Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley

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

Biography

He attended in his youth at Eton College and was then sent for further training at the court of the Duke of Brunswick- Wolfenbüttel.

After a short time in the army and first diplomatic stations in The Hague and Stockholm Wellesley in 1794 fell into French captivity, from which he was able to escape until the following year. After Wellesley worked as a secretary at the Foreign Office. He accompanied 1797 James Howard Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, as attaché to the Congress in Lille.

In the same year he went with his Governor-General of India appointed eldest brother Richard as private secretary to India, was Commissioner in Maissur and was able in July 1801 to cause the Nawab of Awadh ceding of territory, from which flowed one million pounds of annual income. He was employed as manager of the area. Next Wellesley supported his brother in the contract negotiations with various Indian princes.

In January 1803 he returned to Britain and married the year after Lady Charlotte Cadogan, with whom he had three sons and a daughter. The marriage was divorced in 1810 after Wellesley had previously been abandoned in the year of his wife. She married a short time later her lover, Henry Paget, a famous cavalry officer.

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

1816 Wellesley married again, this time Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Cecil, a daughter of James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury. Already in 1808 he had become a member of the Privy Council, Knight of the Bath in 1812. From May 1823 to August 1831 he was British Ambassador at the Austrian court in 1828, he was appointed Baron Cowley of Wellesley in the County of Somerset, peer. The title was in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

When the Whigs Wellesley was not in favor, and only became prime minister in 1841 when Sir Robert Peel, he was the successor of Granville Leveson - Gower, 1st Earl Granville, the post of ambassador in Paris. When the Whigs came to power again in 1846, he made Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby, space. He went to live in Paris and died there on 27 April 1847.