Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/360

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Collier
354
Collier

the office, however, with success until the liberal government resigned in 1866, and in December 1868 he became attorney-general, and in the next year he had the conduct of the Bankruptcy Bill in the House of Commons. He was, while attorney-general, appointed recorder of Bristol, but resigned the appointment at once in deference to the wishes of his constituency. In 1871, to enable the judicial committee of the privy council to overtake its arrears of colonial appeals, an act (34 & 85 Vict. c. 91) was passed providing for four paid judgeships, two of which were to be held by judges or ex-judges of the English bench. To none could one of the law officers be appointed. One of these two judgeships was accepted by Sir Montague Smith. The other was offered to and refused by three English judges, and a fourth having intimated that he would refuse it if offered, Lord Hatherley, the lord chancellor, thought it unseemly to hawk the appointment about any further. It was imperative that the vacancy should be at once filled, and Collier agreed to relieve the government in this difficulty. To give him the necessary technical qualification, Lord Hatherley in November 1871 appointed him to a vacant puisne judgeship in the court of common pleas. Here he sat a few days only ; three judgments of his are, however, reported (Law Reports, vii. Common Pleas, 163). Though a writ was made out appointing him a serjeant, it was never executed in open court, nor was he a member of Serjeants' Inn. Then Mr. Gladstone appointed aim to the vacancy on the privy council. No doubt was cast either on his fitness for the place or on his personal conduct in accepting it ; but a controversy, very damaging to the government, arose out of the appointment. Lord-chief-justice Cockburn and Chief-justice Bovill [q. v.] protected against it as contrary to the spirit of the act, and on 15 Feb. 1872 Lord Stanhope made a motion in the House of Lords condemning it, which was lost only by two votes. A similar motion in thellouse of Commons was lost by only twenty-seven. This post Collier held till his death, and the task of giving literary shape to the judgments of the privy council was frequently committed to him. In 1885 he was created a peer, taking his title from Monkswell, a small property in Devonshire. He married in 1844 a daughter of Mr. William Rose of Woolston Heath, near Rugby, and her sudden death in April 1886 shook him severely. In failing health he went to the Riviera, and died at Grasse, near Cannes, on 27 Oct. 1886, and was buried in London on 3 Nov. He was highly versatile and accomplished. He was a good billiard-player, an excellent scholar, and wrote some very pretty verses both in Latin and English. His memory was most retentive. But it was chiefly in painting, of which he was passionately fond, that he was distinguished. As a young man he drew very clever caricatures in the H.B. manner. When solicitor-general he painted in St. James's Park, and he exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery, especially pictures of the neighbourhood of Rosenlaui, Switzerland, where he spent many vacations. He published a treatise on the Railways Clauses Acts, 1845; another on Mines in 1849 ; a letter to Lord John Russell on the 'Reform of the Common Law Courts,' 1851, 2nd ed. 1852 ; and a translation of 'Demosthenes de Coronâ' in 1875. He was succeeded by his son Robert, a barrister, who graduated in the first class of the Cambridge law tripos, 1866, and has held the post of conveyancing counsel to the treasury ; his son John is a well-known artist ; and his daughter Margaret, Mme. Galettidi Cadilhac, has written ' Our Home by the Adriatic ' and 4 Prince Peerless/ a fairy tale.

[Times, 28 Oct. 1886 ; Saturday Review, 30 Oct. 1886 ; Solicitors' Journal, 30 Oct. and 7 Nov. 1886 ; Law Journal 30 Oct. 1886 ; Life of Lord Hatherley, ii. 271 ; information supplied by the present Lord Monkswell]

J. A. H.


COLLIER, THOMAS (fl. 1691), baptist minister, is said to have been originally an illiterate carter or husbandman (Edwards, Gangræna iii. 41). In 1634, when he is described as of Witley, Surrey, he was complained of for obstinately refusing to pay taxations in the tithing of Enton, in the parish of Godalming, where he had an estate. Having adopted the opinions of the baptists, he assumed the office of a preacher, although he had not received any academical education. He preached for some time in Guernsey, where he made many converts, but ultimately he and some of his followers were banished the island for their heresies and turbulent behaviour, and he was cast into prison at Portsmouth (Crosby, Hist. of the English Baptists, iii. 51). In, or perhaps shortly before, 1646 he was a preacher at York. About the same period there are traces of him at Guildford, Lymington, Southampton, Waltham, Poole, Taunton, London, and Putney; and in 1652 he was preacher at Westbury, Somersetshire (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 678, Fasti, i. 508; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vi. 322). At one time he was minister at Luppitt and Up-Ottery, Devonshire (Ivimey, Hist. of the English Baptists, ii. 141). ‘This Collier,’ remarks Edwards, ‘is a great sectary in the west of