English lord chancellor, whose grasp of legal principle and study of the historical foundations of equity, combined with his knowledge of Roman civil law, enabled him to establish the principles and limits of the English system of equity.

Called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1715, Hardwicke afterward joined Lincoln's Inn, of which he was bencher and treasurer in 1724. He sat in Parliament (1719, 1722–34) and was solicitor general (1720), attorney general (1724), lord chief justice (1733), and lord chancellor (1737).

For many years from 1740 onward Hardwicke held the controlling power in the government. During King George II's absences on the European continent he was an influential member of the Council of Regency, and he had to cope with the Jacobite rising of 1745. After the Battle of Culloden he presided at the trial of the Scottish Jacobite peers; he carried out the great reform of 1746, which swept away the private heritable jurisdictions of the Scottish landed gentry. Among his other services was the reform of the English marriage laws (1753), which required, however, that weddings be performed in Anglican churches.

Hardwicke was created a baron in 1733 and an earl in 1754. He retired with the duke of Newcastle in November 1756 but helped to secure the coalition between Newcastle and William Pitt in 1757.