William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley

William Page Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley, PC (29 November 1801 – 10 July 1881) was a British lawyer and statesman who served as a Liberal Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain between 1868 and 1872 in William Ewart Gladstone's first ministry.

[1] Wood entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in 1824, studying conveyancing in John Tyrrell's chambers.

In 1849 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster, and in 1851 was made Solicitor General for England and Wales and knighted,[2] vacating the former position in 1852.

[3] In 1868 he was made a Lord Justice of Appeal, but before the end of the year was selected by Gladstone to be Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and was raised to the peerage as Baron Hatherley, of Down Hatherley in the County of Gloucester.

Charlotte's death in 1878 was a great blow to Wood, from which he never recovered, and he died in London on 10 July 1881, aged 79.

Lord Hatherley as Lord Chancellor, by George Richmond .
William Wood caricatured by "Ape" in Vanity Fair , 1869