WESTBURY, RICHARD BETHELL, 1ST BARON ( 73), lord chancellor of Great Britain, was the son of Dr. Richard Bethell, and was born at Bradford, Wilts., on June 3o, 1800. He was educated at Wadham college, Oxford, and in 1823 was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. He was appointed vice-chancel lor of Lancaster in 1851. His most important public service was the reform of the then existing mode of legal education, a reform which ensured that students before call to the bar should have at least some acquaintance with the elements of the subject which they were to profess. In 1851 he obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where he continued to sit, first as member for Aylesbury, then as member for Wolverhampton, until he was raised to the peerage. Attaching himself to the liberals, he became solicitor-general in 1852 and attorney-general in 1856 and again in 1859. On June 26, 1861, on the death of Lord Campbell, he was created lord chancellor, with the title of Baron Westbury of Westbury, county Wilts. The ambition of his life was to set on foot the compilation of a digest of the whole law, but for various reasons this became impracticable. While personal corruption is
not imputed to him, he acted with some laxity, and after Parlia mentary enquiries, he resigned (1865).
In 1872 he was appointed arbitrator under the European Assurance Society act 1872. Perhaps the best known of his judgments is that delivering the opinion of the judicial commit tee of the privy council in 1863 against the heretical character of certain extracts from Essays and Reviews. His principal legis lative achievements were the passing of the Divorce act 1857, and of the Land Registry act 1862 (generally known as Lord West bury's act), the latter of which in practice proved a failure. What chiefly distinguished Lord Westbury was the possession of a blistering tongue. He waged a remorseless war on the clergy in general and bishops in particular. He died on July 20, 1873, within a day of the death of Bishop Wilberforce, his special an tagonist in debate among the clergymen of England.
See T. A. Nash, Life of Lord Westbury (2 vols., 1888).