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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. 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.
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. They had three sons and a daughter:
Stephen Coleridge c. 1873 by Jane Seymour ColeridgeStephen William Buchanan Coleridge (1854–1936), barrister, author and landscape artist
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.
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.
Lord Coleridge by Eden Upton Eddis
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Grant Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone (1911). "Coleridge, John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 677–678.
