James Coleridge

The third son of the Reverend John Coleridge, the well-respected vicar of St Mary’s Church, and the elder brother of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James was born in 1759. He was a lecturer at Molland, a master at Hugh Squier’s School in South Molton, and was headmaster of King’s School, a free grammar school in Ottery St. Mary. He became a captain in the French Revolutionary Wars, and was then promoted to colonel. In the Napoleonic Wars, he escorted French prisoners to Dartmoor prison. In 1788 he married Frances Duke Taylor, and they had six surviving children.