372 COLERIDGE 1st da. of Henry Baring Lawford, of the Bengal Civil Service. He d. at I Sussex Sq., of jaundice, 14, and was bur. 22 June 1894, at Ottery afsd., aged 74.(*) Will pr. at ;^ 15,000. His widow, who was b. 1853, was living 1 913. II. 1894. 2. Bernard John Seymour (Coleridge), Baron Coleridge of Ottery St. Mary [1874], ist s. and h., b. 19 Aug. 1 851, at Heath's Court afsd.; ed. at Eton, and at Trin. Coll. Oxford, B.A. 1875; Barrister (Middle Temple) 1877; was M.P. (advanced Liberal) for the AtterclifFe div. of Sheffield, 1885-94; Q.C., 1892. On his accession to the peerage he contended (unsuccessfully) that his seat in the lower House was not vacated thereby till after the writ of summons to the upper House had issued. App. in Oct. 1907, a Judge of the King's Bench-C') He w., 3 Aug. 1876, at Cuddesden, Oxon, his first cousin, (*) His Oxford career was, save for the taking of the ordinary degrees, a total blank, contrasting singularly with that of his father (who was ist class in classics besides obtaining the prize in 1 8 10 for Latin verse, and in 1813 both for Latin essay and English essay), and yet more strikingly with that of the ist Lord Selborne at the same University. His father accurately enumerates his quahfications for the Bench: " Quickness and clearness, a powerful memory, remarkable powers of arrangement and delivery, much dignity of person and manner, quickness of perception, and a full grasp of facts and arguments." A highly cultured man, of fine presence and dignified demeanour, an excellent raM«?i?«r and after-dinner speaker. His "silver-tongued" oratory was much admired, but he made no great reputation in the House of Commons, nor on the Bench: posterity will probably with difficulty understand his importance in his own day. He had an unpleasant habit of sneering at those whom he considered his intellectual inferiors. He was a strong Liberal, and life long friend of W. E. Gladstone. By far the most famous case in which he was engaged as an advocate was that in which he successfully opposed the claim of the soi dhant " Sir Roger " to the Tichborne estates in 1872, when he made the longest speech ever delivered in a Court of Justice. On this trial a Judge grimly remarked, that it disclosed the fact that there were two impostors! While Chief Justice he was defendant in an action for libelbrought by his son-in-law, C.W. Adams, thus furnishing a unique spectacle by appearing in that position in his own Court before one of his own Puisnes. He gained the day, and the fairest comment on the affair is, that if the family dirty linen was washed in public, there was not very much of it, and it was not very dirty. His life, in 2 vols., by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, was published in 1 905. See also note luh Robert, Marquess of Salisbury [1868]. V.G. () A slight, fair, lean-faced man, who lacks the surface graces of his father; when in the House of Commons his utterances were not always calculated to endear him to his political opponents, but he is a faithful friend, and his enemies are not to be found among his neighbours, or those who know him well. He makes a painstaking and successful Judge, being patient with, and courteous to, those wiio practise before him. His Lordship has set several precedents, being the first peer to become a Judge, and the first Judge whose father and father's father have also sat on the Bench. He would have been also the first peer to practise at the Bar, had not Henry (Pierrepont), 2nd Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull (see note to that title) forestalled him. He is one of the numerous peers who are or have been directors of public companies, for a list of whom (in 1896) see vol. v. Appendix C. V.G.
