Wellesley, RICHARD COWLEY, MARQUIS, was born in Dublin, June 20, 1760. His father, the first Earl of Mornington (1735-81), was a man of great ability, though chiefly known for his musical attainments. Richard was educated at Eton, then at Christ Church, Oxford, and distinguished himself by his mastery of the classics, and especially by the remarkable excellence of his Latin verse. On his father's death in 1781 he took his seat in the Irish House of Peers, and in 1784 he was returned to the parliament at Westminster as member for Beeralston in Devonshire, sitting later for Saltash and Windsor. He supported Pitt's policy and Wilberforce in his efforts to destroy the slave-trade, and as early as 1786 became one of the Lords of the Treasury, having had the good fortune also to gain the favour of George III. In 1793 he became a member of the English Privy-council and of the Board of Control, and in October 1797 he was selected by Pitt to be Governor-general of India, and raised to the English peerage as Baron Wellesley. At this time the power of England was by no means supreme in India, but at the close of Wellesley's administration in 1805 she had become predominant, the revenue of the company raised from seven to fifteen millions, the foundations of British India securely laid. He cleared out the French from the Peninsula by ordering the Nizam to disband his French contingent of 14,000 men, and sent English soldiers to take their place, and in May 1799 crushed the dangerous power of Tippoo Saib when General Harris took Seringapatam by storm. This year he was made Marquis of Wellesley, and received the thanks of parliament, while later the Court of Proprietors voted him an annuity of £5000. In 1802, mortified by misunderstandings at home, he offered to resign, but was induced to remain because of the threatening clouds on the horizon. The great struggle with the Mahrattas soon broke out, but was closed by the energy of Wellesley and of his younger brother Arthur, afterwards Duke of Wellington. In 1805 Wellesley returned to England, where he never overcame the mortification of finding that he no longer stood first of men as he had done in India. He chafed much under the attacks on his administration which were made in parliament. In 1809 he went as ambassador to Madrid to urge a more vigorous support to his brother in the struggle within the Peninsula against the French, and on his return was made Foreign Minister and a Knight of the Garter. He became Lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1821 and again in 1833. He died at Kingston House, Brompton, September 26, 1842, and by his own desire was buried in the chapel of Eton College.
See the Memoirs and Correspondence, edited by Robert R. Pearce (1846); the Despatches, Minutes, and Correspondence, edited by Montgomery Martin (1840); the study by Col. Malleson (1889), and that by W. H. Hutton (1893).