Coleridge, Sir John Taylor

Coleridge, Sir John Taylor (1790-1876), English judge, the second son of Captain James Coleridge and nephew of the poet S. T. Coleridge, was born at Tiverton, Devon, and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he had a brilliant career. He graduated in 1812 and was soon after made a fellow of Exeter; in 1819 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple and practised for some years on the western circuit. In 1824, on Gifford’s retirement, he assumed the editorship of the Quarterly Review, resigning it a year afterwards in favour of Lockhart. In 1825 he published his excellent edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, and in 1832 he was made a serjeant-at-law and recorder of Exeter. In 1835 he was appointed one of the judges of the king’s bench. In 1852 his university created him a D.C.L., and in 1858 he resigned his judgeship, and was made a member of the privy council. In 1869, although in extreme old age, he produced his pleasant Memoir of the Rev. John Keble, whose friend he had been since their college days, a third edition of which was issued within a year. He died on the 11th of February 1876 at Ottery St Mary, Devon, leaving two sons and a daughter; the eldest son, John Duke, 1st Baron Coleridge (q.v.), became lord chief justice of England; the second son, Henry James (1822-1893), left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic church in 1852, and became well-known as a Jesuit divine, editor of The Month, and author of numerous theological works. Sir John Taylor Coleridge’s brothers, James Duke and Henry Nelson (husband of Sara Coleridge), are referred to in other articles; his brother Francis George was the father of Arthur Duke Coleridge (b. 1830), clerk of assizes on the midland circuit and author of Eton in the Forties, whose daughter Mary E. Coleridge (1861-1907) became a well-known writer of fiction.