Richard Wesley, 1st Baron Mornington

Who is Richard Wesley, 1st Baron Mornington?

Richard Colley Wesley, 1st Baron Mornington was an Irish peer, best remembered as the grandfather of the 1st Duke of Wellington.

He graduated from the University of Dublin in 1711. Between 1729 and 1746 he represented Trim in the Irish House of Commons. He was High Sheriff of Meath in 1734, and held a number of sinecures including Chamberlain to the Court of Exchequer. He was created Baron Mornington in the Peerage of Ireland on 9 July 1746.

He married Elizabeth Sale, daughter of John Sale, Registrar of the Diocese of Dublin, on 23 December 1719. She died on 17 June 1738. They had one son, Garett, and two daughters, Frances Crosbie and Elizabeth Fortescue.

He was the eldest son of son of Henry Colley and Mary, daughter of Sir William Ussher; brother of Henry Colley, father of Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, father-in-law to Chichester Fortescue and William Francis Crosbie, and grandfather of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley. He took the name Wesley, which later generations changed back the older form Wellesley, on inheriting the estates of his cousin Garret Wesley.