Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, PC (30 June 1800 – 20 July 1873) was a British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician.

[1] Born at Bradford on Avon, in Wiltshire, he was the eldest son of the physician Richard Bethell of Bristol and Jane (née Baverstock).

[6] 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.

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.

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.

[4] After an illness, Westbury died six months later on 20 July 1873, within a day of the death of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, his special antagonist in debate.

Lord Westbury's daughter Augusta Bethell was a children's author and translator who was sought in marriage by Edward Lear before marrying Henry Charles Adamson Parker and then barrister Thomas Arthur Nash.