Life & Correspondence of John Duke Lord Coleridge, Lord
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CORRESPONDENCE ORD COLERIDGE (iJortteU Hniuerfiitg 2Iibrarg 3tljaca, HcM ^nrk WORDSWORTH COLLECTION Made by CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA, N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 LIFE (ff CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN DUKE LORD COLERIDGE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND LIFE ^ CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN DUKE LORD COLERIDGE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND WRITTEN AND EDITED BY ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1904 I. PRINTED IN ENGLAND TAis Edition is Copyright in all Countries signatory to the Berne Treaty <,>^^'^'% 4^;' TO AMY LADY COLERIDGE THESE MEMORIALS OF HER HUSBAND JOHN DUKE LORD COLERIDGE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND ARE INSCRIBED BY HER COUSIN ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE OCTOBER 1904 ; PREFACE I AM indebted to many persons, friends or repre- sentatives of friends, of the late Lord Coleridge, for the right to publish in these volumes letters to him which remained in his possession, and letters from him which passed into their hands at once, or, afterwards, came into their possession. My thanks and acknowledgments, on this score, are due to the executors of Cardinal Newman ; of Cardinal Manning ; of the late Master of Balliol of Dean Stanley ; of Lord Blachford ; of Mr. James Russell Lowell : to Mr. Richard Arnold ; Lord Acton ; Mr. Charles Chauncey Binning ; Mr. Arthur Benson ; Lord Brampton ; the Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen ; Mr. John Brown (of Edinburgh University) ; Miss Edith Coleridge ; Mr. Richard Dana ; Mr. Coningsby Disraeli ; Mr. Drew ; Sir Mountstuart E. Grant Duff ; Miss Hawker ; the Earl of Iddesleigh ; Mrs. Jake ; Lord Lindley Mrs. Prichard ; the Marquis of Salisbury ; Sheriff Shairp ; Mr. Goldwin Smith ; Mrs. Temple ; Lord Justice Vaughan Williams ; Sir Spencer Walpole, K.C.B.; Mr. Ellis Yarnall; Lord Young. I have received valuable assistance, and informa- tion, from the Editor of the Guardian with regard to Lord Coleridge's contributions to the paper. Mr, Arundel Esdaile, of the British Museum, has viii PREFACE greatly assisted me in reading the proofs in slips, and in verifying references to books quoted in the text or in the notes. Among those who have assisted me in preparing and completing the notes, I desire to mention the names of Miss Hastings and Miss Peacock, and Mr. Bailey Kempling. Papers by Lord Lindley, Lord Justice Mathew, and Mr. Goldwin Smith will be found at the end of the second volume. It is difficult to overestimate the value and importance of these contributions to the Life of Lord Coleridge. I cannot sufficiently express my obligations. I have received from Sir Francis Mowatt, G.C.B., and from Mr. W. P. Courtney, author of the Bihlio- graphia Cornubiensis, &c., advice and assistance in the preparation, and with regard to the materials, of the work, which, I trust, I may be permitted to publicly acknowledge. I would add that my warmest thanks are due to Mr. Egerton Baring Lawford, Master of the Crown Office, for constant and unvarying assistance in the arduous and difficult task of sorting and arranging the vast collection of letters and papers placed at my disposal. Of these, the great majority remain, and perhaps will always remain, unpublished. Even the names of many correspondents, some of them old and valued friends, others of greater or lesser note in Church, or State, or the world of letters, are not mentioned in the following pages. Their name is legion, and I am compelled to make a selection, and then only to give excerpts from the selected letters of selected correspondents. PREFACE ix The letters or parts of letters now published are either of direct biographical importance as a record of events, or indirectly bear witness to and illus- trate the mind, the tastes, and the character of the man by whom or to whom they were written. Tastes differ, and others might have made a better or, at least, another selection. I can but hope that after long and careful consideration I have made a good choice. ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE. October i8, 1904. CONTENTS PAGE I. A Devonshire Idyll .... I II. Laleham 17 III. A Distant Prospect of Eton College 31 IV. Balliol, 1839-1843 53 V. Memorials of Oxford .... 80 VI. Hursley—the Isle of Wight—Exeter College 113 VII. Marriage 147 VIII. Circuit 173 IX. Literature and Art 203 X. The Recordership of Portsmouth 224 XI. Queen's Counsel .... 