Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley

Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley (left) and Lord Clarendon

Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley , GCB , PC (born January 20, 1773 , † April 27, 1847 in Paris ) was a British statesman and diplomat and the younger brother of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington . Until 1789 he wrote his last name Wesley .

Live and act

Wellesley's maiden name was Henry Wesley. He was the son of Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington (1735–1781) and the Hon. Anne Hill, daughter of Arthur Hill-Trevor, the Viscount Dungannon. In his youth he attended Eton College and was then sent to the court of the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel for further training . Here he was registered at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig in 1790, still under the name Henry Wesley .

In 1789 his name was officially changed to Henry Wellesley. In 1791 he was raised to the rank of officer and headed the 1st Foot Guards Regiment. After a short time in the army and first diplomatic posts in The Hague and Stockholm in 1792 , Wellesley was captured by the French in 1794, from which he was only able to escape the following year. Wellesley then worked as a secretary in the Foreign Office, where he was employed in 1795 as a Member of Parliament for Trim (Ireland). In 1793 he went as Lord Malmesbury's secretary to the embassy in Lille and between 1798 and 1805 he was the private secretary of his eldest brother Richard, who had been appointed Governor General of India . In India, he became commissioner in Maissur and, as envoy in Lucknow , was able to induce the Nawab of Avadh in July 1801 to cede an area from which 1 million pounds sterling of annual income flowed. He was appointed as the administrator of this area. Wellesley also supported his brother in contract negotiations with various Indian princes.

Wellesley became Member of Parliament for the Patch Eye in Suffolk in 1807 and Secretary of the Treasury under the Ministry of William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland , and Ambassador to Madrid in 1809 , where he remained until 1821. During the fighting on the Iberian Peninsula , he worked closely with his brother Arthur, who was commander in chief of the British troops in this theater of war.

In 1808 he was a member of the Privy Council and in 1812 became a Knight of the Order of Bath . From May 1823 to August 1831 he was British Ambassador at the Austrian court , on 1 January 1828, he was as Baron Cowley , of Wellesley in the County of Somerset , to peer collected. The title belonged to the Peerage of the United Kingdom .

Wellesley was not in favor with the Whigs, and it was not until Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister in 1841 that he succeeded Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville , the post of ambassador to Paris . When the Whigs came back to power in 1846, he made way for Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby . From then on he lived in Paris and died here on April 27, 1847.

family

He returned to Great Britain in 1803 and married Lady Charlotte Cadogan on September 20 in Santon Downham, Suffolk, with whom he had three sons and a daughter. The marriage ended in divorce in 1810 after Wellesley had been abandoned by his wife the previous year. A short time later she married her lover, Henry Paget , a famous cavalry officer.

Children from this marriage:

Hon. Charlotte Arbuthnot Wellesley († November 21, 1891)
Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley (June 17, 1804 to July 15, 1884)
Captain the Hon. William Henry George Wellesley (February 2, 1806 to December 21, 1875)
Very Rev. Hon. Gerald Wellesley (1809 to September 17, 1882)

On February 27, 1816, Wellesley married Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Cecil, daughter of James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury, at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire .

The Hon. Georgiana Charlotte Mary Wellesley (June 11, 1817 to August 2, 1878)

literature

Henry Wellesley, Charlotte Cadogan, Henry William Paget Anglesey, W. Plomer: Lord Paget's letters and trial in the affair of Lady Charlotte Wellesley in which is included the eloquent speech of Mr. Dallas . Printed for T. Purday and Son, by B. M'Millan, London 1809, OCLC 506024343 .
Henry Wellesley, Frederick Arthur: The diary and correspondence of Henry Wellesley, first Lord Cowley, 1790-1846 . Hutchinson & Co., London 1930, OCLC 557918311 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Commons : Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley of Wesley on thepeerage.com , accessed February 14, 2016.
↑ In the year 1790. ( Memento from February 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) In: Peter Düsterdieck: The matriculation of the Collegium Carolinum and the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig 1745–1900. P. 23.

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Cowley 1828-1847	Henry Wellesley

personal data
SURNAME	Wellesley, Henry, 1st Baron Cowley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Cowley, Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron; Wesley, Henry (until 1789)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British politician, Member of the House of Commons and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH	January 20, 1773
DATE OF DEATH	April 27, 1847
Place of death	Paris

[peerage-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley of Wesley on thepeerage.com , accessed February 14, 2016.

[2] In the year 1790. ( Memento from February 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) In: Peter Düsterdieck: The matriculation of the Collegium Carolinum and the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig 1745–1900. P. 23.