Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley
Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley (born June 20, 1760, Dangan, County Meath, Ireland—died September 26, 1842, London, England) was a British statesman and government official. Wellesley, as governor of Madras (now Chennai) and governor-general of Bengal (both 1797–1805), greatly enlarged the British Empire in India and, as lord lieutenant of Ireland (1821–28, 1833–34), attempted to reconcile Protestants and Roman Catholics in a bitterly divided country. Throughout his life he displayed an ever-increasing jealousy of his younger brother Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, despite his own achievements.
Richard Wesley was the eldest son of Garret Wesley, 1st earl of Mornington (Richard changed the family name to Wellesley in 1789). He was educated at Harrow School, Eton College, and Christ Church, Oxford, although he left the latter in 1781 (following his father’s death) before completing his degree. He entered the Irish House of Commons in 1780 and, after he inherited his father’s Irish titles in 1781, moved to the Irish House of Lords. A moderately liberal disciple of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, he won a seat in the British House of Commons in 1784 and served there until 1797. From 1793 he was a member of the British Privy Council and a commissioner of the India Board of Control.
As governor-general in India, Wellesley used military force and diplomacy to strengthen and expand British authority. East India Company forces defeated and killed Tippu Sultan, Muslim ruler of Mysore (present-day Mysuru) and sympathizer for Revolutionary France, in the fourth Mysore War (1799), and Wellesley then restored the Hindu dynasty there that had been deposed by Tippu’s father, Hyder Ali. He annexed much territory after his brother Arthur and General Gerard (later 1st Viscount) Lake defeated the Maratha Confederacy of states in the Deccan (peninsular India). In addition, he forced the state of Oudh (Awadh) to surrender numerous important cities to the British, and he contracted with other states a series of “subsidiary alliances” by which all parties recognized British preponderance. He had received a barony in the British peerage in 1797 at the time of his appointment as governor-general, and in 1799 he was awarded a marquessate in the Irish peerage for his victory in the Mysore War.
When Wellesley was faced with an invasion by Zamān Shah, ruler (1793–1800) of Kabul (Afghanistan), he utilized his envoy, Captain (later Sir) John Malcolm, to induce Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah of Persia (ruled 1797–1834) to restrain Zamān Shah and to give British political and commercial interests preference over the French. On receiving a British government order to restore to France its former possessions in India, he refused to comply. His policy was vindicated when the Treaty of Amiens (1802) was violated, and Great Britain resumed war against Napoleonic France.
Wellesley’s annexations and the vast military expenditure that he had authorized alarmed the court of directors of the East India Company. In 1805 he was recalled, and soon afterward he was threatened with impeachment, although two years later he refused an offer of the foreign secretaryship. In 1809 he went to Spain to make diplomatic arrangements for the Peninsular War against France and later that year became foreign secretary under Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. In that office he antagonized his colleagues, who considered him an indolent megalomaniac and welcomed his resignation in February 1812. Unlike most of them, however, he had urged a stronger war effort in Spain and had advocated political rights for British Roman Catholics. After Perceval’s assassination (May 11, 1812), he attempted unsuccessfully to form a government at the request of the prince regent (the future King George IV).
As lord lieutenant of Ireland, Wellesley disappointed the anti-Catholic George IV, and he was about to be removed when his brother, Wellington, was appointed prime minister (January 1828). Wellesley then resigned because his brother was opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation, although the duke was constrained to accept (1829) that policy as a political necessity. Wellesley’s second term as lord lieutenant of Ireland (1833–34) ended with the fall of the 2nd Earl Grey’s reform government. When the Whig Party returned to power (April 1835), he was not sent back to Ireland, and in his rage he threatened to shoot the prime minister, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. He wanted to be created duke of Hindustan so that his rank would equal that of his brother.
Wellesley had several children, including three sons, but none were legitimate. The marquessate thus became extinct upon his death. The earldom of Mornington went to his next surviving brother, William Wellesley-Pole.