Simon seemed destined for a seat in the Cabinet. However, after three years as Solicitor-General, he resigned from his office and his seat in Parliament in 1962, to widespread surprise, to become a
High Court judge, and President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, replacing
Lord Merriman. His legal practice at the family bar had prepared him for this position perfectly. The year after taking office, he had an operation to remove a benign tumour. The operation left him paralysed on one side of his face: he had a
speech impediment and also lost the use of his right eye; he habitually wore a black eye-patch thereafter, which gave him somewhat of a piratical air. He remained President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division for nine years, until he was created a
Life peer as
Baron Simon of Glaisdale, of
Glaisdale in the
North Riding of the County of York on 5 February 1971 and appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He retired from judicial office in 1977, but continued to attend the
House of Lords and took a close interest in legislation. He sat as a
crossbencher in the House of Lords, despite earlier sitting in the House of Commons and holding ministerial office as a Conservative. He was strongly opposed to
Henry VIII clauses. He proposed a
bill in 1981 to
reform the spelling of
British English by adopting certain practices from
American English, such as replacing "-ours" endings with "-ors". At the time of his death in 2006, he was the last living person to have held the title of a KC, having been appointed in 1951 under the reign of
George VI. However, he used the suffix QC between 1952 and 2006. ==Lord-Lieutenancy==