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.[3] 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 1873 he was described by the Manchester-based Women's Suffrage Journal as a "firm and consistent" supporter of women's suffrage.[4]
In November 1873 Coleridge succeeded Sir William Bovill as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and in January 1874 was raised to the peerage as Baron Coleridge, of Ottery St Mary in the County of Devon.[1][5]
In 1875, the three English common law courts (the Court of Queen's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Court of the Exchequer) merged to become divisions of the new High Court of Justice. The head of each court (Lord Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Lord Coleridge, and Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Fitzroy Kelly) continued in post. After the deaths of Kelly and Cockburn in 1880, the three divisions were merged into a single division, with Lord Coleridge as Lord Chief Justice of England.[6] In 1884, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.[7] Despite his health failing towards the end of his life he remained in this office until his death on 14 June 1894, aged 74, at his house in Sussex Square in Paddington.
On 11 August 1846, Coleridge married Jane Fortescue Seymour, daughter of the Rev. George Turner Seymour of Freshwater, Isle of Wight, herself an accomplished artist who notably painted John Henry Newman. 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.[1] They had three sons and a daughter:[5]
Gilbert James Duke Coleridge (1859–1953), barrister and sculptor
His first wife died on 6 February 1878. He remained a widower until 13 August 1885, when he married Amy Augusta Jackson Lawford, daughter of Henry Baring Lawford, who survived him.[5]
When Coleridge's daughter Mildred went to live with the lawyer Charles Warren Adams – they married in 1885, Lord Coleridge refusing to attend the wedding – the family considered the match inappropriate. Mildred's brother Bernard wrote her a letter disparaging Adams as a fortune hunter, which prompted Adams to sue for libel. The resultant legal proceedings in November 1884 and November 1886 were highly embarrassing for Lord Coleridge, who was obliged as Lord Chief Justice to appear in the court of which he was the senior judge.[8][9]
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