William Hart Coleridge

Born in 1789, Coleridge was the nephew on his father’s side of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was educated under another uncle, Reverend George Coleridge, at the grammar school of Ottery St. Mary. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a commoner, and after leaving the university became one of the curates of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. He became the secretary for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and was also preacher at the National Society’s chapel in Ely Place. In 1824, he was consecrated the first bishop of Barbados. He married in 1825, and had two children by his wife. In a charge delivered in July 1838, just before the legal emancipation of the slaves in the West Indian colonies, he states that the black residents ‘flock to the churches and chapels,’ and are ‘civil in their behaviour’ and ‘decent in their appearance.’ At this time the number of communicants was unusually large. He gave up his bishopric in 1842 due to ill health, and the large diocese was then divided, the three archdeaconries of Barbados, Antigua, and Guiana being erected into separate sees. On the establishment of St. Augustine’s Missionary College at Canterbury, Coleridge was induced to become the first warden, and held the office till his death in 1849.