Wood was born on November 29, 1801 in London, England, the second son of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet, a London alderman and Lord Mayor who became famous for befriending Queen Caroline and braving George IV. Sir Evelyn Wood and Katharine O'Shea were his nephew and niece respectively.
Wood was educated at Winchester, Geneva University, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow after being 24th wrangler in 1824.
Wood entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in 1824, studying conveyancing in John Tyrrell's chambers. He soon obtained a good practice as an equity draughtsman and before parliamentary committees. In 1845 he became a Queen's Counsel, and in 1847 was elected to parliament for the city of Oxford as a Liberal. 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, vacating the former position in 1852. When his party returned to power in 1853, he was raised to the bench as a Vice-Chancellor. In 1868 he was made a Lord Justice of Appeal, but before the end of the year was selected by Gladstone to be Lord Chancellor and was raised to the peerage as Baron Hatherley, of Down Hatherley in the County of Gloucester. He retired in 1872 owing to failing eyesight, but sat occasionally as a law lord.
Wood married Charlotte, daughter of Edward Moor, in 1830. They had no children. Charlotte's death in 1878 was a great blow to Wood, from which he never recovered.
