the public. He fairly enough states,
that he derived his materials largely from the British Museum, and from
other sources common to the reader. His politics, too, will not stand
the test of grave enquiry. He adopts popular opinions without
consideration, and often panegyrizes where censure would be more justly
bestowed than praise. But we have no idea of disregarding the labour
which such a work must have demanded; or of regretting that the author
has given to the country the most exact and intelligent biography which
he had the means of giving.

The Wellesley family, rendered so illustrious in our time, is of remote
origin, deriving its name from the manor of Welles-leigh, in the county
of Somerset, where the family had removed shortly after the Norman
invasion. A record in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, traces the
line up to A.D. 1239, to Michael de Wellesleigh. The family seem to have
held high rank or court-favour in the reign of Henry I., for they
obtained the "grand serjeanty" of all the country east of the river
Perrot, as far as Bristol Bridge; and there is a tradition, that one of
the family was standard-bearer to Henry I. in the Irish invasion. In
England, the family subsequently perished; the estates passing, by a
daughter, into other families.

The Irish branch survived in Sir William de Wellesley, who was summoned
to Parliament as a baron, and had a grant by patent, from Edward III.,
of the castle of Kildare. In the fifteenth century, the family obtained
the Castle of Dangan by an heiress. The _de_ was subsequently dropped
from the family name, and the name itself abridged into Wesley--an
abbreviation which subsisted down to the immediate predecessor of the
subject of this memoir; or, if we are to rely on the journals of the
Irish Parliament, it remained later still. For in 1790 we find the late
Lord Maryborough there registered as Wesley (Pole,) and even the Duke is
registered, as member for the borough of Trim, as the Honourable Arthur
_Wesley_.

Richard Colley Wesley, the grandfather of the Marquess, having succeeded
to the family estate by the death of his cousin, was in 1746 created a
peer. He was succeeded by his son Garret, who was advanced to the
dignities of Viscount Wellesley of Dangan Castle, county Meath, and Earl
of Mornington. He was a privy councillor in Ireland, and _custos
rotulorum_ of the county of Meath. He married Anne, eldest daughter of
Arthur Hill Trevor, first Viscount