[3] Cole also gained notoriety for being tried in the Criminal Branch of the New York Supreme Court from 1911 to 1916 for practicing medicine without a license, being found guilty, and then winning his appeal.

The couple lived in Manhattan and Greenwich Village, where Cole continued his practice of Christian Science treatment and writing poetry.

[7] The trials were widely publicized, creating heated debate - and finally a permanent ruling - on what constitutes freedom of religious practice in the treatment of bodily ills.

[5][9][10] In the ruling, Chief Justice Willard Bartlett wrote: "I deny the power of the Legislature to make it a crime to treat disease by prayer.

After winning an award for his first novel, The Star of the Alamo, in 1926,[12] he retired to France and established himself in a historic Loire chateau, Château de Cinq-Mars, near Tours, where he began making his own wines from the chateau's vineyards and developed this pursuit into a prosperous wine business, "Vins de France".

[13] He continued writing novels, winning a second award for Constanza,[14] and in 1927 married Maria Estella Jiminez of Pasadena, California.