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Jeremy Thorpe in February 1970 when he was Liberal party leader and MP for North Devon. Photograph: Getty

Jeremy Thorpe, who brought the Liberal party to the brink of coalition government in 1974 but resigned amid scandal soon after, has died aged 85. He died on Thursday morning after a long battle with Parkinsons disease, his son Rupert has announced.

From the age of 38, he led the Liberals for nine years. Between 1967 and 1976, surviving a poor performance in the 1970 general election, he turned the Liberals from a tiny party of six MPs into a small one of 11. In the 1974 general election, Thorpe played up his relative youthfulness by vaulting a security barrier wearing his trademark trilby.

The Liberals made a breakthrough, winning 19% of the vote (then a post-war record) and got 14 MPs. Although Ted Heath had not won a majority, he had won the popular vote and refused to resign. Thorpe went to Downing Street for secret coalition talks with Heath (at one point being smuggled into No 10).

The talks eventually collapsed as the Liberals couldnt stomach coalition with the Tories and feared being tainted by Heath, whom even the Spectator was calling a squatter in No 10. It was the the closest to actual government the third party had come for decades , with the failure of the talks leading to a minority Labour government led by Harold Wilson.

Two years after walking up Downing Street, Thorpe resigned as leader of the party after being accused of conspiracy to murder a former model, Norman Scott, who claimed to be a former lover. Scott had been out walking his great Dane, Rinka, and, though he survived, the animal was killed. Thorpe was acquitted on all charges in 1979, but had by then had lost his seat and his party.

Not long after the end of the trial Thorpe was found to have Parkinsons disease and retired from public life. For many years, the disease has been at an advanced stage. However, in 1997 he visited the Liberal Democrat party conference and was given a standing ovation by party members, and he attended the funeral of Roy Jenkins in 2003.

In 1999, Thorpe published his memoirs, In My Own Time, in which he described key episodes in his political life. He did not, however, shed any further light on the Norman Scott affair.

If it happened now I think ... the public would be kinder. Back then they were very troubled by it, he told the Guardian in 2008. It offended their set of values.

Harold Wilson thought the allegations a Conservative smear, asking in a memo to one of his ministers, Barbara Castle, why damaging details surfaced later in the 1970s at a time when Labour might want to go into coalition with the Liberals, rather than earlier when Heath wanted them.

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Jeremy Thorpe, former Liberal party leader, dies aged 85