John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge, PC (3 December 1820 – 14 June 1894) was an English lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He held the posts, in turn, of Solicitor General for England and Wales, Attorney General for England and Wales, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord Chief Justice of England.

Background and education

Coleridge was the eldest son of John Taylor Coleridge, and the great-nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1846.

Coleridge was a member of the Canterbury Association from 24 June 1851.^[1]

Legal career

Coleridge established a successful legal practice on the western circuit. From 1853 to 1854 he held the post of secretary to the Royal Commission on the City of London.^[2] In 1865 he was elected to the House of Commons for Exeter for the Liberal Party. He made a favourable impression on the leaders of his party and when the Liberals came to office in 1868 under William Ewart Gladstone, Coleridge was appointed Solicitor-General. In 1871 he was promoted to Attorney-General, a post he held until 1873. In 1871 he was also involved in the high-publicity Tichborne Case.

In November 1873 Coleridge succeeded Sir William Bovill as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and in January the following year was raised to the peerage as Baron Coleridge, of Ottery St Mary in the County of Devon. In 1880 he was made Lord Chief Justice of England on the death of Sir Alexander Cockburn. Despite his health failing towards the end of his life he remained in this office until his death. In 1873 he was described by the Manchester-based Women's Suffrage Journal as a "firm and consistent" supporter of women's suffrage.^[3]

Family

Lord Coleridge married Jane Fortescue Seymour, daughter of the Reverend George Seymour of Freshwater, Isle of Wight, herself an accomplished artist who notably painted John Henry Newman. They had three sons and a daughter. His first wife died in February 1878. He remained a widower until 1885 when he married Amy Augusta Jackson Lawford, who survived him. Lord Coleridge died in June 1894, aged 74, and was succeeded by his eldest son Bernard John Seymour, who later became a Judge of the High Court of Justice. His second son Stephen also became a barrister. His daughter Mildred eloped with the lawyer Charles Warren Adams, to whom she was married in 1885. This led to two celebrated libel actions won by Adams while Coleridge was serving as lord chief justice.^[4]

Leading cases and judgements

• R v Coney (1882)
• R v Dudley and Stephens (1884)
• Gordon-Cumming v Wilson and Others (1891), the trial arising from the Royal Baccarat Scandal.

References

• {{note|r1}}A short notice of her by Dean Church of St Paul's was published in The Guardian, and was reprinted in her husband's privately printed collection of poems.
• {{EB1911|wstitle=Coleridge, John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron|volume=6|pages=677–678}}

External links

• {{Internet Archive author |sname=John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge}}
• {{Hansard-contribs | mr-john-coleridge | Lord Coleridge }}
• {{UK National Archives ID}}