Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley peer, and Anne, the eldest daughter of The 1st Viscount Dungannon. His younger brother, Arthur, was Field Marshal The 1st Duke of Wellington. Wellesley is an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, as his elder daughter, Anne, was the paternal grandmother of Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, maternal grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. Wellesley was born in 1760 in Ireland, where his family was part of the Ascendancy, the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy. He was educated at the Royal School, Armagh, Harrow School and Eton College, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington his brother's term as Governor-General of India ended in March 1805, the brothers returned together to England on HMS "Howe". Arthur, coincidentally, stopped on his voyage at the little island of Saint Helena and stayed in the same building to which Napoleon I would later be exiled. In September 1805, Major-General Wellesley was newly returned from his campaigns in India and was not yet particularly well known to the public. He reported to the office of the Secretary for War to request a new assignment. In the waiting room he met Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, already a legendary figure after his