Sir John Thomas Claridge (1792–1868) was a British barrister who served as Recorder for the Straits Settlements in what is now Malaysia from 1825 to 1829. Claridge was recalled from his post after a well-publicised bitter quarrel with the East India Company. He was later involved in a public scandal regarding the will for a wealthy estate. Early life John Claridge was born in 1792, into a middle-class family in Sevenoaks, Kent in England. He was the son of John Fellowes Claridge, a solicitor and partner in a law firm with Francis Austen, a great-uncle of Jane Austen. His younger brother, George Claridge (1794–1856), a solicitor who practiced in the family firm in Sevenoaks and was a famous amateur cricketer Harrow School and Lord Byron Claridge started attending Harrow School in 1805. While at Harrow, Claridge became friends with Lord Byron and his small circle of friends. Although Byron graduated from Harrow in 1805, he continued to visit there regularly, staying with Henry Drury who shared accommodations with Claridge. Over a dozen letters from Claridge to Byron survive in the John Murray Archive and cover a period from 1808 to 1811. The letters strongly hint that Byron exerted a powerful attraction on Claridge, who expresses his love for Byron in unequivocal terms. Claridge stayed at Newstead over Easter 1809. He attended a party in which Byron and his friends John Hobhouse, Scrope Berdmore Davies, Charles Skinner Matthews and James Wedderburn Webster dressed up as monks. The men drank from a skull and consorted with "Paphian girls", played by female servants. Byron refers to this party in the canto 1 of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, stating "Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile/And monks might deem their time was come agen". After returning from Greece in 1811, Byron renewed his friendship with Claridge. However, after a month of his company, Byron became rapidly bored. Byron wrote in September that year: In letters to Hobhouse that autumn, Byron execrates Claridge's dullness, fending off a claim of an "attachment" to the youth and eventually dismisses him with "Claridge is gone". Claridge's letters stop and Byron never refers to him again in his letters or journals. Early career Claridge graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1813 and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1818. However, there is no evidence of Claridge's work as a barrister. In 1825, the London