Richard Wellesley KG KP PC (1760 - 1842)

Born 20 Jun 1760 in Ireland

Ancestors

Husband of Hyacinthe Gabrielle (Roland) Wellesley — married 29 Nov 1794 (to 7 Nov 1816) in St Georges, Hanover Square, London, England

Husband of Marianne (Caton) Wellesley — married 29 Oct 1825 in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

Descendants

Died 26 Sep 1842 at age 82 in Kingston House, Brompton, Middlesex, England

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Biography

3xGreat grandfather to Queen Elizabeth II.

He was the eldest son of Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and Anne, the eldest daughter of Arthur Hill-Trevor, 1st Viscount Dungannon; and brother of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, the famous General who later served as Prime Minister.

Part of the Anglo-Irish Aristocracy, Richard served a year in the Irish House of Commons before succeeding his father as 2nd Earl of Mornington (Marquis Wellesley from 1799), taking his seat in the Irish House of Lords. In 1784 he joined also the British House of Commons as member for Bere Alston. Soon afterwards he was appointed a Lord of the Treasury by William Pitt the Younger. He served as Governor-General in India 1798-1805. Created an English Peer in 1797, he served as ambassador to Spain 1809, and Foreign Secretary 1809-12. A supporter of Catholic Emancipation and an opponent of the Corn Laws, he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1821-8.

Wellesley lived together for many years with Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, an actress at the Palais Royal. She had three sons and two daughters by Wellesley before he married her on 29 November 1794. He moved her to London, where Hyacinthe was generally miserable, as she never learned English and she was scorned by high society: Lady Caroline Lamb was warned by her mother-in-law that no respectable woman could afford to be seen in Hyacinthe's society. Their daughter, Anne (Lady Charles Cavendish-Bentinck), married sequentially Sir William Abdy, 7th Baronet, and Lieutenant Colonel Lord Charles Bentinck, while another daughter, Hyacinthe Mary Wellesley, married Edward Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton. Through Lady Charles Cavendish-Bentinck, Wellesley is a great-great-great grandfather to Queen Elizabeth II.

Following his wife's death in 1816, he married, on 29 October 1825, the widowed Marianne (Caton) Patterson, whose mother Mary was the daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence; her former sister-in-law was Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. They had no children.

Sources

• C. A. Bayly, ‘Wellesley , Richard, Marquess Wellesley (1760–1842)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 accessed 18 Oct 2016

• Wikipedia Entry

• Findagrave memorial