Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as Prime Minister. His victory against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 puts him in the first rank of Britain's military heroes. Wellesley was born in Dublin into the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. He was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland.
Arthur Soames (politician) Arthur Soames (politician) Arthur Wellesley Soames (30 November 1852 – 2 November 1934) was a British Liberal politician and architect. Soames was born in Brighton, the son of William Aldwin Soames. He was educated at Brighton College, the public school which his father had founded in 1845, and in 1871 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge where he obtained his BA in 1877 and MA in 1881. In 1876 he married Eveline, the daughter of T. Horsman Coles from Ore in East Sussex. They had two sons and two daughters. Both sons, Gilbert and Maurice, were killed during the