Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury

Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, (30 June 1800 – 20 July 1873) was a British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain between 1861 and 1865. He was knighted in 1852 and raised to the peerage in 1861.

Background and education Born at Bradford on Avon, in Wiltshire, he was the eldest son of the physician Richard Bethell of Bristol and Jane (née Baverstock). He was from an old Welsh family originally named Ap Ithel. His younger brother was John Bethell.

He was educated in Bath and Bristol before attending Wadham College, Oxford at only 14 years old. He received a scholarship the next year. He took first-class honours in classics and second class in mathematics, and he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1818 and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1823, Bethell was called to the bar at the Middle Temple.

Career Westbury was made a Queen's Counsel in 1840 was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster in 1851.

Westbury was nominated Attorney-General in 1856 and again in 1859, serving both times for two years. He represented Wolverhampton from 1859 to 1861. Owing to the reception by parliament of reports of committees nominated to consider the circumstances of certain appointments in the Leeds Bankruptcy Court, as well as the granting a pension to a Mr Leonard Edmunds, a clerk in the patent office, and a clerk of the parliaments, the Lord Chancellor felt it incumbent upon him to resign his office, which he accordingly did on 5 July 1865, and was succeeded by Robert Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth. After his resignation he continued to take part in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords and the Privy Council until his death. In 1872 he was appointed arbitrator under the European Assurance Society Act 1872.

Character Perhaps the best known of his decisions was the judgment delivering the opinion of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1863 against the heretical character of certain extracts from the well-known publication Essays and Reviews.

His principal legislative achievements were the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, and of the Land Registry Act 1862 (generally known as Lord Westbury's Act), the latter of which in practice proved a failure. What chiefly distinguished Lord Westbury was the possession of a certain sarcastic humour; and numerous are the stories, authentic and apocryphal, of its exercise. In fact, he and Sir William Henry Maule filled a position analogous to that of Sydney Smith, convenient names to whom good things may be attributed.

Family Lord Westbury married Ellinor Mary, daughter of Robert Abraham, in 1825. His younger brother John married another daughter of Abraham, Louisa Sarah, in 1833.