Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge


Bernard John Seymour Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge, QC was a British lawyer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 until 1894 when he inherited his peerage.

Biography

Coleridge was the eldest son of John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Jane Fortescue Seymour. His grandfather, John Taylor Coleridge, was the nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. He was called to the bar at Middle Temple in 1877.
Coleridge was elected Member of Parliament for Sheffield Attercliffe in the 1885 general election and held the seat until 1894 when he succeeded his father as second Baron Coleridge. He was the first peer to regularly practice at the bar.
Coleridge became a QC in 1892 and served as a Judge of the High Court of Justice from 1907 to 1923.
Lord Coleridge married Mary Alethea Mackarness, daughter of John Fielder Mackarness, on 3 August 1876. They had three children, one son and two daughters. He died in September 1927, in Honiton, Devon, aged 76, and was succeeded in the barony by his only son Geoffrey.

Selected bibliography