(Diary, iii. 468), Wellesley refused the vice-royalty of India. Wellington now approached Canning's successor, Lord Goderich, with the view of obtaining a peerage for his brother. On 21 Jan. 1828 Wellesley was created a peer, with the title of Baron Cowley of Wellesley. Wellington soon afterwards suggested his transference to Paris. On Palmerston's appointment to the foreign office at the end of 1830, Cowley offered to resign, and in July 1831 he left Vienna. On 13 March 1835 he was named ambassador at Paris by Peel's tory government, but retired in a few days when the whigs returned to office.
He was reappointed by Peel in October 1841. Princess Lieven, writing to Earl Grey on 6 Aug. 1841, said Cowley's appointment would be agreeable at Paris, but feared his health was too bad (Corresp. of Princess Lieven with Earl Grey, ed. Le Strange, iii. 338). He remained at Paris for the rest of his life, though he resigned his official position in 1846, when the tories went out of office.
Cowley died at Paris on 27 April 1847. He was buried in Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street. Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, characterised Cowley as a straightforward man, and as one who had a true eye for affairs. A portrait of him was engraved after a painting by John Hoppner, in the possession of the Duke of Wellington.
Cowley was twice married. His first wife, Charlotte, daughter of Charles Sloane, first earl Cadogan, whom he married in 1803, was divorced by act of parliament in 1810, after an action for criminal conversation, in which Cowley obtained 24,000l. damages from Henry William Paget (afterwards Marquis of Anglesey) [q. v.], who married her the same year. By his first wife Cowley had three sons and a daughter, Charlotte Arbuthnot, who married Robert Grosvenor, first lord Ebury. The eldest son, Henry Richard Charles, earl Cowley [q. v.], is separately noticed. The second wife was Georgiana Charlotte Augusta, eldest daughter of James Cecil, first marquis of Salisbury. She died at Hatfield on 18 Jan. 1860, leaving a daughter, Georgiana Charlotte Mary, who married William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, baron Dalling and Bulwer [q. v.]
Cowley's third son, Gerald Valerian Wellesley (1809–1882), dean of Windsor, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1830. He took holy orders, and from 1836 to 1854 held the family living of Strathfieldsaye, Hampshire. In 1854 he was nominated dean of Windsor. He had been Queen Victoria's domestic chaplain since 1849, and from that time lived on terms of intimacy with the royal family. The queen stood sponsor to his son, and a portrait of him hangs in the vestibule to the private apartments of Windsor Castle. He died at Hazlewood, near Watford, on 17 Sept. 1882. The Prince of Wales attended his funeral. Wellesley married in 1856 Magdalen Montagu, third daughter of Lord Rokeby. His only son, Albert Victor Arthur, was born in July 1865.
[Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage; Burke's Peerage; Ann. Reg. 1847, App. to Chron. pp. 225–6; Pearce's Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley, vols. i. ii.; Wellington Correspondence, ed. second duke, iv. 72–3, 162–7, 171, 469–71, 486, 499; Metternich's Memoirs (transl.), iv. 99, 117; Greville Memoirs, new ed. vi. 20, 27. Cowley's despatches to Castlereagh while in Spain are in Castlereagh's Corresp. vols. ix–xii.; letters to Wellesley and Wellington, 1809–10, in Wellington Suppl. Despatches, vol. vi., and to the latter in India in Gurwood, vol. ii. See also Times, 19 Sept. 1882; Illustr. London News, 23 Sept., with portrait.]
WELLESLEY, HENRY (1791–1866), scholar and antiquary, born in 1791, was the illegitimate son of Richard Colley Wellesley, marquis Wellesley [q. v.] He matriculated on 17 Oct. 1811 from Christ Church, Oxford, where he held a studentship from 1811 to 1828, graduating B.A. in 1816, M.A. in 1818, and B.D. and D.D. in 1847. On 20 June 1816 he became a student at Lincoln's Inn, but having been ordained a minister of the English church he was appointed successively vicar of Flitton-with-Silsoe in Bedfordshire on 5 Sept. 1827, rector of Dunsfold in Surrey on 1 Nov. 1833, and rector of Woodmancote in Sussex on 6 June 1838, resigning the last in 1860. He was also rector of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex at the time of his death. In 1842 he was nominated vice-principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, and in 1847 was made principal by the Duke of Wellington, then chancellor of the university. While principal he filled the office of university preacher. Wellesley was an accomplished scholar, well read in both ancient and modern literature. He was a member of the Sussex Archæological Society from its foundation in 1846. At the time of his death Wellesley was a curator of the Bodleian Library, of the university galleries, and of the Taylorian Institution. He died at Oxford, unmarried, on 11 Jan. 1866.
Wellesley was the author of ‘Stray Notes on the Text of Shakespeare,’ London, 1865, 8vo. He edited ‘Anthologia Polyglotta; a
