Henry Wellesley (born Wesley), 1st Baron Cowley, GCB (20 January 1773 - 27 April 1847) was the younger brother of the Duke of Wellington, and became a notable diplomatist in his own right.

Educated at Eton College and at the court of the Duke of Brunswick, Wellesley joined the army in 1790. In 1791, his diplomatic career began, when he was appointed attaché to the British embassy at The Hague. The next year, he became Secretary of Legation in Stockholm In 1794, while on a trip home from Lisbon with his sister Anne, he was captured by the French, and remained in prison during the height of the terror, escaping only in 1795.

In 1797 Wellesley accompanies Lord Malmesbury as secretary on his unsuccessful mission to negotiate peace with the French at Lille. Later that year, he travelled to India, where he became private secretary to his oldest brother, Lord Mornington, the new governor-general. He was in India between 1797 and 1799, and again from 1801 to 1802, and was a useful assistant to his brother in a variety of diplomatic capacities, negotiating treaties with Mysore and Oudh.

In 1802 he returned to Europe, and married the next year to Charlotte Sloane , by whom he had three sons and a daughter before she abandoned him in 1809, running off with Henry Paget, a talented cavalry officer. He divorced in 1810. This had serious consequences for Paget's career, as he was later unable to serve under Wellesley's brother Wellington in the Peninsular Campaign due to the bad blood.

In 1809, Wellesley became the British envoy to Spain - his eldest brother, by now Marquess Wellesley, was now Foreign Secretary, while his brother Arthur (now the Earl of Wellington) was British commander-in-chief in Spain. Together, the three brothers helped to make the Peninsular campaign a success, and in 1812 Wellesley was knighted.

He remained Ambassador to Spain until 1821, but found time to marry again, this to to Lady Georgiana Cecil , daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury . In 1823, Wellesley became Ambassador to Austria, where he remained until 1831. Although he was close acquaintances with Foreign Secretary George Canning, who had asked Wellesley to serve as his second in his duel with Lord Castlereagh, Wellesley felt that Canning did not appreciate his services, feeling him to be too concilitory.

In January 1828, Wellesley was created Baron Cowley, of Wellesley, due to his brother Wellington's influence with then prime minister Lord Goderich. His final diplomatic service was in Paris, where he served as ambassador during Robert Peel's administrations in 1835 and 1841-1846. In 1846 Cowley retired, but remained in Paris, where he died the next year.

Cowley's eldest son, Henry Richard Charles Wellesley , followed in his father's footsteps as a diplomatist, holding the Paris embassy for fifteen years, and was eventually created Earl Cowley.

External links

• pedigree from thepeerage.com