for Exeter for the Liberal Party. He made a favourable impression on the leaders of his party and, early in the session of 1867, he was assigned a leading role in the parliamentary attack on the Conservative government. However, that move seemed unwise to many of the party's staunchest adherents, and it was frustrated by the active opposition of a section, including Hastings Russell, his brother Arthur, member for Tavistock, Alexander Mitchell of Stow, A. W. Kinglake and Henry Seymour. The opponents met to deliberate in the tea-room of the House of Commons, and were afterwards sometimes mistaken for the tea-room party which was of subsequent formation and under the guidance of a different group. The protest was sufficient to prevent the contemplated attack being made, but the Liberals soon returned to power with a large majority behind them in 1868. Coleridge was made, first Solicitor General, and then Attorney General.
As early as 1863 a small body of Oxford graduates in parliament had opposed the Test Acts which kept their university bound by, as they saw it, "ecclesiastical swaddling clothes" through refusing admission to dissenters and Roman Catholics. They had made a good deal of progress in converting the House of Commons to their demands for a broader access before the general election of 1865. That election having brought Coleridge into parliament, he was hailed as a valuable ally, whose great university distinction, brilliant success as an orator at the bar, and hereditary connection with the High Church party, entitled him to take the lead in a movement which, although gathering strength, was yet very far from having achieved complete success. Those Conservatives who stood in defence of the special status of the Church of England listened to the son of Sir John Coleridge, the godson of John Keble, and the grandnephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a man regarded by John Stuart Mill as an indirect cause of the Anglican revival of 1833.
Walking up one evening from the House of Commons to dine at the Athenaeum with Henry Bruce and another friend, Coleridge said: "There is a trial coming on which will be one of the most remarkable causes celebres that has ever been heard of. This was the Tichborne Case, which led to proceedings in the criminal courts that attarcted huge public interest and notoriety. The Tichborne trial was the most conspicuous feature of Coleridge's later years at the bar, and tasked his powers as an advocate to the uttermost, though he was ably assisted by the skill and industry of Charles Bowen. In November 1873 Coleridge succeeded Sir William Bovill as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and was immediately afterwards raised to the peerage as Baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary. In 1880 he was made Lord Chief Justice of England on the death of Sir Alexander Cockburn.
Lord Chief Justice of England
As a practicing barrister he showed a quickness in apprehending facts in jury trials and demonstrated a remarkable lucidity in organising the details. He was, reputedly, not one of the most academically able of lawyers, but he is likely to have had a greater knowledge of the law than many supposed. As an ecclesiastical lawyer he excelled. As a judge, he gained a reputation, perhaps natural for an advocate, for taking one side, even to the point of allowing his political and personal prejudices to colour the tone of his remarks from the bench.
Towards the end of his life his health and energy failed. His reputation in a judicial capacity has not proved as durable as those of Campbell or Cockburn. However, his scholarship, his refinement, his power of oratory, and his character enhanced judicial prestige. It is curious to observe that of all judges the man whom he ranked highest was one very unlike himself, the great Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant. Coleridge died while still serving as a judge.
Writing, travel and society
Coleridge was a prolific and enthusiastic writer but his profession, first as a barrister, and then as a judge, prevented his publishing as much as he moight otherwise have done. His addresses and papers would, if collected, fill a substantial volume of fine writing. One of his best and most characteristic papers, was his inaugural address to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1870. Another was a paper on William Wordsworth (1873). He was also an exceptional letter-writer.
He had very little experience of travel, having hardly ever been even to Paris. Near the end of his career, he did spend a few days in the Netherlands, and came back an enthusiast for the work of Rembrandt van Rijn. His longest absence from England was a visit, which had something of a representative legal character, to the United States. It is strange that a man so steeped in Greek and Roman poetry, so deeply interested in the past, present and future of Christianity, never saw Rome, or Athens, or the Holy Land.
Coleridge was an able raconteur with stories almost always connected with Eton, Oxford, the bar or the bench. He had a fine voice, considerable power of mimicry and effective method of narration which added greatly to the stories' charm. Once, at the table of Benjamin Jowett, master of Balliol, he told anecdotes through the whole of dinner on Saturday evening, through the whole of breakfast, lunch and dinner the next day, through the whole journey on Monday morning from Oxford to Paddington station, without ever once repeating himself.
He was frequently to be seen at the Athenaeum Club, was a member both of Grillions and The Club, as well as of the Literary Society, of which he was president, and whose meetings he very rarely missed. Bishop Copleston is said to have divided the human race into three classes: men, women and Coleridges. The family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge may well have regarded themselves as a class to themselves, the objects of a special dispensation. John Duke Coleridge was sarcastic and critical, and at times over-sensitive. However, his strongest characteristics were love of liberty and justice. By birth and connections a Conservative, he was a Liberal by conviction, and loyal to his party and its leader, William Ewart Gladstone.
Family
Coleridge married Jane Fortescue Seymour, daughter of the Rev. George Seymour of Freshwater, herself an accomplished artist who painted John Henry Newman, though her portrait is less well known than the familiar one by John Everett MillaisTemplate:Ref. The couple had three sons and a daughter.
Coleridge's first wife died in February 1878. He remained a widower for some years then, in 1885, married Amy Augusta Jackson Lawford, who survived him.
Sons:
- Bernard John Seymour (born 1851) became a K.C. in 1892 and in 1907 was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court. He succeeded his father to the peerage.
- Stephen (born 1854) became a barrister, later secretary to the Anti-Vivisection Society.
- Gilbert James Duke (born 1859)
Leading judgments
- R v. Coney (1882)
- R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884)
- ...
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References
- Template:NoteA short notice of her by Dean Church of St Pauls was published in The Guardian, and was reprinted in her husband's privately printed collection of poems.
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