Anne Wellesley, Countess of Mornington

Anne Wellesley (née Hill-Trevor), Countess of Mornington (23 June 1742 – 10 September 1831) was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. She was the wife of Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington and mother of the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

Portrait of Anne Wellesley, Countess of Mornington (4674635)

Life

Anne was born the Hon. Anne Hill-Trevor in 1742. She was the eldest daughter of the banker Arthur Hill-Trevor, 1st Viscount Dungannon, and his wife Anne Stafford. She was a friend of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the famous Ladies of Llangollen.[1]

Family

Anne married Garrett Wesley, the Earl of Mornington, in 1759. The marriage was said to be a happy one. Anne and Mornington had nine children together, and seven of them survived to adulthood:

Lord Mornington died in 1781, leaving her and their eldest son Richard, who was 21 then, to raise the rest of the family. She disliked Arthur when he was young. She said that he was "food for powder and nothing more" and constantly worried about his future.[2] In 1785, Lady Mornington went to Brussels to live, as a way to economise. She took Arthur with her and sent him to the Royal Academy of Equitation at Angers, in Anjou, after she returned to Britain in 1786. She was granted a pension of £600 in 1813 by Parliament after Arthur's success in the Peninsular War.[3]

Her husband's titles were in the Irish peerage, entitling him to sit in the Irish House of Lords, which disbanded following the Act of Union 1800 with Great Britain. Four of her five sons who survived to adulthood earned titles in Peerage of the United Kingdom, entitling them to sit in the United Kingdom House of Lords, while the fifth, Gerald Valerian, became a bishop, giving him precedence comparable to a peer.

References

  1. Hibbert, C. (1997). Wellington: A Personal History. New York: Harper Collins.
  2. Hibbert, C. (1997). Wellington: A Personal History. New York: Harper Collins.
  3. Muir, R. (2015). Wellington: Waterloo and the fortunes of peace, 1814-1852. New Haven; London: Yale University Press.
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