William de Grey, 1st Baron Walsingham

William de Grey, 1st Baron Walsingham PC KC (7 July 1719 – 9 May 1781), was a British lawyer, judge and politician.

He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1742, and became a King's Counsel in 1758.

de Grey entered Parliament for Newport, Cornwall, in 1761, a seat he held until 1770, and then represented Cambridge University from 1770 to 1771, and held office under George Grenville and Lord Rockingham as Solicitor-General between 1763 and 1766 and under William Pitt the Elder, the Duke of Grafton and Lord North as Attorney-General between 1766 and 1771.

He failed to secure the conviction of Henry Sampson Woodfall for the publication of one of the Letters of Junius, which was deemed by the Crown to be a seditious libel; the jury thought otherwise and Lord Mansfield declared a mistrial.

[3] In 1771 de Grey was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a post he held until 1780, when he was forced to resign due to ill health.