Selborne, William Waldegrave Palmer (1859–1942)

English politician and administrator. He was first lord of the Admiralty 1900–05, governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony and high commissioner for South Africa 1905–10, and president of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries 1915–16.

He prepared the document known as the Selborne Memorandum (1907), on the principles of South African union in a federal constitution. In 1909 he accompanied the Boer delegates to London and helped the British government in its task of passing the South Africa Act of 1909.