3-053-398 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Lord Westbury, ex-Lord Chancellor, 1873. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. S. A. Walker. 'Sir Richard Bethell had just completed his seventy-third year. His career was one of brilliant success as a forensic advocate and jurist rather than a statesman...In 1840 he became a Queen's Counsel. He was appointed Solicitor-General by the Aberdeen Government in 1853, and promoted to be Attorney-General in 1856. While conducting the Law Amendment measures of Government in the House of Commons, Sir Richard was a most efficient member of Parliament. Among the legislative acts with which he was occupied were the Succession Duty Act, the Oxford University Reform Act, the Acts for abolishing the Ecclesiastical Courts and Ecclesiastical Testamentary Courts and for establishing the Court of Probate and Divorce, the Fraudulent Trustee Act, the Charitable Trusts Act, and some improvements in the Equity and Common Law Courts...His retirement from the woolsack was occasioned by a Parliamentary censure of the exercise of his patronage in appointing a near relative to be Registrar of the Leeds Bankruptcy Court. Since that time Lord Westbury chiefly attended to the judicial business of the House of Lords, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.