Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley
Encyclopedia
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
(20 January 1773 – 27 April 1847) was the youngest brother of the Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
, and became a notable diplomat in his own right.
Life
Educated at Eton CollegeEton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and at the court of the Duke of Brunswick, Wellesley purchased an Ensigncy
Ensign (rank)
Ensign is a junior rank of a commissioned officer in the armed forces of some countries, normally in the infantry or navy. As the junior officer in an infantry regiment was traditionally the carrier of the ensign flag, the rank itself acquired the name....
in the 40th Foot in 1790. In 1791, his diplomatic career began, when he was appointed attaché
Attaché
Attaché is a French term in diplomacy referring to a person who is assigned to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency...
to the British embassy at The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
. The next year, he became Secretary of Legation in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. In 1791 he exchanged into the 1st Foot Guards and in 1793 he purchased a Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
cy. In 1794, while on a trip home from Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
with his sister Anne, he was captured by the French, and remained in prison during the height of the terror, escaping only in 1795. In the latter year he sat for Trim
Trim (Parliament of Ireland constituency)
Trim was a constituency represented in the Irish House of Commons until 1800.-1692–1801:...
in the Irish House of Commons
Irish House of Commons
The Irish House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland, that existed from 1297 until 1800. The upper house was the House of Lords...
.
At the 1807 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1807
The election to the 4th Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1807 was the third general election to be held after the Union of Great Britain and Ireland....
he was elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP) both for Athlone
Athlone (UK Parliament constituency)
Athlone was a parliamentary constituency in Ireland, which from 1801 to 1885 returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.-Boundaries:...
in Ireland and for Eye
Eye (UK Parliament constituency)
Eye was a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected two Members of Parliament by the bloc vote system of election...
in England.
He chose to sit for Eye, and held the seat until his resignation
Resignation from the British House of Commons
Members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are technically forbidden to resign. To circumvent this prohibition, a legal fiction is used...
in 1809 by taking the Chiltern Hundreds
Chiltern Hundreds
Appointment to the office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham is a sinecure appointment which is used as a device allowing a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament to resign his or her seat...
.
In 1797 Wellesley accompanied Lord Malmesbury
James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury
James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury GCB was an English diplomatist.-Early life :...
as secretary on his unsuccessful mission to negotiate peace with the French at Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
. Later that year, he travelled to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, where he became private secretary to his oldest brother, Lord Mornington
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
Richard Colley Wesley, later Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, KG, PC, PC , styled Viscount Wellesley from birth until 1781, was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator....
, the new governor-general. He was in India between 1797 and 1799, and again from 1801 to 1802, and was a useful assistant to his brother in a variety of diplomatic capacities, negotiating treaties with Mysore
Kingdom of Mysore
The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom of southern India, traditionally believed to have been founded in 1399 in the vicinity of the modern city of Mysore. The kingdom, which was ruled by the Wodeyar family, initially served as a vassal state of the Vijayanagara Empire...
and Oudh.
In 1802 he returned to Europe, and married the next year to Lady Charlotte Cadogan, by whom he had three sons and a daughter before she abandoned him in 1809, running off with Henry Paget, a talented cavalry officer. His wife divorced him in Scotland in 1810. Although, at first, Paget's career was badly affected by the affair, as he was later unable to serve under Wellesley's brother Wellington in the Peninsular Campaign due to the bad blood, Paget later distinguished himself under Wellington at Waterloo.
In 1809, Wellesley became the British envoy to Spain - his eldest brother, by now Marquess Wellesley, was now Foreign Secretary, while his brother Arthur (now Viscount Wellington) was British commander-in-chief in Spain. Together, the three brothers helped to make the Peninsular campaign a success, and in 1812 Wellesley was knighted.
He remained Ambassador to Spain until 1821, but found time to marry again, this time to Lady Georgiana Cecil, daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury
James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury
James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury, KG, PC , styled Viscount Cranborne until 1780 and known as 7th Earl of Salisbury between 1780 and 1789, was a British politician.-Background:...
. In 1823, Wellesley became Ambassador to Austria, where he remained until 1831. Although he was close acquaintances with Foreign Secretary George Canning
George Canning
George Canning PC, FRS was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.-Early life: 1770–1793:...
, who had asked Wellesley to serve as his second in his duel with Lord Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, PC, PC , usually known as Lord CastlereaghThe name Castlereagh derives from the baronies of Castlereagh and Ards, in which the manors of Newtownards and Comber were located...
, Wellesley felt that Canning did not appreciate his services, feeling him to be too conciliatory.
In January 1828, Wellesley was created Baron Cowley, of Wellesley, due to his brother Wellington's influence with the prime minister, Lord Goderich. His final diplomatic service was in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he served as ambassador during Robert Peel's
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
administrations in 1835 and 1841-1846. In 1846 Cowley retired, but remained in Paris, where he died the next year.
Family
Cowley's eldest son, Henry Richard Charles WellesleyHenry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley
Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley KG GCB PC , known as The Lord Cowley between 1847 and 1857, was a British diplomat...
, followed in his father's footsteps as a diplomatist, holding the Paris embassy for fifteen years, and was eventually created Earl Cowley
Earl Cowley
Earl Cowley is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1857 for the diplomat Henry Wellesley, 2nd Baron Cowley. He was Ambassador to France from 1852 to 1867. He was made Viscount Dangan, of Dangan in the County of Meath, at the same time as he was given the earldom. This...
. Another son, Gerald Valerian Wellesley
Gerald Valerian Wellesley
Gerald Valerian Wellesley was a Church of England clergyman who became dean of Windsor.-Family:...
, became Dean of Windsor
Dean of Windsor
The Dean of Windsor is the spiritual head of the Canons of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The Dean chairs meetings of the Chapter of Canons as primus inter pares.-List of Deans of Windsor:* William Mugge, 1348* Walter Almaly, 1380...
.