246 XII Letters to American Friends before the War 271 ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Lord Coleridge, est. 57 Frontispiece To /ace page Colonel James Coleridge, Grandfather of John Ditke (Lord) Coleridge 2 Portrait by Mrs. McNiven of John Duke Coleridge, cet. 9 months 18 Portrait of John Duke Coleridge, cet. 76 . .48 Portrait of Sir John Taylor Coleridge 180 Heath's Court, 1829 and 1890 27a CHAPTER I A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL St. Mary Ottery, my native village. Charles Lamb. John Duke Coleridge was born in London, at No. 7, Hadlow Street, December 3, 1820. He was the second child and eldest son of John Taylor Coleridge, who was born July 9, 1790, and died February 11, 1876, when his son was fifty-five years of age and in the fourth year of office as Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The mutual relations of father and son were so intimate and so peculiar, the parental tie was so unusually close and remained so long unbroken, that it is necessary to preface the son's life with something more than an outline of the early years and character of the father. The two lives are, in a measure, inseparable and both lives remain to be written. John Taylor was the son of James Coleridge, a Captain in the Army, and his wife, Frances Duke Coleridge, born Taylor. After his marriage (Feb- ruary 27, 1788), Captain Coleridge, who had retired on half-pay, settled, in the first instance, at a house in St. Peter's Street, Tiverton, and, secondly (1796), at Heath's (or Heath) Court, Ottery St. Mary. Five children, James Duke, John Taylor, Bernard Frederick (d. 1806), Francis George and Frances VOL. I A 2 LIFE OF LORD COLERIDGE 1718 Duke (Lady Patteson), were born at Tiverton : a sixth son, Henry Nelson, was born October 25, 1798, and a seventh and youngest child, Edward, was born May 11, 1800, at Ottery St. Mary. The late Master of Balliol (Benjamin Jowett) used to say that there were as many Coleridges as there were Herods, and that it was impossible to remember how they were related to each other. If the reader will bear in mind that James, the father of John Taylor and grandfather of John Duke Coleridge, was the progenitor of most who bear his name, and that the sole exceptions are the descen- dants of James' nephew, William Hart Coleridge [Bishop of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands,] and James' youngest brother, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it may help him to thrid the maze.^ If he seek to know more he will find a genealogical table at the end of the second volume. James, who maybe regarded as the second founder of the family, was the third surviving son of the Reverend John Coleridge (1718-1781), a self-made man who began life as Master of a village school at Clyst Hydon, took orders, and, after eleven years* service as Master of Squire's endowed school at South Molton, was appointed, September 6, 1760, Master of the King's or New Grammar School at Ottery St. Mary, and, about the same time. Vicar of the Parish and Chaplain Priest of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Of the Vicar's father, woollen draper, or woolstapler (his son entered him- 1 The descendants of William Hart Coleridge in the male line are his grandson Rennell Coleridge of Salston, Ottery St. Mary, and three great-grandchildren ; the descendants of S. T. Coleridge are his grandchildren, Edith Coleridge, Christabel Rose Coleridge, Ernest Hartley Coleridge, and four great-grandchildren. Colo-^el t;2 3jEj4iXiiL«-rcii<i« Colonel James Coleridge, Grandfather ok John Duke (Lord) Coleridge A Pastel Drawing in the possession of the Right Honble. Lord Coleridge, K.C 1748 A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 3 self on the books of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March i8, " 1748, as filius Johannis textoris "), nothing is known save that he lived at Crediton, and that before his death he was " reduced to extreme poverty." The sole authority for these facts or, rather, "dim traditions of times too remote to be pierced by the eye of investigation," is the poet who knew but little and recorded the little he did know, as a poet should, with a view to poetic rather than historic fidelity. It may, however, be taken for granted that " Johannes textor " was a son of the soil, and that if he could claim kinship with those Exeter Coldridges or Coleridges whose wills are preserved in the diocesan registry, he was a poor relation. There is a village named Coleridge three miles to the west of Lapford Station in the North of Devon, a Hundred of Coleridge in the South, and an ancient building named Coleridge House not far from Kingsbridge, but whether John of Crediton or the other mid-Devon Coleridges came from the Parish in the North or the Hundred in the South is uncertain. They were not of sufficient importance to have been name-givers, and the inference is that they were emigrants and brought their name with them. A time comes when even " the low begin- nings " of a prosperous family are eagerly sought after and inquired into, but, at first, and before the prosperity is a fait accompli, there is a conspiracy of silence.