William Hart Coleridge

Bishop of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, 1824-1842.

Son of Luke Herman Coleridge (brother of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet) of Thorverton, Devon, and Sarah, daughter of Richard Hart of Exeter. He married Sarah Elizabeth Rennell, daughter of Dr Thomas Rennell, dean of Winchester and master of the Temple, and a granddaughter of Sir William Blackstone, the judge.

In Barbados, Coleridge worked closely with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel which provided all the diocese's clergy and managed the slave-worked Codrington estates and Codrington College on Barbados. Supported the Codrington trustees and the SPG in the belief that gradual emancipation could be brought about.

Following ill health, resigned as Bishop in 1842. Returned to England. Died at home, Salston, in Ottery St Mary, 1849.

W. W. Wroth, ‘Coleridge, William Hart (1789–1849)’, rev. Clare Brown, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography